"Fallout"

The nearly empty room he stood in matched the way he felt. Everything was hollow. His footsteps echoed, creating a terror in the back of his mind each time he took a step, and he realized that he was more alone now than he ever wanted to be. No matter what Josh did, he couldn’t shake that feeling and he hated it. It never would have been that way if he hadn’t caused so many problems for himself and everyone around him, but there was nothing he could do now.
Josh felt a panic attack coming on, so he did what he always did. He sunk down to the floor against the wall in the corner of the room and drew his knees up to his chest. He tried his best to remember to breathe and find happier memories to call to mind so he wasn’t so scared and worried. Unfortunately, all he could see were the walls around him and everything reminded him that he was no longer the man he used to be.
The couch…that God-awful red suede couch he had been talked into buying still sat on the opposite side of the room, and he didn’t have to try very hard to visualize his now-ex friends sitting on it, laughing and trading jokes. The picture that hung crookedly on the wall above it took even less imagination. It was a photograph of Josh and his ex-fiancée. He was wearing some stupid hat that he’d long since lost, probably around the same time she packed up and moved out. He was smiling at the photographer and she was hanging on his arm, standing on her tip-toes to reach up to kiss his cheek. Better circumstances weren’t that long ago, but it still hurt like hell that they were gone. Even the rug under his feet made him think of the dog and two cats he had adopted. They used to sleep on that cream-coloured carpet, curled up together on the colder nights, sharing warmth rather than company. But now everything was gone now and it was his fault.
Everyone in Josh’s life had spent so much time trying to tell him to get his shit together. You need to stop drinking, man, Mike told him. The drugs are gonna kill you, dude, Matt had repeated over and over again. I don’t know how you can function like that, Ian accused him. I can’t live like this, his ex-fiancée sobbed as she threw things into a suitcase and walked out the door.
It wasn’t always like that, though. Once upon a time, everything was beautiful. He had it all. Josh’s life was on track. He was a brilliant musician with close friends, a tight-knit family and fans who hung on every word he sung. He had a great apartment that overlooked the city that even he could hardly believe belonged to him. But then, everything changed. He couldn’t remember how it happened and he couldn’t even pinpoint when it happened. Josh just knew that things had slowly begun to spin out of control and drugs had become a big part of his life again. That was one thing he thought he had left behind for good years ago, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. There’s a reason he was a “recovering” addict and not a “recovered” addict, it seemed. Now, he couldn’t even pretend to be that.
There were so many things that Josh shouldn’t have missed. So many signs telling him that he was going downhill fast, but he ignored them all. He ignored all the late nights in bars that he had recently started to frequent. He ignored the new phone numbers he had stored in his cell phone for “when he needed them”. He ignored the fact that he was passing money to strangers hand over fist to make himself feel a little better for a short amount of time. Most of all, he ignored the blunt accusations and questions from everyone in his life who asked if he was okay, if he had a problem he needed to talk about, if he needed help.
Once they found out how deep in trouble the man actually was, they pushed him hard to get clean, to break the cycle again, to get help. But all he did was resist. It was easy for everyone else to say, “it’s for the best,” but he didn’t want to be told what to do. He wasn’t some fucking kid. He was an adult who had made his choice and it was his decision to live with that. But, it was also the resolve of everyone around him to realize they couldn’t watch Josh slowly and methodically kill himself. They wanted more for him than that life, but, as hard as everyone tried, Josh wouldn’t make the change he needed to keep everyone around, so each person he was close to walked away one at a time, leaving him with less pride, dignity, self-esteem and positivity than he already had.
Josh whined quietly, dropping his forehead down onto his knees. “Fucking hell…I know you’re fine, but what do I do now?” he asked, speaking to the memories of happier times. “What the fuck do I do…?”
It had been over half a year since the last person that cared about him to any degree had told him to get clean, get sober and pull himself together. Josh tried for a little while, but the insomnia he had been dealing with for his entire life came back with a vengeance, and he needed the drugs and the alcohol more than ever just to get through his days. He couldn’t change everything overnight, and he wound up losing the person he shared his home with, the person he shared his life with, the person he shared his bed with.
Through the grapevine, he had heard that she had moved on with her life. She spent her time following her new man around, riding his coattails, and she spent her nights sleeping like a babe beside him. Josh had known all along that their relationship wasn’t the best, but it fucking killed him to know that she was able to put everything behind her while he still spent more time curled up in a ball on the floor staring at the places where her furniture used to be and hoping that everything would go back to the way it was before he fell apart, than he spent doing anything else.
