My Name Is Alex
1/1
My name is Alex. I'm 6 years old, but I'll be 7 in December. I love my mommy and my daddy and my big brother and sisters! I also love my kitty, whose name is Fish. That confuses me, because fishes are a kinda animal that swims in the ocean. But Fish the kitty isn't a fish; he's a kitty that lives in my house with me and my mommy and daddy and brother and sisters, and he doesn't even like the water.
I also love my babysitter, Candy. She comes over to my house while my parents and siblings are off doing things that I'm too little for, and she loves to play games and watch movies with me. She even lets me watch Jurassic Park, which kinda scares me but is so cool anyway. She's really pretty, too, or at least that's what Tom, my big brother says. And she knows that popcorn is my favorite food! Sometimes, when we watch movies, she goes into the kitchen to make popcorn and leaves me in the living room to start the movie.
Sometimes I really like it when Candy makes me popcorn, but other times, I wish she would just stay in the room. Like on Friday nights when my parents take Tom and my sisters out for family night to do things they like that I'm too little for, like paintball or PG-13 movies. On Friday nights, when he doesn't have to work at the Blockbuster on Thames Street, Candy brings her boyfriend, Max, to hang out and build Lego towers and watch movies with us.
Max is 21 whole years old, which means that he's old enough to drink beer, but my mommy says that means he's too old for Candy, who's only 16. It's weird 'cause I never knew you could get too old for somethin', only that you could get old enough. He's really fun and cool when Candy is around, but when she goes to the kitchen to make popcorn, he touches me weird. It confuses me, because he doesn't do it when Candy is around, and he told me he wants it to be our secret.
I've heard my mommy telling my daddy that you should never keep secrets from the ones you love, but I guess Max is a grown-up and I'm sure he has reasons for it to stay secret. Maybe it's because it tickles funny, but not like the kind of funny when my daddy and me get into tickle fights. Maybe it's because it makes me feel confused and scared and sad when he does it, like something's been taken from me. Like the time Caleb Jacobs stole my toy truck at the park, but it hurts even heavier in my heart. Maybe those kinds of feelings are s'posed to be a secret when you're bigger. I guess I've never seem grown-ups talk about being sad or angry or confused; at least their meaning of confused doesn't really seem to match how I feel. I guess sometimes a word like confused can have two different meanings, just like my kitty is Fish even though he's not a fish. And I've only ever seen babies cry, and I'm not a baby anymore. So I guess I can keep it a secret, even on Halloween when he touches me while I'm wearing my favorite Spiderman costume and I don't feel like I can ever wear the costume again, like every chance I thought I had of being a superhero like Spiderman or my daddy is "gone with the wind". That's a saying Candy taught me, but I don't think I like it so much anymore.
☔️
My name is Alex. I'm 14 years old, and I'll be 15 in a few days. I don't know why, but birthdays don't really make me happy anymore. I don't think anything happened to make me this unhappy, but I guess it's just how I feel. This birthday might be a little bit more fun, though, than the last couple birthdays. I met this really weird kid at my new school that's in most of my classes and listens to the same music as me. Since my parents got me a guitar last Christmas, Jack and I have been getting together to jam.
At my old school, I was in a band, but I got kicked out when I transferred to go to public high school. So now that I'm kind of embracing a whole new life, Jack and I decided that we're gonna start a new band. He's come over a couple of times already, and right now we're mostly doing covers of Green Day and Blink, but we do have a name: Ctrl+Alt+Delete My Heart.
Jack and I both think it's cool, which is good, because it took us nearly three hours to come up with a band name that he didn't deem too pretentious and I didn't deem too goddamned stupid. He says he met this cool guy in his English class who plays drums and listens to Face To Face, which is cool. On my birthday, we're gonna go over to his house and see if he can play as well as Jack's imagination wants to believe. Maybe we'll have a real band soon if all goes well.
