"Roxy, open the door."
"No." You respond defiantly. You don't even have the energy to make a smart ass response anymore. You can't even make an excuse with Dirk. He knows exactly why you're like this right now. He's known exactly what you've felt the whole time. He's the one who was on the phone with you every week, listening to you gush and gab and whine and pine for your best friend. Dirk warned you. He warned you like the brother he is – though he's not actually your brother.
"Roxy Lalonde, open this door. I'll break it down."
Your response is silence.
You hear him sigh, and then you hear his footsteps as he shuffles off. He could break down your door if he really wanted to, but he knows you well enough that if you want to be by yourself, you will be. You'll even take out your strife equipment to make him leave, and he knows that. Besides, you've barricaded it. Dirk is the only one who lives close enough to come to your house and try to coax you out. Your mom is away for an entire month on a research trip for her novel. It's been a week since you've locked yourself in the dark recesses of your room. It's been a week since that party.
There are clothes strewn all over the room. Your piles of wizard and cat plush toys are now covered in empty liquor bottles. All the video game systems are on the floor, wrecked – some might not even be repairable. You tore down your Calmasis poster but bits and pieces of it still remain on the door. There are very few things in your room that aren't destroyed now, actually. There's only one item that has survived unscathed – your laptop. The air conditioning is on full blast so that you barely hear anything on the outside unless it's by your door. It doesn't matter that you're freezing or cold. Nothing really matters anymore in the first place. The only things you do now are drink alcohol – the hard stuff like vodka and tequila – eat, shower, sit on your bed, think, and sleep when you're deadbeat tired. You put all the void related items against the wall, covered by one of your blankets. You don't want to see anything that reminds you of what you are, or who you are. You only come out when you know Dirk isn't there. At this point, even Mutie knows not to go near you. It's your chance to be alone.
In the end, isn't that all you are? All you deserve to be?
You swirl the liquid around in the tequila bottle you're holding, and take a swig. It was cool when you took it out. It's practically as cold as you are now. You did this to yourself, you know. You saw all the signs. You were told all the signs – it was obvious. You just never listened. You hoped. That's all people hang on to, isn't it? Hope. Hope, hope, hope, hope, hope. Maybe that's why everyone hangs onto Jake. He's been hope when you're the hopeless. Dirk likes Jake. Jane likes Jake. Who gives a shit about you? Of course, they come find you when something's gone wrong or they need you to do something for them. All those conversations after midnight, all those games and phone calls – she was humoring you, and so was Dirk. Why would they care? After all, you're an underage alcoholic that only knows how to hack, play video games, and jump around in darkness. Your own mother doesn't even give a single shit about you – playing her passive-aggressive mind games with you. She's never around when you want her to be. You deserve to be secluded. You deserve all this. You were asking for it.
What a pitiful mess you are.
Empty. So fucking empty. Your body feels so listless and heavy – as unmovable stone. The only thing that still moves is your brain – the one thing you want to stop the most. Thinking. Thinking over and over the same thoughts racing through your head like a never ending cycle of pity and hate and just stop already, Roxy. Please, stop. That's all you want – you want the thoughts and memories to stop.
But they won't.
You can't stop because it won't go away – the nagging feeling of loneliness, yet wanting to be alone at the same time. The amazing memories you have with everyone – when they were humoring you and you fell for it – they hurt the most. Baking with Jane, talking with Dirk about ass, gun slinging with Jake – all those stupid memories are making it hard for you to breathe. It's making it hard to get out of your own head. You don't want to see anyone. You don't want to hear from anyone. It will only remind you how stupid you are. So naïve. So, so naïve. You stopped crying after the first few days. It's just numbness now – a dull ache in your bones, in your head, and in your heart. You don't want to deal with it anymore.
Pesterchum has been going off incessantly. Your phone was too, before you threw it against the wall and it split in half. You know it's Jane trying to reach you. Dirk says she's worried. Well of course she is. But she wouldn't be if she knew why you were doing this – why you're hurting so bad. There are so many different aspects as to why you don't want to do anything. So many reasons why you don't want to speak to anyone at all. It was more like she set the trigger off on a gun called misery. The bullet hit you straight in the heart.