Josh had run into her once in the last seven months, and that was only two weeks ago. He had finally ventured out of the house looking nearly completely unrecognizable. A thin beard and mustache covered the lower half of his face- a look that he had never, ever before allowed himself to have because it made him feel too old and it simply didn’t suit him. These days, though, he just didn’t give a shit, so of course that would be the one time he would bump into someone he knew and still cared for while throwing random food items into a shopping cart.
He recognized her before she ever saw him. Josh felt his heart drop to his stomach and he almost felt like he would be sick right where he stood, but he kept it together and ducked down another aisle to avoid having to speak to her. His cart collided with hers at the opposite end of the aisle and he was forced to make fucking small-talk until he thought his head would explode. His hands shook, so he jammed them in the pockets of his sweatshirt, nearly giving it away that he was on the ledge, while she chatted away about the weather, her current live-in boytoy, his work and her great new life, acting so goddamn polite and composed.
Josh knew that she could see through his façade. She knew him well enough to know when he was faking being okay. He knew that she could see him for what he was, and that he was having a hard time with his life and his current situation, and more specifically, their conversation. But she was making it look so easy, like it didn’t get to her that she had just run into someone she had loved for years. It was as if dropping back into his life, by fate or by design, just didn’t get to her. It was hard enough on him this time and he didn’t want it to happen over and over again. What comes and goes like that, he would be more than willing to go without.
He had a vague memory of telling the younger blonde woman that he was glad to know that she was fine before making an excuse to leave and walking away from his full shopping cart, leaving it in the middle of the store. Josh walked straight through the front doors and slid into his car, gripping the steering wheel with both hands and leaning his forehead down against it. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, what a fallout…,” he mumbled to himself, trying to steady his nerves and his thoughts.
Josh wasn’t referring just to the broken relationship or to the severed friendships he’d recently lost, but to his entire life. Every single calculated decision he had made over the last year had come back to bite him in the ass. His existence was a fucking mess and he had no one there to pick up the pieces. Everything was shattered and going up in flames around him as he ran for his life. But he couldn’t run much longer. He didn’t have the energy. He knew something was going to take him down, and he knew that he was that “something”. His own thought process would eventually be his downfall and the cause of the biggest fallout of them all.
Somehow Josh had made it back to his apartment, but he had no recollection of the drive home. That scared him a little, but not enough to deter him from emptying half a bottle of liquor into a glass and chugging it, standing at the kitchen counter. He finished the liquid and stared down at the cup. “STOP IT, JUST FUCKING STOP IT!” he screamed as he threw the glass against the opposite wall, shattering it. Shards skimmed across the floor in every direction, but Josh just couldn’t make himself care. That was the least of his troubles.
He grabbed the counter with both hands and bent over, squeezing his eyes shut and breathing heavily. He had to stop. He had to stop this shit. It’s no wonder he had no one left in his life. Who would want to be around someone like this?
Josh was so altered from the way he was before. It was as if he was two entirely different people. It was almost like Josh himself could point to his former life and not recognize it. That was him, now this is me, he thought. His former self talked to people. He was able to tell his problems to those closest to him, but now? Now those secrets he used to give away so readily were the secrets he kept. He just couldn’t bring himself to admit that he was right back to where he started so many years ago. Nevertheless, he was expected to try to change and to give his all when he had been left with nothing.
“Fuck you!” He screamed at the thoughts in his head and straightened himself, angrily running his hand through his hair. Everything in him was telling him to fight for his health, for his well-being, for his sanity. “FUCK YOU!” Josh yelled again. “After this long, I shouldn’t have to fight! I shouldn’t have to keep doing this!!”
How did ‘normal’ people do this? How did they survive? How were they able to live and function day-to-day without falling into the same trap Josh had set for himself? He knew that everyone who had previously been in his life were all doing fine and well for themselves. He was sure of it, but fuck, what would he have to do to get that, too? He couldn’t do it alone, but he didn’t have a choice. Everyone knew what he was going through, but it wasn’t their fight. It wasn’t their problem. It was his.
They saw what he was dealing with. They saw him, just like she did and they still left. They made it look so fucking easy to just walk away from their problems. Why couldn’t he? Why the fuck couldn’t he? Josh would go without his vices if he could, but they came and went and he could barely control it.
The memory slowly slipped from Josh's mind and he pulled his legs in tighter against his chest. He was awake and trying, always trying, even if he knew it would get him nowhere. Fuck it, just fuck it. He’d never be fine. What was the point? Maybe he’d just let himself fall.