☔️
My name is Alex. I turned 18 almost 3 months ago, and a month ago, my whole world came crashing down. My psychology teacher was talking to our class about the effects of traumatic experiences on the human brain, and one of his slides was about the effects of abuse on childhood development. I wondered why so many of the things she mentioned seemed so relatable to me, but then I felt a heavy weight on my chest as a name flashed repeatedly in my brain like warning lights: Max, Max, Max.
I asked to be excused as quickly as I could, and I went to the bathroom and threw up.
☔️
My name is Alex. I'm 20 years old, and I'm on tour with my band for our first full length album on a real record label, So Wrong It's Right. I love being on tour; the stage feels like it's my only real happy place in the world anymore. Nothing else really makes sense anymore. Nothing has really made sense to me for over two years.
I also like being on tour because I feel safer from myself. I'm not out to the rest of the guys yet, even though I have a really big crush on our tour manager, Matt Flyzik, who went to school with us. It would never work out, though. Matt is out of my league; he's kind, and funny, and he's not damaged goods like I am. Besides, sometimes he's too kind. He could never hurt me like I deserve to be hurt. Like the men who take me home from the gay bars that I can't visit when I'm on tour for fear of outing myself to band and crew alike. Like those men who I beg to hit me and rape me and even murder me, if they're feeling generous enough. As if the first time didn't damage me enough; didn't do a thorough enough job of marking me as undesirable and dirty and worthless.
Sometimes I think that what happened to me wasn't real enough. I catch myself thinking that if I'd been hurt worse, I could have shifted some of the blame and shame of it all away from myself and onto the monster who did this to me, the monster who I still find myself wishing would sit next to me while I watch Jurassic Park and eat popcorn made by his oblivious girlfriend. The monster that I hate with my whole heart but still miss every single day. The monster that I still long for while I'm re-traumatizing myself in the sleazy apartment of a much older complete stranger.
Of course the band and some of the crew know about what happened, but they don't know this side of my trauma. They only know the side that dissociates for hours on the couch in the bus or the side that cries me to sleep every night. So it's really no surprise that Matt is shocked, to say the least, when he tries to comfort me during a complete mental breakdown and I beg him to hurt me. He stares at me in shock as I curl up into his chest and word vomit, soaking in the affection before it's inevitably gone and replaced by the hostility that I really deserve. After all, I'm not any better than any of the other trash Max and all those other men have thrown away in their lives.
☔️
My name is Alex. I'm 24 years old, and I'm touring with my band on our latest album, Don't Panic. The stage is still my most happy place, but I feel more and more every day as though that happy place is fading away. I just miss Matt. He left almost a year ago after our relationship went sour (all my fault; who would have guessed? He got sick of me asking him to re-traumatize me. Who can blame him? I'm vile, disgusting, pathetic) to tour with some other band. And I miss Max, as fucked up as it sounds, and I miss who I used to be. I miss being a teenager, clueless and blissful, before it all crashed down on my head like waves, breaking over my body and keeping me pinned down until I give up and lie comatose on a desolate seabed, silent and empty as the worthless body I inhabit. I see children at our shows sometimes, there with their parents, and I have a disgusting, spiteful, angry sort of envy toward them. Some nights I beg and plead with God that I could just have a second shot at the childhood innocence I was robbed of. I don't believe in God anymore.
The boys can see me dying more every day; I know they can, but I can't stop it. They can see my sunken eyes and the tremble if my upper lip as I hold back tears just as clearly as I can see that I'm a complete waste of space. They know that I loved Matt as well as I do. I've loved him since the day we got together almost 4 years ago. I can't live without him, it's like there's a hollow void inside of me where he once lived. Where he once filled my soul with kindness and affection and patience, there's only bitterness, all because I couldn't stop wanting the two things he wasn't able to give me: pain and suffering.
My name is Alex. I'm 24 years old, and this morning I googled how to tie a noose. I don't know how I decided that this would be my last day on Earth, but my brain is on autopilot.
My name is Alex. I'm in All Time Low, a band I formed with 3 guys who love me with fans who need me very much but who still can't fill some hole inside of me. Tonight, I played my last show. I played Dear Maria, the last song I'll ever hear in my sorry life.
