Craig
He was creative. Pictures had first caught his imagination, how you could freeze the world, catch something in it or make something appear to be one certain way when it wasn't, and both were illusions. And music, this flow of it, how it could carry you along and make up these worlds that might exist. And he could lose himself in these things, and he liked to lose himself.
He felt almost like he wouldn't survive the death of his mother. She'd left his father years earlier but had also left him. His father had to become mother and father, in a way. He saw his mother like you might see a second cousin or a favorite aunt, often, but not often enough. He couldn't come home every day and see her, he couldn't talk about little things with her because she was gone.
He didn't like science in school. He didn't like knowing about the systems in the human body, knowing that his father knew this better, knowing that he had cut into these systems, cut out tumors and infected and inflamed appendixes, that he had taken lung biopsies and breast biopsies. That he had replaced shattered bones with metal, that he had repaired torn arteries and bleeding herniated ulcers.
This puzzling man who was his father, living in a neat, sterile house like his surgical field. A house where the forgetting of a coaster could result in being strapped with a belt. Where being late could result in the dinner and dishes thrown to the floor, where being somewhere you shouldn't have been could result in being thrown to the floor and kicked and kicked in the stomach and ribs.
He had died, too. He'd wished for his father's death many times, or if not his death exactly his absence. He'd wished it when he felt the belt land in full force across his back and his legs and his butt, when he'd felt the sting of leather like being bitten by something vicious. When he'd felt his father's strong hands around his wrists, shoving him back against the metal shelves. He'd wished him away.
How had he felt about Joey at first? At the very first when his mother left them for him? He'd narrowed his eyes at this smiling used car salesman who had destroyed his family. But could he blame Joey when his father yelled at his mother in that way that shook the house? When his mother cried herself to sleep almost every night and tried to give him attention despite her red eyes and bruised skin? And when his mother left couldn't he see why?
It was Joey who was there when he ran away, when he kneeled in despair in front of his mother's gravestone. Joey's concerned face and watering eyes, and Joey whispered the truth of what was happening. 'He hits you, doesn't he?' Joey had said, and the tears had come, he couldn't stop them anymore. He couldn't stop the things Sean and Emma told people, or Angie. She'd seen the black and blue and he'd lied. All the lies had dried up and gone, revealing the stark and twisted truth.
Ashley had become all out of proportion in grade 11. He only felt completely whole when he was near her. He only felt completely real when he was with her. When she was gone he felt lost, alone, transparent. Everyone else had left, his mother, his father. He had been abandoned. He needed Ashley.
He lost her, too. She'd gone in the wake of his mental illness, his mind buckling under the weight of the racing thoughts, the ideas glittering like gems, too bright to see.
Cocaine had boosted his confidence. All his confidence and swagger in high school had been an act. Deep down he was just the kid cowering from his father's blows, convinced of his worthlessness. Being thrust on stage in bigger and bigger venues had been fucking with his head. Deep down he knew he couldn't measure up, he wasn't at the level of these other musicians. Coke gave him confidence to believe in himself, to stop the synapses from firing off and leaving him dizzy. Cocaine was an answer he'd never even knew he was looking for.
Rehab had been, above all, boring. The hours stretched on like time had rarely stretched on. It was like being in some tedious ancient history class, the teacher talking about some faded generals in a deadly monotone. The clock ticks the seconds off, chopping them up like some guillotine.