Tiptoe Through the True Bits

“And what does this represent, Elise?”

I watched as he pushed the book back towards me, picking up his own pen, ready to scribble away at his clipboard and pick apart my own analysis of this week’s drawing. But for the first time, I couldn’t articulate my reasoning for him. I merely shrugged, and allowed myself to gaze out of the window over his shoulder, watching Manhattan from this great height.

There was a pigeon on the window-ledge, and it kept pacing back and forth. Back and forth from one end of the window to the other. Pigeons always fascinated me because of the way they move. As if their head is attached to their feet, on one string like a puppet. With every step, its head bobbed around, and I found myself smiling ever-so-faintly as I watched it.

It must be so easy to be a pigeon. You fly around, scavenge food from others, mate, and then die. Nobody cares what you look like. Nobody gets up in your business. Nobody asks you stupid questions. Pigeons don’t need to worry about paying taxes, or washing dishes, or avoiding bitchy blondes in the school corridors. They just have to live. And I envy them for that.

“Elise?” Dr. Gould pressed, leaning forward onto his forearms and raising his eyebrows at me. I tore my eyes off of the pigeon and shrugged again, sighing in exasperation as I examined my most recent drawing.

It had taken me hours to get the eyes and the hair and the face shape just right, but finally I was looking at an image that I was truly happy with. I didn’t need to see his face to draw him, of course; I had memorised every feature, from the curve of his lips to the hook of his brow to the angle of his jaw. I had spent so much time just looking at him that every fibre of his being had been committed to my memory.

Dr. Gould was very interested in my sketch of Gerard. He had stared at it for a long time, and commented that it resembled the subject greatly, and then he had scribbled away for a little while before looking back up at me and beginning to ask his obnoxious questions.

If you looked hard enough at my drawing, you could almost make out a sadness over Gerard’s face. And this was the dimension of the sketch that had taken me so long to perfect. The physical aspects of Gerard’s face were easy, as I knew all about them. But I was only just gaining proper insight into the expressional aspects, as they were always hidden so well. But I think this face had a subtle depressive air to it, and I think Dr. Gould could perceive that just as well as I could.

Slowly, I reached over for the notepad, and picked up a pencil, and studied the paper for a long time before I thought of a satisfactory explanation for my portrait. It was only a short explanation, but it was more than sufficient, as I could see from Dr. Gould’s face as he ingested the sentence I was showing to him.

He’s hurting, too.



You may expect that after the revelation, things became awkward between Gerard and I, and to be honest, I thought perhaps they would, too. But, if anything, we only drew closer to each other, and that was when I knew that Gerard wasn’t just hanging around me because he was being told to. I knew that he actually came to consider me as a real friend.

Such was our closeness, after only a single week, that my silence did very little to make either of us uncomfortable. We didn’t need to talk. I aimed to spend every free moment I had with Gerard, at his house and every time I knocked upon that yellow door I was greeted by a crushing hug from Donna, a nod of acknowledgement from Don, and then a wide grin from Gerard. And, until the moment dinner was announced as ready, Gerard and I would sit alone in his room. Sometimes we would play computer games. Sometimes I would play with his guitar and he would sing softly along in his beautiful voice. Sometimes he would talk to me about the shitty day he had had. But sometimes – and these were my favourite times – we would just sit in mutual silence, gazing into nothingness and letting our thoughts run away with us.

My thought of choice on this particular day was, not unusually, regarding my attraction to Gerard.

I was contemplating shuffling closer to him, laying my head on his chest just so that I could keep track of his heart beat. I felt like the physical closeness of him might soothe me, but I wasn’t sure how he might react to a move as bold as that. The closest we had ever physically come before was a hug. And somehow, this seemed like it would be far more intimate; more personal.

It was as I was weighing up the perspective pros and cons of a move like this that Gerard spoke up, for the first time in what felt like hours. And the words that he spoke would finally give me some real insight into his past.