My name is Alex. Some people can cope with horrible, gut-wrenching trauma, but I just can't. I'm weak. Tonight, I'm giving up.
I also love my babysitter, Candy. She comes over to my house while my parents and siblings are off doing things that I'm too little for, and she loves to play games and watch movies with me. She even lets me watch Jurassic Park, which kinda scares me but is so cool anyway. She's really pretty, too, or at least that's what Tom, my big brother says. And she knows that popcorn is my favorite food! Sometimes, when we watch movies, she goes into the kitchen to make popcorn and leaves me in the living room to start the movie.
Sometimes I really like it when Candy makes me popcorn, but other times, I wish she would just stay in the room. Like on Friday nights when my parents take Tom and my sisters out for family night to do things they like that I'm too little for, like paintball or PG-13 movies. On Friday nights, when he doesn't have to work at the Blockbuster on Thames Street, Candy brings her boyfriend, Max, to hang out and build Lego towers and watch movies with us.
Max is 21 whole years old, which means that he's old enough to drink beer, but my mommy says that means he's too old for Candy, who's only 16. It's weird 'cause I never knew you could get too old for somethin', only that you could get old enough. He's really fun and cool when Candy is around, but when she goes to the kitchen to make popcorn, he touches me weird. It confuses me, because he doesn't do it when Candy is around, and he told me he wants it to be our secret.
I've heard my mommy telling my daddy that you should never keep secrets from the ones you love, but I guess Max is a grown-up and I'm sure he has reasons for it to stay secret. Maybe it's because it tickles funny, but not like the kind of funny when my daddy and me get into tickle fights. Maybe it's because it makes me feel confused and scared and sad when he does it, like something's been taken from me. Like the time Caleb Jacobs stole my toy truck at the park, but it hurts even heavier in my heart. Maybe those kinds of feelings are s'posed to be a secret when you're bigger. I guess I've never seem grown-ups talk about being sad or angry or confused; at least their meaning of confused doesn't really seem to match how I feel. I guess sometimes a word like confused can have two different meanings, just like my kitty is Fish even though he's not a fish. And I've only ever seen babies cry, and I'm not a baby anymore. So I guess I can keep it a secret, even on Halloween when he touches me while I'm wearing my favorite Spiderman costume and I don't feel like I can ever wear the costume again, like every chance I thought I had of being a superhero like Spiderman or my daddy is "gone with the wind". That's a saying Candy taught me, but I don't think I like it so much anymore.
☔️
My name is Alex. I'm 14 years old, and I'll be 15 in a few days. I don't know why, but birthdays don't really make me happy anymore. I don't think anything happened to make me this unhappy, but I guess it's just how I feel. This birthday might be a little bit more fun, though, than the last couple birthdays. I met this really weird kid at my new school that's in most of my classes and listens to the same music as me. Since my parents got me a guitar last Christmas, Jack and I have been getting together to jam.
At my old school, I was in a band, but I got kicked out when I transferred to go to public high school. So now that I'm kind of embracing a whole new life, Jack and I decided that we're gonna start a new band. He's come over a couple of times already, and right now we're mostly doing covers of Green Day and Blink, but we do have a name: Ctrl+Alt+Delete My Heart.
Jack and I both think it's cool, which is good, because it took us nearly three hours to come up with a band name that he didn't deem too pretentious and I didn't deem too goddamned stupid. He says he met this cool guy in his English class who plays drums and listens to Face To Face, which is cool. On my birthday, we're gonna go over to his house and see if he can play as well as Jack's imagination wants to believe. Maybe we'll have a real band soon if all goes well.
☔️
My name is Alex. I turned 18 almost 3 months ago, and a month ago, my whole world came crashing down. My psychology teacher was talking to our class about the effects of traumatic experiences on the human brain, and one of his slides was about the effects of abuse on childhood development. I wondered why so many of the things she mentioned seemed so relatable to me, but then I felt a heavy weight on my chest as a name flashed repeatedly in my brain like warning lights: Max, Max, Max.
