Slip Away.

Each and every day of my life seemed to be the same. Wake up. Lie silently for a few hours. Get out of bed. Go downstairs. Sit on Ian’s sofa. Pretend to watch some bullshit on the television.

I didn’t really watch television. I didn’t take anything in. All my senses were dulled in the day and I could be numb.
I would just sit still and stare at a crack on the wall. I stared and stared and stared until I could stare no more and yet I still stared. I didn’t get up and go anywhere else. There was no point. I knew there was nothing that could possibly hold my attention much better than this.

When there’s nothing left to enjoy, you just hang onto the mild amusements. I don’t take any pleasure from anything but sometimes staring at a crack on the wall that’s been there for ten years gives me a dull amusement. Sometimes letting my skin burn over the flame of a match is a sharper sensation of pain that feels strangely welcome.

Anything is more welcome than this. This... this ache, that just tugs at me and weighs me down all day until it tears me apart at night.

I hate clichés. So. Fucking. much. I hate to watch them. I hate to read them. And I hate to be one more than anything.

The days were, in comparison to how things used to be, or how I imagined they must have been, phenomenally dull and excruciatingly monotonous. But dull and monotonous, I could handle. The days were peaches and cream compared with the night.

Night was when the darkness seeped out of me. Night was when I couldn’t pretend. Night was when I couldn’t shut off. Night was when the knife of reality stabbed into me and twisted itself a few times. Night was when I saw all my best and worst memories. Night was when I saw his face. Night was when I dared to whisper the name.

Lee Gaze. Just two words. It only takes two words to turn one grown man into a wreck.

And it only took six to put me here.

+++

I awoke with a start, my breath coming in ragged gasps and sweat seeping from every pore. I could feel my hair sticking to my forehead, not to mention my damp hands. I felt a chill go through me and the feeling of a cold sweat ran through me. I shuddered slightly, my eyes darting around my surroundings. I had no idea how I’d ended up here. I quickly lifted my wrist to look at my watch, which I obviously hadn’t taken off before sleeping.

5am.Fucking Brilliant. I dropped my hand back down and slowly rubbed my face, trying to think. I didn’t know where the hell I was, though it was a bed, and it was oddly familiar. It wasn’t my house... it wasn’t my mum’s house... Ian’s! It was Ian’s house. His spare room, I supposed.

I blinked. What on earth was I doing sleeping at 5am at Ian’s place with all my clothes still on? Maybe I’d got completely wasted and passed out somewhere... but no, that didn’t make sense. If I was drunk then I’d have ended up at Stu’s, or my own home, or Aled’s...

Aled’s.

“Fuck.”A single word; a practically incoherent whisper, mingled with a slight moan, just escaped my lips.

Memories from several hours previously came flooding into my mind.

“No,” I gasped. “No, no I didn’t. I can’t have.”

I couldn’t have told him.

Oh holy hell. I had. I’d actually told him. I, Jamie Oliver, had been enough of a stupid prick to let my fucking stupid mouth open, and tell Lee Gaze of my fucking stupid secrets. I’d actually done the unthinkable. I’d really gone and done it this time. Fucking stupid Jamie.

I swallowed hard as I remembered those few minutes in the bathroom. I eventually buried my face in my hands, breathing hard as I tried to figure out how to make this better. But I couldn’t. I just... couldn’t. I couldn’t fix this. I’d messed up everything in my life with six fatal words and I knew, from what Lee had said after those six words, that there was no way to fix it.

As I realised this in my stone cold sober state I started to shake just a little bit. I held one hand over my mouth as I cried out slightly, uncontrollably. Hot salty liquid leaked from my eyes and I felt a heat rise over my entire body, the heat of embarrassment or humiliation perhaps. My body shuddered with the sobs and I sat in the same position for the next two hours. In fact, I completely repeated the process that I’d gone through the night before in Aled’s bathroom, except I’d stayed in Aled’s bathroom a grand total of five minutes by myself before Ian very gently came and got me, and took me to his.

Not only was it a process I was repeating, it was a process I would repeat again, every night for the next several nights. Remember. Cry. Panic. Wish. Hope. Hate. Despair. Cry. Sleep. My life grew to be more routine than that of a houseplant’s.

Stuck in a rut? It was more like a canyon. It wasn’t me at all. It didn’t suit me. I was all about enthusiasm...or I used to be, anyway. Now I couldn’t summon the enthusiasm or energy for anything. I was apathetic to it all. Ian kept telling me to eat, he would cook me meals which I picked at like a child; Ian told me when I should go to bed at night, he even went and fetched clothes from my house for me and washed them after I’d worn them. It was a wonder he didn’t brush my hair and get me dressed in the mornings.

Then again: I barely bothered to get dressed any more. I didn’t leave the house, so what was the point?

What was the point in anything?

No, I didn’t see the point in fucking anything. I didn’t see the point in getting up in the morning, I didn’t see the point of living, I didn’t see the point of loving him.

But it would seem understanding isn’t a big factor in the grand scheme of things because here I still was. Getting up in the morning. Living. Really, I was more existing than I was living, but that was a mere technicality, practically just a matter of opinion. The fact of the matter was that I loved Lee. I was in love with him and I had been for longer than I could possibly forget, and there was no turning back now.

Six words to make everything fall. Just six. Not five, not seven. Six.

I’m still in love with you.