You give so much. You give so much and it isn't returned or somehow it isn't enough. You've listened to Jane talk about Jake. You've listened to Dirk talk about Jake – at least Jane has the excuse of not knowing you love her. There's no excuse for Dirk to talk about him just as much as she does to you. You listen anyway though. You try to be a good friend. You want to be there for everyone – it just hurts so much. You give and you give and you fucking give. You see yourself as some living, breathing clay statue. Every statue becomes cracked somehow. You're the kind that isn't cracked by weather, but by people. Other people hurt you, and your cracks widen. You seem to be the only one that realizes cracks can't be fixed. They can only be made less visible. You get tricked by people. They see your cracks and they want to fix you. It brings your hopes up every time. They take out their staples and shitty Elmer's glue, and you become so happy that someone is finally trying to be with you for once that you take out your strength duct tape. You take out your hot glue gun and help them with their cracks. That's not all, though. You go one step above that. You take a chunk of you, and you give it to that person in the hopes that they'll stay – that they'll love you back and feel the same way as you do, with the same amount of love in return – be it platonic, romantic, or familial.
But they always leave.
They leave when they've taken what they need from you. No matter what type of need it is – a lesson, a physical object, it doesn't really matter – they leave when they get it. Some people lie straight to your face about caring and leave. Some people think they care but really don't. Others honestly do care in some way or another, yet something comes up and they leave too. All of them leave with a chunk of you which not only makes the cracks bigger – it makes parts of you disappear before your eyes. Who knows what these people do with them? Maybe they throw that piece of you in a box in the back of their closet, and when they finally look at it again after rummaging for something else, they look back and remember you, then stuff the piece back in the closet where it belongs. Some probably just throw it away. The statue still stands, though. The statue tries with all its might to keep standing, though it gets tricked over and over – loving over and over, caring over and over. One day the statue is going to be one piece, lying on a concrete floor because no one ever loved it enough to give her a piece of their own self. Who gives a shit about a statue anyway? People just walk past them, look for a minute, and then they're on their way. No one gives a single fuck about a statue.
The worst part is that you miss all of them already. You miss your mom. You miss Dirk. You miss Jane. You even miss Jake. You can't bring yourself to hate them. Why can't you hate them? Why can't you fucking hate them?
Don't kid yourself. You know why.
It's because you love them – you care about them. That is exactly why you don't hate yourself – it's stronger than hate. You loathe yourself for caring so much. You love too much. You care too much. You miss too much. You don't want to do any of that anymore. You need to protect yourself. There has to be some way that you don't have to hurt this bad – so you don't feel all this pain. It's way too painful – to be in between this cycle of caring and missing, mentally torturing yourself, and wanting to be alone. You don't want it anymore. You can't take it. If your glass was half empty before this, now it's broken into pieces with liquid spilling all over the floor. Look at yourself.
Tragic.
Desperate.
Weak.
Deplorable.
You disgust yourself. How could you fix it? What in the world can you possibly do?
Oh, here we go. The light bulb just went off.
Loving hasn't worked for you. Loving and caring hasn't done a single thing for you other than make you suffer. So why don't you become the opposite? Why don't you be as superficial as everyone else? All you have to do is not give a shit. All you have to do is not care.
All you have to be is hollow.
If you're hollow, you don't have to love anyone. There is no in between – the in between is hurting worse than the original pain; it's to the point where even suicide seems out of the question, if only because it's the same shit, next life. No more of your actions being mechanical motions with your feelings running rampant and off the wall. No more pain. No more suffering.
No more love.
This is the most brilliant idea you've had in a long time. That's the answer to all your problems. It's not that hard to fake anything, after all. You'll put on a fake face – a smile so fake that it seems real. You want an unbreakable mask – one made out of diamond that no one can ever break – not even you. Of course, you don't plan to break it. It will take a while to fix how you've been for years – loving and kind, that is. But you'll learn. For your own sake you'll learn – no matter what you have to do. Jake can have Dirk and Jane. You won't have to care anymore. Hell, you don't even have to love yourself. Honestly, either way you weren't going to. You thought you were so mature, since you basically take care of yourself. You were so terribly, terribly wrong.
