All We Are Is Bullets...

"Hmm. Bloody blemish." I was fiendishly rubbing my face with tea tree oil, trying in vain to remove a spot that had been lingering on my forehead for a few weeks now. Thus far, nothing I'd tried had worked, and it was irritating me. I knew at this stage that wearing heavy stage make up had it's disadvantages, but this was downright ridiculous. I always took care of my skin. I always made sure to look my best at all times of the day or night. I always did my utmost to look perfect.

"Rachel! Stop it." Amy's stern voice echoed across the room, distracting me from my obsessive scrubbing. I jumped, startled, before gazing down at my hands and dropping the cotton wool. "I'm sorry," I replied remorsefully. "Force of habit." I could still hear his voice in my head sometimes, questioning, accusatory, sinister...

Why aren't you dressed up? I do so much for you and all I ask in return is that you try and look your best for me. But no, you can never do anything right!

"Smash."

"What?"

"Smash," I repeated out loud, adding the sound effect from my flashback. "Something always broke after the incessant questioning." Amy smiled sympathetically and came over to me.

"That's not your life anymore, Rachel. It's not you and it never will be again." I reciprocated her embrace.

"I know. It's just hard not to fall back into my old ways at times. Sometimes I can't believe it went on for so long, cos it's all like one unending nightmare. Then I realise how ingrained all my ways from those years are and I realise... I lost so much of my life to that bastard."

"But you got away from him, and you're building a new and better life. One that can't be tore down no matter what."

I nodded uneasily; I knew she was right, but there were times when it was so difficult to grasp onto the vision of an idealistic new reality. After having so much of my life lived for me for so long it was hard to imagine taking anything into my own hands again. I knew I had to if I was ever to escape the psychological trauma that still made my life a living hell at times, but I was never quite certain if I had the strength to do so.

The distant cheer of a crowd of people as the doors to the venue were opened distracted me and drew a smile from my weary lips. That was one army that always made me feel invincible; our fans. Strong, proud, loyal and eternally supportive-their words of comfort and messages of hope and solidarity had given me so much to live for and something to believe in when everything else was falling to pieces around me. I knew I had to be as strong for them as they were for me. I had read the letters, right down to the last poorly scrawled word and inappropriately used apostrophe. I knew what some of them had been through and I knew what they saw in the band and the music that had helped them through it. I realised by now that in conquering my own misery I had become a beacon of hope for them; a heroine who had achieved what they longed to do. I needed to show them that it was possible, that anyone could do it and the sooner they could the better. Living in an abusive relationship destroyed everything about you. Absolutely everything-your faith in yourself, your family, your friends, love and life itself. Grasping onto the fragile hope of a new reality got increasingly difficult with each punch, either verbal and subtle, or physical and devastating. Someone had to give them fuel to fan the flames of belief, and I knew that for a significant group of people, I was that person. I would always stand up tall and strong for them, no matter what I felt inside.

"Have you decided what to wear tonight?" Amy asked, setting up the straightening tongs so as to get started on my mane of waist-length black hair.

"Yeah, I think so," I replied. I walked over to the sleek black and grey metallic case that held my stage outfits and started ruffling through the colourful ensembles. Hmm. That new grey skirt with the skull motif and suspenders was pretty cool; but also exceptionally slutty given that it barely skimmed my thighs. One for the private stash! Ha-that implies I had someone to share my private stash with. Not for more than two years now. It had been that long since I dug a path out of my pit of despair and I'd never been able to find a man with whom I could build a proper relationship since. Granted, I hadn't been looking to or interested in doing so, focusing instead on my music and creating the best possible album I could for the band, but nonetheless I had noticed that whenever anyone showed so much as a smidgen of interest I backed away immediately. It was so hard not to see evil intent behind the twinkling eyes. Every smile hid a potential monster. Every outstretched hand could easily be remoulded into a fist. Nothing held positive connotations for me anymore.

Everyone with a friendly face
Seems to hide some secret inside

Always there to remind me
He keeps me from believing
That someone might be there
Who will free me and never ever leave me...

Bless you, Sharonje. Your music has saved me more times than I can remember.

"So what will it be?" Amy asked again, her make up now doled out and her foot tapping impatiently. "Are you doing your make up first or what?"

"Oh, sorry! I'm in a pensive mood today. Em...methinks I shall wear my new black waist cincher, with the green skirt from H & M. I need to puff it out a bit though, and preserve my modesty, so I'm putting a black underskirt underneath it."