“I was really depressed,” he said, slowly and calmly, making only the briefest of glances in my direction before looking back up at the ceiling, his face neutral and impossible to read.

I knew that he was taking the conversation back to the issues he had brought up the previous day, and I decided that he probably wouldn’t mind if I moved closer to him now, so I wriggled along until we formed a seam between our bodies, reaching right up from our ankles, all the way to our shoulders. There was not an inch between us. I could feel warmth from his body seeping through his clothes and my clothes and into my skin, radiating from him.

After a couple of seconds, I felt him interlock his fingers with mine as he pinched his eyes shut. I gave his hand a small squeeze and he let out a sigh.

“They put me on all these pills but none of them worked,” he said, his voice now laced with pain. I lightly squeezed his fingers again, to let him know that he didn’t have to continue if he didn’t want to. And I knew that he knew that this was what I meant. He was getting increasingly good at analysing my movements and the subtle differences between my smiles. He was learning how to communicate properly with me; embracing a kind of language that nobody else cared enough to familiarise themselves with.

“Nobody could understand what was wrong with me,” he continued, turning his head now to face me. “All the psychiatrists just kept prescribing me more and more drugs until eventually I started to feel like a zombie. I was just wandering through life, nothing had any meaning anymore. All I saw were faces. And then soon the faces began to all bleed into one, too. And then there was just nothing. I couldn’t feel anything.”

I stared right into his eyes, willing him to continue as our hands remained firmly entwined. “Without any feelings, I didn’t see the point in being alive,” he said, with a small sigh. “So I decided one day to just do it. I swallowed all of these pills at once and I just let myself fall back onto this bed and I waited for it to come. I didn't even really want to die. I just wanted to disappear. But all I got was a long, deep sleep.” He paused. “I woke up in a hospital bed and everybody was crying and there were all of these wires and suddenly I could feel again, but it felt fucking horrible. I felt like an awful person for making my mom and everybody else worry like that. And that’s when they finally realised that the drugs weren’t going to cut it. That they needed to figure out the underlying problems instead of just burying all of my symptoms in this chemical fog.”

As he spoke, his words filled my mind like poetry. He was speaking so bluntly and so honestly that there was no way that he could be expressing anything other than raw emotion. Eventually I gave in to myself and tentatively snaked my free arm across his torso, extremely grateful to be received by a light kiss on the top of my head.

I felt him nuzzle a little into me and my heart began to somersault like there was a trampoline in my chest cavity. We remained in a comfortable silence for a while before he broke it again.

“When I’m around you, I don’t feel sad,” he breathed, barely loud enough for me to really hear what he was saying. For a couple of seconds, as I digested this claim, I felt my whole body tense, and I’m sure Gerard felt it too, but he just kissed me again on the top of the head and I softened again.

“I think that you are incredible,” he finished, giving my hand a light squeeze and draping his arm across me, almost mirroring my own position on him. I looked up and gave him a smile that I hoped said I think you’re pretty amazing too, and judging by the beam he was directing back towards me, I think that’s probably exactly what it said.

I was overwhelmed by contentedness at this point. I was comfortable, I was with my best friend, and I was happy. Our relationship had been confirmed now. There was no going back. We were best friends not because we had to be, but because we wanted to be. We were like soulmates. We understood each other in a way that nobody else could, and neither of us either had to say anything like this for us to both know that it was true.

After all the shit that had happened, I didn’t think I would ever come to depend on somebody like I depended on Gerard. I told myself that people were shit and friends only ever disappointed you. But I felt like nothing Gerard could do could change the way I thought about him. He was my hero. We may not have known each other long, but I knew enough to know that this was only the beginning of what I hoped would be a long and meaningful friendship.

Gerard was going to change my life. I was sure of that.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. And that’s when I felt it wash over me, like a fresh wave crashing against the sand. My feelings for Gerard ran far deeper than teenage lust. I needed him, and I was starting to need him more with every second that passed. The sweet smell of almonds that I inhaled from his body confirmed it:

I was falling in love with Gerard Way.