Triangles

My weekend with Sean was far from perfect. His little brother was a nightmare - disorderly and rude and a terror to his mother. He insisted Sean and I was in a relationship and just wouldn’t drop the matter. He reminded me of Gavin. Sean's mother may be an angel but she kept forgetting I was mute. However, I liked snuggling up with Sean late at night. I liked the feeling of his fingers running through my hair and his hand making soft circles on my back. He never once asked me to speak. He let me remain silent and he never once pressured me into anything. He was quite happy just talking to me. He, unlike everyone else respected my decision.

But that was 8 months ago. I'm on exam leave, which mean a lot of frantically looking over chemistry homework. Thankfully, I've already done half of my GCSE's. In Wales you do an exam in Year 10 and Year 11. I'm not that confident, but being mute means I don't have that many distractions. It won't be long before I'm off out of here. Sadly, I'm not going to get to Bangor like I wanted. There's no accommodation for students and I can't find a cheap apartment. The Council waiting list goes on for decades. Instead, I've found another college not too far away. It's a lot smaller but getting to it will be a lot easier and I've got myself on a council waiting list that will be empty in a week or so. I'm so excited to finally move!

"What's room temperature?" Gavin asks in an attempt to engage me in conversation. I ignore me as though his voice was just the whistle of the trees in the wind. He sighs and sits down by my side. "Never mind, I already know"

I take another quick look over my work and slam my book closed. I don’t like being in the same room as him. I feel like a spider is crawling up my spine, ready to sink its fangs into my neck and poison me. I’m always on the edge when I’m around him. He hasn’t stopped asking me to speak. I’m always being bombarded by countless, pointless apologies. He thinks I’ll be easy to sway and I’ll just fall to my knees and forgive him, but it’s not that simple. Only an idiot would forgive someone after they destroy all they’ve wanted. I only wanted someone to love but he had his mind somewhere else. I was stupid to believe he ever felt something in return.

I stand to leave, smoothing out my band shirt in dignity. He catches my hand and tugs hard at my arm. I glare at him viciously. He smiles weakly, his blue eyes like a stormy ocean. They remind me of a time where I thought they were perfect. His blue eyes couldn’t lie, he was an angel. Gavin has those eyes that lead you to believe he’s such a little sweetheart but really, he’s a polar opposite. He can play angel well enough; deep down he’s a bastard.

“One day it’ll all be okay for you. I promise you” He said softly, pulling me to sit down next to him. I back as far away from him as I can, hugging my body close. I will always feel like I’m walking into Hell when I’m around him. “One day – when I’m not around you all the time and you can finally relax. You’ll be able to get a great life and do something great with yourself. Just like your mother wanted” he said softly.

It’s taking all I have in me not to scream at him for mentioning my mother. My mother knew she’d given birth to a failure. My mother expects nothing more of me; she’s probably forgotten I exist! I’ve never had a mother; I had to grow up quickly so I could look after myself. I learnt the ways of the world quickly. I had no choice.

“In my first year in secondary I failed my exams really bad. Dad beat me up for being such a failure. I was in hospital for a while, a few broken ribs and my face was all swollen. It was so bad I couldn’t open my eyes. Dad was jailed for child abuse and I doubt I’ll ever see him again because I have plans to leave, just like you. I think the way my father made me feel about myself, the way he hurt me made me the way I am. I want to make myself look good and like I have something. I don’t. I’m a failure, just like my dad said” he admits softly. He sighs and stares at his hands.

An overwhelming feeling of guilt came through me. Gavin had his father and he tried his best to please him only to have it thrown back in his face. He had someone to cling onto unlike me. My dad – I can’t remember. Maybe I don’t have such a right to whine about my family position. Both Sean and Gavin have had it harder than me. I don’t need my family much, since I’ve grown up without them. I smile sympathetically at him.

“One day it’ll get better and I’ll forget about it but I always feel the need to be better than everyone else. I put people down, I hurt them and I treat them like nothing. I know it’s wrong to blame him for making me like this but…who else can I blame?”

Yourself, maybe?!?

A silence falls like a feather to the ground. I stand to leave again, feeling very uncomfortable. I could dribble on about how much I hate him but it’d be pointless. It’d just be a big waste of time, there isn’t much reason in hate. I’m tired of holding grudges against people. It’s energy consuming. It drags me down because I’m constantly concerned about being better than them. I just don’t need that anymore. I never needed it in the first place. It’s like a virus that’s so easy to catch yet so hard to get rid of. I slip out of the room and skip upstairs to my own sanctuary. Jan made sure that Gavin knows he isn’t allowed in my room. She found out about what he did and she was furious. The cheating rat still gets away with it though.

Maybe one day he’ll be right. I’ll be okay someday and I can get a job and get married and have kids and be happy. It’s a far off dream, but one day. Everyone wants to make it big and everyone wants to live the dream. Not everyone is that lucky. You can work as hard as you like and go to college and all that bullshit but you’re never going to be guaranteed a job. There are hundreds of people fighting over that one single fucking occupation and only one fucking person can get it. If you don’t get a job, you get nothing.

I sigh and open my laptop. Maybe a movie will help me for a while. But maybe one day, I won’t need movies to keep me safe. There has to come a time when we must stop relying on the things we use for comfort, be it movies or music or food, right? We have to grow up and become independent. To replace the things that we fabricated with real life people, to move away from that dark, consuming area. We all have to do it at some point. Humans can’t always rely on creations for help; sometimes we need something real and natural like other humans. Animals can’t live alone in the wild so why do we think we can? Why do we surround ourselves with temporary comforts like food and alcohol and drugs and block out the outside world? Then we expect it to work out and we expect to be happy one day in the future.

I slam the laptop closed again in self hate. Watching a movie will only make me angry and lonely. I rely on it to fill the hole that loneliness made and for a while it worked. Now it just makes it deeper, because it reminds me I have no one. Every fabricated piece of comfort just makes that hole deeper. Soon there will be nothing left to me. One day I’ll be just as lonely as I am now. I’ll be a mute, relying on movies to keep me going. One day I might turn into some sort of Tyler Durden, imagining someone who gives me something, only to realise it’s just me talking to walls. I don’t want to be that person. I suppose it won’t be long before I can just run away and work it all out. I can start fresh because no one will know me. No one could make assumptions based on rumours because no one will fucking know me. I’ll dye my hair and change my name and do everything I fucking can to get out of this fucking life. I’ll forget Sean and Gavin and meet some nice people who don’t fucking feel sorry for me.

The more I think about it, the angrier it makes me. Everyone deserted me as I child so I turned to movies for help. The people who were hurt as children may never find that one day where everything runs smoothly. They had their chance taken from them. Their fight is harder than the others because their scars run deeper. They’re always looking over their shoulders, always worrying about pointless problems they made in their own head. They had their confidence set alight right before their eyes. Too afraid to get out their and make a move, they sit in their fabricated comfort, melting away.
I don’t want to be that person. I’ll do everything I fucking can to change who I am. Fuck, I’ll have plastic surgery done to my face if need be. Just anything to get me a new start. After college I’ll run away again and I’ll never stay in one place too long. No one will know much about me. I can forget everything about me and just be born again. I’ll do anything to earn that life. Anything that is needed to kill Echo Moon.