Light up the Sky

“Mikey… are you okay in there?” he asked.

I grunted, still bringing the sharp shard of glass through my arm. Taking in all of the blood that I was managing to shed and smiling down at it. It was almost… beautiful: as crazy as that sounds. Blood is a beautiful thing. It’s blue to start with, and then as soon as it gets hit with oxygen it turns to red. The way it flowed was so peaceful, running out of the cut on my arm and running onto my pyjama clad legs that were beneath it as I sat crossed-legged on the floor.

I didn’t reply to Frank. I didn’t need to and I shouldn’t need to. I didn’t want to talk to him right now, and I didn’t care how selfish I was being. He was ruining everything.

“Mikey… please tell me!” I could hear him practically beg and it broke something else inside of me.

Something shattered and I felt… I felt sorryfor him. I felt shame for putting him through this pain, through the pain of not knowing what was going on in here. For leaving him on the other side of the world when he was trying absolutely everything to get on my side.

“Mikey… please.” I heard him whisper and I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up quickly, feeling all of the blood rush around my body, giving me a head rush, and I moved swiftly to open up the door for him. Forgetting about the mutilation I had just put upon my arm and allowing him to run inside, take one glance at the blood and scream as loud as he could.

I cringed, the shrill sound of his shriek hitting my ears.

“Mikey! What the fuck?!” If I remember correctly, that was the first time I’ve heard him swear.

I hung my head in shame, looking down at the floor and watching as droplets of blood fell beneath me, hitting the tiled floor. Splish, splash. Plip, plop.He pulled me into a hug, wrapped his tiny and frail arms across my back and squeezing the life out of me. I think he started to cry, well, I felt hot droplets on the back of my neck and my first guess was that it was him crying.

“Why?” he sniffed, taking another blow at that thing inside of me, making me feel even worse about myself.

“Because,” I mumbled into his neck. “Because of you.”

He broke out of the hug, practically ripping his body away from mine as he stared at me in awe. “Me?! What have Idone?”

I felt myself break again. I had caused him to feel guilty; which in the beginning was what I had wanted, and now didn’t. I couldn’t make up my mind about him. I couldn’t decide what to make of him.

No matter what, you’re gonna break my shell.

“Because… you’re breaking my shell…” I answered after what felt like 10 minutes but was probably only 10 seconds of silence. “You’re breaking me down…” I whispered.

“I’m… I’m what?” he asked, the confusion was clear in his voice. He had absolutely no idea what I was talking about, and I had absolutely no idea of how to tell him. What was I talking about? I didn’t even know myself.

I shook my head, thinking of a way to describe everything to him. I think I owed him that. It was obvious that he was suffering so much, and I was doing nothing to help him get over that. I owed him an explanation.

“All through my life… I’ve been… building a barrier, I guess. Blocking people out, blocking people out, becoming numb. I- I’ve been shielding myself off from pain, away from suffering and away from any hurt that I could possibly feel. I’ve been punishing myself for anything I’ve ever done wrong, forcing myself to numb out the pain of those punishments as well so that I could finally just… stop… feeling. I didn’t want to feel any of the heartbreak, any of the pain that others went through. I tried my hardest to block it out, numb myself off to it. I’ve never talked to anyone, other than my brother, before. I’ve been blocking myself off from getting close to anyone. Not wanting to feel the hurt that they could possibly cause me. Not wanting to… to get close to them. Not wanting to let them it, let them understand me.

“And then you came along, and you - you were nice to me. And you tried to get me to open up. You talked to me. You gave me your room to share, and you tried so hard to talk to me and get me to listen. You gave me the senses of other humans touching me. All through my life I’d been blocking out the blows that my father gave me, all of the touches that people had placed upon me. All of the wrong and all of the right. And I didn’t want it. No, I didn’t want to lose that numbness that I had built up over the years. You broke it down. You pushed it down. You forced that numbness away; you caused me to start to talk to you. You gave me a friend.

“Only… I don’t know what a friend is, I don’t understand these feelings I hold towards you. I want to talk to you, I want to be with you, I want to touch you. And I’ve never felt that before. I’ve never wanted to be near to anyone. But I don’t like it, it’s so – so surreal to me. This so called shell that I’ve been burying myself under is being destroyed. And you’re the one destroying it… only, you don’t mean to. To you, it’s a perfectly natural impulse. You’re only doing what’s of nature to you, and you don’t mean any harm by it. But it’s causing harm. It’s causing… it’s causing me harm. It’s slowly breaking me down, causing me the hurt that I’ve blocked out for so long. And I hate it!

“I hate this wanted to be near you, this wanting to talk to you, this longing to just reach out my hand and stroke it down the side of your face. To take in all of the ruin that you’ve caused upon yourself. You’re so beautiful, Frank. I don’t understand why you do it. You’re such a stunning boy, and you’ve broken yourself. You’ve completely destroyed yourself.” I finished and took in a deep ragged breath that started off my chocked sobs.

I fell down to the ground, my head shielded from Frank’s gaze as I looked down at the lacerations I had caused upon myself.

“I – I’m sorry…” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to… I guess… I guess I just wanted a friend… y’know. I’ve… I’ve been in here for so long, and I’ve had no one to talk to. I’ve missed being out there. Out in the open, out with my friends. They all hate me now, y’know. They stopped coming to visit a few months after I got put in this place. I wanted to replace them, I wanted you to come along and make me forget all about them. And in a way, you did that for me. You blocked them out of my mind, and I focused on you. But probably too much. I focused on you too much. For now, I have that longing to touch you. To trace my fingers across every single one you’re your accented bones, to show you what you’ve done to yourself. How you’ve ruined yourself. You’re the beautiful one, Mikey. Not me, you are. Only you don’t know it. You’ve caused yourself to deteriorate, you’re nothing but skin and bone. And I don’t like it. You don’t need to starve yourself, and there’s probably a fair chance that you never needed to…

“I don’t know what it is either, only… I probably have more sense than you do. But I want to touch you, too, Mikey. I want to talk to you, I want to be with you, I want to hold you night after night and just forget about the world. I want to get lost in you, just forget about everything. I really like you, Mikey…”

By now he was crying to. And we sat together, sobbing on the floor of our bathroom; completely oblivious to anything going on around us. Completely oblivious to the lessons that were taking place for some, or for the counseling sessions that others had. It was just me and him, venting all of our emotions into the millions of tears that needed to be shed.