"Grand."

"I think I'll get dressed first and then do my make up."

"OK. I'll go and check on the guys then, shall I?"

I giggled loudly. The guys had only recently taken to wearing "guyliner" on tour, and Amy was properly chuffed with them. So much that she had taken to stalking them before every show to ask (insist more like) if they wanted it applied properly.

"Have fun!" I said as she threw a few pieces of maquillage into a bag and walked excitedly out the door. She closed it sharply behind her and I took out my outfit. Sheesh. Something in that case did not smell good. The unpleasant side effect of wearing beautiful outfits on tour; sweat and overpowering body odour. Eww. No wonder stage clothes were always kept in sterile metal containers-the smell couldn't seep through. I took a marker from the table (markers were always kept handy for autograph sessions after shows) and sifted through the clothes; placing a mark on whatever hanger held something in need of a trip to the dry cleaners. I then took down my hair, throwing it forward and back and fiddling with it in front of the mirror. He'd always made me wear my hair long. It kept me looking "young and pretty." Of course. Youthful. Vibrant. Innocent. Vulnerable. Breakable. Now that he was out of the picture, I still wore it long. I'd grown to like it that way, in spite of the nightmares involved in drying and styling it. I didn't wear it as a talisman for him. I wore it because I liked it that way. There was something deeply liberating about that. I remember sitting in a hairdresser's only four days after I left and willing myself to cut it all off and start afresh. But something inside pleaded with me to keep it. It was a triumph to have hair that long, that thick, that black and that beautiful. It was an asset, not a war wound. I kept it to remind myself of the day I looked into that hairdresser's mirror and decided what I wanted to look like myself.

I pulled on the skirt and underskirt, before doing up my boots. On top I wore a black vest top (with hidden padding, hee) and pinned the waist cincher about it. There. Done in 10 minutes. Long gone were the days of taking hours to get ready, just so I could make sure to meet all of his criteria, his requirements, but it still felt a little strange to merely pull something on and think, "I'm done." It wasn't a good strange either. I felt incomplete at times, like there was something I was missing. A tiny voice inside still clambered for attention, the one telling me that I wasn't good enough yet. I had still to drown myself in make up and remove any semblance of imperfection. I found myself wandering over to the mirror and staring at the spot again. I could tell myself over and over again that it was a milimetre of pointlessness, but it wasn't going to work. That tiny blemish was disgusting me. It was ruining an otherwise flawless presentation and someone would notice it.

I stepped away from the mirror, shaking my head and throwing my hands to my face in frustration. Stop it. This isn't you anymore. It never was. That girl you stared at in the mirror for all those years wasn't you. It was a product of his desires, a robotic doll with your face attached. You were not that girl. The one with the wasted look in her eyes, the haunted face, the sunken cheeks and dark visage. The one who spent every five minutes looking over her shoulder to make certain things were still perfect. The one who doubled the make up to cover the wound, the one who prepared her excuse for her bandmates before going to sleep the night before. No, you weren't her. You were the girl who woke up in the hospital bed and felt like sense had been knocked into her for the first time in her life. You were the girl who got up three days later, left the hospital in a cast, with a black eye and crutches, aching, miserable, but resolute. The one who felt the resurgance of her teenage spirit and embraced it as though her life depended on it. Because in many ways, it did. When you sat at that piano that night and wrote the opening notes of Lithium, you knew you were trying desperately to say goodbye to something that you yet clung to, something that could kill you if you let it. You still knew it when in the studio, you improvised the desperate wail of "Let me go!" after the second chorus. That shadow still hovered over your shoulder. That darkness still swam through your veins. But you were also getting better at not looking back, at not gazing within when the whole world lay outside and around you. Your life had hung in the balance during those few weeks, and when you retraced your steps in your music every night, you were reminded of the essential importance of hanging on. Every note, every word, every teary eye in the crowd.

I started singing to myself to distract my mind from those thoughts. There were times when the wave of them hit me and I felt like I would drown under them. There had been many a night when I curled up in the corner and simply whimpered to myself until the torrent calmed down. Outside violence was one thing; the inner tumult was one from which you could never escape.

"It's true, we're all a little insane..." I repeated to myself gently, taking things up and down the scale as I went along. My voice could be dodgy live and I tried my best to be prepared when I went onstage. I didn't like things going awry and the fans being disappointed. Heaven knows, if I were one of them, I'd expect better. I suppose never having a voice lesson was something of a handicap but I had no time to take them. I'd been meaning to take breathing lessons at least somewhere along the line but for the time being, nothing had come to fruition. My natural talent (what little there was of it) would have to suffice.

