Sid and the Last Five Years

“Be real with me,” I said shaking in the presence of the boy I was obsessed with and the man who formed his life around me, “what happened?”

The world outside felt shallow and isolated, as if there were nowhere to go. I had never felt so low, this wasn't fear, this was regret and guilt, this was realization; I was just like my father. “You're one strong girl,” he said slowly, and the words felt like they dragged on forever, like cigarette smoke whisking throughout the clean air to poison it with it's scent. “You're one, strong, strong girl.” The lack of eye contact conflated everything that just happened; it was clear what I had done, meant nothing was the same anymore.

“Why are you walking with me?”

'I asked myself the same thing, actually.'

“I mean, you're really strong,” he ignored my question, “you kicked her. Not just once, but twice, maybe three times. And she just sat and took it, like it's all she's ever taken.” I could imagine the look in her eyes, and the look in mine; hers like a scared little animal, but never once did she make a scream, mine like tar and midnight, meaningless, soulless. “I think you proved your point, Elli. You don't like people shoving you.”

Why is he talking to me, why is he here, why does he care, why did I hurt her like that, why am I such a fucking monster, where's my brain at, do I even have a heart, this wouldn't have happened if my mom wasn't drunk all the time, where does the road end, Tom Sawyer never changed he just made it look like he did, I don't grow, where's the sunlight in this god forsaken place, is there a god, where do I go from here-

Eat me. Just eat me.

“Why are you here?”

“I don't really know.”

“You know, I'm scared of the dark. It's not that typical fear that thousands of Americans possess because they imagine something lurks in the shadows. It's not that type of fear, that fear is based off television and old tales, creativity and too much time on their hands, forming scenario after scenario- It's not that type of thing. I'm scared of the dark because I know what goes on in the dark. I don't THINK I know, I know I know. I've been in the dark first hand. And want to know why people hate the dark so much, even if nothing bad has ever actually happened to them in the dark? It's because they're blind to their surroundings. It's the endless possibilities that scare people. But when you're not blind, sometimes it's the reality that your mind is only the dark pit, that scares you the most.” He stared at me with blank eyes, and I tried to reword my sentences for them to come off more fluent, for the thoughts I had would be mutual. He wouldn't grasp what I was trying to say, for his mind was probably in the gutter thinking about where to have sex with me and when the right time would come, he would make a move.

Sometimes I just think my mind is like every other American's, coming up with things that may never, or will never actually happen. And then sometimes I think my case is way more severe.

*

We walked until what seemed like the early hours of the morning, but was only the late hours of the afternoon. Conversation did not sift as smoothly as I had wanted, but it was expected for our talking to gradually build- Of course he wouldn't just propose his life story to a girl who just kicked the shit out of her favorite teacher.

But I could feel what was happening between the both of us, the more he got to know me, the more he didn't want to and realized he was in a bad situation. He realized he wasn't just fucking around with some whore, instead he adopted a crazy bitch into his life; I realized it at about the same time he realized it. And yet, the more I got to find myself, the more accepting I was of my own mind. It wasn't normal, no, I had my outbursts, I had my rants about society and my miserable life, but now I tolerated myself. The same acceptance in me, was not in Eric.

If you think back to the beginning of my story, he had walked me back to class after a bad episode. Now he was walking me away from another bad episode. I could see the faint look in his eyes of piecing together the puzzle of what he had gotten himself into. The more he did not speak, the more I felt my heart race; I knew he was sure I wasn't normal, I wasn't sure why he was still sticking around.

“Where do you live?” I asked as we wandered further away from the school, the distance from others growing by the minute. Is it possible to feel lonely although you are with someone? He did not answer my question, the same way he hadn't answered the first one earlier. It was probably best if he left my question in thin air, his location was not one to give to a psychotic, raging lunatic like myself. “Never mind,” I nodded, looking at the ground, kicking small stones as we walked.

The neighborhood we were now in seemed to grow more familiar, like the smell of a dusty attic, it was distinct. It was the wet smell that never left, the green grass that grew, the nice houses aligned perfectly along their perfect streets. All the houses on the street were light, pastel colors, as if plucked straight out of a comical cartoon on a Saturday afternoon. It was the fairytale neighborhood everyone wished they could live in. Why was it so damn irking to me, to walk down the sidewalk? Why did I feel like puking every time we passed another dog lying in the green yards? Why did I want to flee every step I took and burn every tree I saw?

“Where are we?” I asked sullenly.