I asked to be excused as quickly as I could, and I went to the bathroom and threw up.
☔️
My name is Alex. I'm 20 years old, and I'm on tour with my band for our first full length album on a real record label, So Wrong It's Right. I love being on tour; the stage feels like it's my only real happy place in the world anymore. Nothing else really makes sense anymore. Nothing has really made sense to me for over two years.
I also like being on tour because I feel safer from myself. I'm not out to the rest of the guys yet, even though I have a really big crush on our tour manager, Matt Flyzik, who went to school with us. It would never work out, though. Matt is out of my league; he's kind, and funny, and he's not damaged goods like I am. Besides, sometimes he's too kind. He could never hurt me like I deserve to be hurt. Like the men who take me home from the gay bars that I can't visit when I'm on tour for fear of outing myself to band and crew alike. Like those men who I beg to hit me and rape me and even murder me, if they're feeling generous enough. As if the first time didn't damage me enough; didn't do a thorough enough job of marking me as undesirable and dirty and worthless.
Sometimes I think that what happened to me wasn't real enough. I catch myself thinking that if I'd been hurt worse, I could have shifted some of the blame and shame of it all away from myself and onto the monster who did this to me, the monster who I still find myself wishing would sit next to me while I watch Jurassic Park and eat popcorn made by his oblivious girlfriend. The monster that I hate with my whole heart but still miss every single day. The monster that I still long for while I'm re-traumatizing myself in the sleazy apartment of a much older complete stranger.
Of course the band and some of the crew know about what happened, but they don't know this side of my trauma. They only know the side that dissociates for hours on the couch in the bus or the side that cries me to sleep every night. So it's really no surprise that Matt is shocked, to say the least, when he tries to comfort me during a complete mental breakdown and I beg him to hurt me. He stares at me in shock as I curl up into his chest and word vomit, soaking in the affection before it's inevitably gone and replaced by the hostility that I really deserve. After all, I'm not any better than any of the other trash Max and all those other men have thrown away in their lives.
☔️
My name is Alex. I'm 24 years old, and I'm touring with my band on our latest album, Don't Panic. The stage is still my most happy place, but I feel more and more every day as though that happy place is fading away. I just miss Matt. He left almost a year ago after our relationship went sour (all my fault; who would have guessed? He got sick of me asking him to re-traumatize me. Who can blame him? I'm vile, disgusting, pathetic) to tour with some other band. And I miss Max, as fucked up as it sounds, and I miss who I used to be. I miss being a teenager, clueless and blissful, before it all crashed down on my head like waves, breaking over my body and keeping me pinned down until I give up and lie comatose on a desolate seabed, silent and empty as the worthless body I inhabit. I see children at our shows sometimes, there with their parents, and I have a disgusting, spiteful, angry sort of envy toward them. Some nights I beg and plead with God that I could just have a second shot at the childhood innocence I was robbed of. I don't believe in God anymore.
The boys can see me dying more every day; I know they can, but I can't stop it. They can see my sunken eyes and the tremble if my upper lip as I hold back tears just as clearly as I can see that I'm a complete waste of space. They know that I loved Matt as well as I do. I've loved him since the day we got together almost 4 years ago. I can't live without him, it's like there's a hollow void inside of me where he once lived. Where he once filled my soul with kindness and affection and patience, there's only bitterness, all because I couldn't stop wanting the two things he wasn't able to give me: pain and suffering.
My name is Alex. I'm 24 years old, and this morning I googled how to tie a noose. I don't know how I decided that this would be my last day on Earth, but my brain is on autopilot.
My name is Alex. I'm in All Time Low, a band I formed with 3 guys who love me with fans who need me very much but who still can't fill some hole inside of me. Tonight, I played my last show. I played Dear Maria, the last song I'll ever hear in my sorry life.
My name is Alex. Some people can cope with horrible, gut-wrenching trauma, but I just can't. I'm weak. Tonight, I'm giving up.
♠ ♠ ♠
Let me know what you guys think!!