Keep the Faith

Words, letters, syllables
They mean nothing, do they?
But to him they mean the world.

They were his haven, his outlet, his weapon.
But lately all they did was do what every arms man feared...
Backfiring.

The letters spewed by his fans, his lovers, his rejects managed to wear him down and implode his already bruised ego. Their pleads for him to alter back to the form of the human being he despised the most, only assisted him into crouching back behind the folds of his blistered thoughts and shut everything out.
He stopped responding, feeling, caring.
The smile curled on his lips won't die, he won't let it. That facial expression that sent millions of girls swooning held more than meets the eye, but after he had molded it so skillfully to match the hurt carved on his face, it fitted perfectly. Like a piece of stained glass fits the jagged edges of the hallows within spaces of a parietal fascia on polished walls.

That smile bore a lot, it took a lot of effort to perfect it and now their spits, their carelessly drawn curses and hate caressed shouts were peeling down the coats of paints he took years to apply.

Those were the weights pulling him back down to Earth all this time, and now they were cutting themselves free, cutting off his life support, letting him go and wither away. In the exile of his paranoia infested mind.

Was he that worthy?

Was he all that that they spew?

Did he really succeed at draining those kids' hope?

Was he that powerful? That weak? That affective?

A liar, an empty shell, a rag doll ...

A fake?

That last one hurt him the most; fake.
He strived to keep on living for them, he tore his empty shell and wrote out the thoughts he dreaded to expose the most. All of them.
His love for them never faltered, only his common sense did. He broke down, his conscience malfunctioned as he shunned it, smashed it against the walls of his insecurities.
The pitiful looks he was given stabbed him more affectively than the dirty one.

They wanted the old him back.
He didn't even know there was a new him...
Thus he wondered... who would want the old him?
That human piece of shit, that broken down fool, the intoxicated drugged-up wreck?

That ... that nothing.

Not even a mother would want that.

He was their hero, glorified, prominent, had the hearts of thousands then...
He was stripped down.They stripped him down.
Now he was naked, he felt naked.

Exposed.

No human being had the right to bear out another. Not in the public eye, not like this.
Their chants used to be his symphony, the hymn he thrived upon hearing.
The syllables of his name pouring out of loving lips made his inflating ego overflow with pride every time.

They were there for him.
But with a blink of an eye ...
They weren't.
They vanished. The trickling music of their chants just faded out to be replaced by cutting silence and accusing stares.
He stared at the picture of the twin image of himself reflected in the silver plated surface, chucking sad looks back at him.

The hazel that seemed so vibrant in pictures everywhere seemed more like a dull brown. The sparks had gone, the passion ...
They were up-rooted from the soil of his fickle mind.

No... NO!
His hands let go of the framed glass, his eyes following its fall, how it resembled his own.
Colliding with the ceramic floor, the surface shattered, the sharp-edged small pieces rush to splatter around the ground, some sinking themselves in the soles of his bare feet and some just lay there still reflecting.

"To be unloved... " He began to whisper to himself his eyes glazing looks upon the small bleeding cuts sprinkled across the pale skin of his feet, "... To be judged, to be dragged down, to be taken apart again, is that what this is all about, Gerard?" The man sitting on the floor looked up to me, eyes dead and frigid. And dark - Dark like the murky bottom of a lake. "Feeling young again?"

I stared down at him, resentment evident on my face and the curl on my lips. These pallid thin lips.
I didn't answer him, I never will. He wasn't worth my time.

Is this what the broken-down me will turn out like?
Yes. I was looking down at myself, him.

The other Gerard Arthur Way.

The passionate,
The loving,
The legendary Gerard Way.

Sprawled between pieces of broken glass, allowing himself to be vulnerable. Weak, like a hero shouldn't be.
I, for one, knew that he hated this. I hated this.

He was tumbling down on the inside, with every internet blog even approaching the mention of him.
Those words: Liar, cocky, fake. They scorched and scalded.

They made him, now they'll break him.
To then he was defected now. They didn't like the new him.
I just watched him sit, scrutinizing his every detail, every outline and every move.

Was he scared? Was he angry? Did he care at all?
I don't know.

My mind was blank like the walls of this hotel room, untouched. Those words were enough to effect every emotion I've hidden.
The figure that mirrored me in every aspect of appearance except his temples, his dim murky temples- frowned.
He invested himself in them, for them. Now he couldn't understand, process, comprehend. What had happened?

His fingers tampered with the fraction of glass on the floor as he let it cut, he was bleeding.
It's like if he wanted to see if he could, if he would.

"Gerard?" His voice, soft and low, reached my ear. Boy, I sounded strange."What made me so special? So ...worthy of all of them?" His question fluidly climbed out of his weary throat.

"You are ... to me, to your friends, to Mikey, to everyone." He was pathetic. I didn't have an answer.

"A girl said she wanted the old Gerard back, but not the drugged one. Then who the hell does she mean? Who does she want? Who do they want?'"

"No-one. Not the Gerard Way I've come familiar with for the last thirty years. They want the one they've created in their inferior brains."

"They're still my fans." Sadness rested in his breaths as he sighed, eyeing the glimmering silvers.

"Not anymore. Don't you get it? They've singled you out. Even your worst enemies wouldn't sink that low, Gerard. Snap out of it! You've been knocked out into far worse spirals but you've clung with every fiber in your body and pulled yourself out. Every time they knock us down ..."

"... We get back up." He added, wrapping his skinny arms around his frail body, "We move on."

"We keep on living."
Rejection
Hate
The picture of the various broken pieces
Sadness
Lack of hope
It all didn't matter now. He'll keep on living, surviving, pouring out his heart out, he'll still love them.
Despite everything; the words, the hate, the heart-break.

"Gerard?" Again, his voice laced with sadness and uncertainty.

"What?" I whispered, throwing looks at the identical pair of hazel.

"I'm too weak to believe you."

A tear.
A sob.
A thud.
Black locks against white floor.

Heart-break kid.
Well, he's not a kid. He was a man.
He was broken, now he's not.

He left. Got his hope back, for the ones who didn't.
He let the other hit too hard, let them strike again, who gives a fuck?
He'll keep breaking if that meant making the believers happy. They were the ones who mattered, the defenders.
I was weak but they saved me.
But not him.

Not him.
-----

Don't lose it, kids. Don't ever lose it.