His smirk appeared, that attractive, mischievous one he got whenever he had planned to add another one to the list. Suddenly, he looked more familiar than the town. “Tell me about your father, Elli.” This look wasn't like the one I had seen earlier, the one that looked slightly frightening; the one that was contemplating to leave, now looked as if it were going to settle for a long while. What had happened to Eric, this was Sid I was talking to. The suit, this occasion ,what was it, where was I going. Where was Eric. Why were all my questions statements, that I knew the answer to. “Well, c'mon now!” he screamed. I was put more in my place as a girl than I had ever been. “Tell me about your fucking father!”

“He's dead,” I assured. It's what I wanted to believe at the moment, all I wanted to say about the man. No matter how amazing he had been to me before The Incident, he needed to be dead.

“He's not fucking dead!”

“He's dead!” I cried.

“You're crazy, just like your father, aren't you! You're a fucking liar! He's not dead!”

“Dead to me!” I cried, breaking town in cold tears.

“We both know that's not true! He may be in a ditch somewhere drinking himself to death, or rotting in a prison cell in a remote area filled with retards like your fucking brother, but he's not dead, and he'll never be dead, because you don't want him to be. You want him to be alive, because that's your only hope that there's someone like you out there. Sure you don't want to be a fucking replica of the man, but you are and you know it. Part of you even thinks this is Eric still talking to you. Part of you thinks that this area we're in now isn't where your fucking house burned down. That part of you lies all the time, and it's time you've faced the truth. You know what's best you crazy mother fucker?”

“Shut up!” I cried. I took my nails and plunged them into the pits of his eye sockets, tearing and ripping, hearing the sound of his flesh peel from his sad face. There was not a scream, yet I felt the pain he was supposed to be enduring. I bit roughly into his neck as if I were some vampire, locking my jaw like a pitbull and rabidly shook my head with his skin in my mouth. I tasted the iron taste of his blood, which I did not know he had. This feeling of murder was subsiding and yet I could not stop the machine that was my body. I released my mouth from his neck and kicked violently at any part of him that could feel pain, but he never as much as winced. It was the sound and cry that I thought emitted from my own body, yet could not identify where this was coming from. I slammed my fists against his chest, pulled on his hair, took every ounce of me and flung it angrily towards him in a fit. As I scrambled, I grabbed a larger rock off the ground and continuously threw it into his abdomen, blood spattering onto my face. “He's dead!”

*

Eric had never walked me out of the building. Ms. Andreq had never told me to leave. It's what I wanted to believe. It was like making the monsters of the dark into Heaven.

When they found me I was sleeping soundly next to an elderly woman's deceased cat; her cat was brutally killed, in the lot of an old, burned down house.

The worst part of being in the hospital, is seeing everyone around you try to build themselves on the outside for you, although you know on the inside you were the reason they finally collapsed.

And the worst part of the recovery process is everyone convincing you it will all go back to normal, but you can't even remember what normal was.

My mother came in every day and wished me well, kissed me like she hadn't been drinking the night before, talking to me as if she had never left, stroking my hair as if she had always done so.

But it wasn't all bad, no it wasn't bad.

Adam came in every day and hugged me until both of us were sore from each other's tight grip. He never cried anymore, in fact, he was happy.

Even Ms. Andreq sent a letter or two, but never did she show her face. She said she had kept the writing prompt I did in a file, all for her own keeping, and assured me it was literary genius. I knew she just put that part in there to make me feel better; it did.

Sometimes I think the pills they give me only sugarcoat everything, only temporarily numb the hurt, the disgust, the pity I feel for everything. And then I realize that's alright. I'm happy those pills keep me from harming anything else. And sometimes those pills make me happy. Sometimes those pills make me want to sing, or even pick up a paintbrush and paint again, like I was nine again. Sometimes those pills were my answer to everything, and if I had to be addicted to love life and not hate everything, that's what I'd do. I'd take every fucking pill in the bottle.

So it wasn't that bad, at the hospital. It was more of a home than the one I had previously been in.

Eric even wrote once. So did a few other unimportant girls I only acquainted with once or twice at the school, but all I really read was Eric's note. It wasn't long, it wasn't meaningful to others.

“Get better.”

And I guess those two words alone, from a guy I barely knew, from a kid who thought they had no role in my life, did make it all the more easier to feel happier, to get happier, because it was the thought that he had me in mind, for even a second. It meant very little to him, yet it meant the world to me. It made me feel happier than my father's confirmed death, or Sid's lack of appearance in my life.

I don't wish for you not to eat me.

I don't wish for you to send me any other letters.

I don't wish for you to stop drinking.

I don't wish for you to stop your tantrums or watch old movies with me.

I don't wish for you to tell me about Tom Sawyer and convert that into a life lesson.

Because I'm momentarily happy; and I get better every day.