I walked over to the window and had a brief glance out. The throng of people was buzzing now. Nearly half the queue had made it inside, but there remained a significant throng of fans all bustling to get in as soon as they could. I smiled to myself as I saw the various pieces of merch, both official and original, adorning our section of the crowd. It made me feel proud, and humble. I still couldn't believe that I was singing words of comfort sometimes. I couldn't believe anyone could take my message seriously. After making one album full of relentless misery, with nearly every song about how terminally fucked up I was when my first boyfriend and I broke up, and another about being liberated from the shackles of my hellish second one, I half felt like an insufferable whingebag. Who would want to listen to that? Desolation, grief, and agony... Oh but was there not hope to be found in other's suffering? A source of solace in the fact someone else understood how you felt and had found a way out that could very well be yours too? The words of all the letters, messages and e-mails ploughed through my head. I sighed and came away from the window. Insufferable whingebag that I may be, I was still part of a group of heroes.

I rambled past the mirror again, wondering aimlessly what to do. If Amy wasn't back by now, she had clearly managed to convince the guys to let her put on make up. It would be at least 10 minutes then before she came back to help me with mine. I got up with a view to getting started on my hair, before quickly abandoning that notion. How on earth does one straighten waist-length hair toute seule? Silly me. I relinquished the straighteners and reviewed the setlist for the night. Even though it was the same as always. I'd gotten used to it practically straight away when the album came out last year. I was always like this before a gig-finicky, fidgety, uncertain, nervous. I needed something to amuse myself. Thank heaven that on this tour at least, we were on first-90 minutes for our half of the double headlining show, then a half hour changeover before the boys went on to rock the house. It meant I could get ready, do my thing, immerse myself in the cheers of my crowd, and then come offstage with enough time to calm down, clean up, and position myself side stage to watch the boys. Or rather, to watch one so-called boy in particular.

My boy.
My Gerard.

Every hero needs a hero, and he was mine. He was the one who found me at the bottom of the stairs, stood staring lovingly into my eyes when I woke up in the hospital, held my hand as I walked unsteadily out of it, came hundreds of miles in one night because I rang him crying, wiped my tears away and held me as I shook inside and out. What a reversal of fortune. Where once I sang, When you cried, I'd wipe away all of your tears / When you'd scream, I'd fight away all of your fears, now he did it for me. Quite literally too-given various accounts of his needing to be physically restrained at Phil's arraignment. I didn't need to be there and he had gone on my behalf, only to lose his reliably volatile temper and be forcibly removed from the courtroom. I'd never have walked away without him. When realities are crumbling around you, you need a new dream to believe in. And it had to be a dream when the real world seems so vague and frail. Time slips through your fingers like sand, faith, hope, belief all the same. Nothing is certain anymore, so you slip into an alternative realm where everything is pristine and precious and everlasting.

Don't say I'm out of touch
With this rampant chaos-your reality
I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge
The nightmare
I built my own world to escape

I had no idea how true those words could ring at the time I wrote them.

Even now, two years later, he still came to me before every show. He still called me every night when he couldn't be there. He smiled, he laughed, he sparkled the way I wanted to. He'd overcome his own demons and would do everything in his power to ensure I would too.

"One day you will shine the way you used to, and smile unharried like before. Don't think I don't remember those days. I wrote to you once, quoting you-know-who about how your eyes were my paradise, your smile made my sun rise. One day you'll be as radiant as you once were, as the luminous girl I fell in love with that winter morning."

I still had the letters from when we were in high school, and I still had the ones from when we were lost souls in the real world. It seemed a lifetime ago that we had held each other that way, that we could barely imagine a fragmented reality in which we weren't together for always. Sometimes I still longed for it. I wasn't sure how strong my feelings lay because I still didn't understand myself. I had been vacant for so long, empty and hollow, a shell who felt what she was told to feel as opposed to having any real sentiments of her own, that I didn't know how to feel. I didn't know how to love anymore. I longed and yearned for the time I had been in love, and known what it was to be loved. Loved properly, adored, wanted, worshipped, and desired. Someone's everything as opposed to their war vessel. I could remember what it was to be so happy and I wanted to believe it again. I was never certain of much but I knew that for definite.

My heart had gone back to the one person it could always trust.
I missed him.
In spite of it all, I was in love with him all over again.