The gears in your brain are starting to slow down. Your thoughts seem to stop racing from one conclusion to the next. Yes. This has to be the answer you've been looking for.
So why are you crying?
Tears are dripping down from your face – down your cheeks and into your mouth. They taste salty and bitter. Little sobs are coming out from your throat, and all you can say is "fuck" over and over again while you hold yourself. You rock slowly, back and forth. The bed squeaks a bit as you repeat the motion. The tequila bottle is still in your hand. It's only a quarter filled at this point. You just don't know what to do with yourself. Right now you're in the in between still, trying to figure out how to do this – how to change your own personality to survive. That stupid phrase comes to your head. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Yeah, that one. It's complete bullshit.
What doesn't kill doesn't make you stronger.
It only makes you wish it did.
All you want to do is lie down on your bed and cry. All your hopes and dreams have culminated to this moment. This moment of something far worse than depression – far worse than even numbness can describe. It's like something is swallowing you whole, and you want it to happen. But something is telling you to stop it – to not go through with this, because this isn't you. You don't want to think anymore. You don't even want to do anything anymore, besides drink and sleep. Fuck showering. Fuck eating. Fuck it all, and fuck everyone else too. Fuck yourself, fuck your mother, fuck Jake, fuck Dirk, fuck yourself and fuck…
God damn it.
You can't tell her to go fuck herself – not even in your own head.
You put the bottle down next to you, after you put the cork back in it. You grab a pillow and you just scream into it. You scream and you cry and you push it against your face so hard that you might suffocate. The thoughts are racing again. You can't even do what you think is going to protect you. You're pathetic, Roxy. You are a pathetic excuse for a human being and no one can say otherwise. This is it. It's over. Hopelessness won out. All you wanted was someone who was willing to fill the void in you like you would for them. Why should they in the first place? The same words keep repeating over and over in your head.
Useless.
Failure.
Disgrace.
After a couple more screams, you put the pillow back where it belonged on your bed. You put your hands on your thighs. Your hands are cold – damp with tears, too. You're getting your leggings wet by putting your hands on them. You feel the drying tear stains on your face. You don't even care enough to wash it off. You don't feel like you can sleep. Yet that's all you want to do right now. Sleep doesn't do anything for you anymore, either. You blink and then it's morning, so there's no point in sleeping. There's nothing to do – absolutely nothing. Pesterchum is still beeping constantly, alerting you that you have new messages. You stare at your laptop blankly. One minute. Two minutes. Five minutes.
It's still going off.
You walk over to it, opening it. You knew it was Jane. You see the last two messages she sent you today.
"Why won't you answer me? I'm sorry if I did something to upset you. Please, Roxy. It's been a week. Respond back...I miss you."
The last one is thirty minutes later.
"If you won't respond back, that's fine. Just know that I love you, okay? I'm here for you whenever you want to talk."
You stare at it in silence. Seconds feel like hours. Minutes feel like days.
It's the silence before the storm.
You pick up the laptop, and throw it at the closest wall. It lands with an impressive crack. It falls to the floor with a clunk. Bits and huge pieces alike fall off of it. The laptop leaves a tiny dent in the wall because of the force you threw it with. You hear footsteps – weighty ones. Dirk is running toward your door.
"Roxy, are you al –"
You pick up your tequila bottle from your bed and throw it at the door before he finishes his sentence. It breaks with a sickening smack, as glass hits the door and falls onto the carpet.
"Leave!" you shriek – voice cracking, throat dry – but you're still screeching at the top of your lungs.
You hear Dirk try to jiggle the door handle. It's no use; you've locked it and barricaded it. After a couple tries, he bangs on the door – probably letting out his own frustration. He bangs the door once, twice. You hear him say "fuck it" as he walks away.
Your breath is heavy now – as if you had just run a mile.
Great.
The one guy who was willing to help you – your own brother – left because you're a horrible person. He doesn't want to give a fuck anymore. You pushed him away.
Isn't that what you wanted?
You look down at the broken bottle on the carpet. The liquid has already been absorbed into it, leaving a dark stain in front of your door.
Broken.
Shattered.
The bottle can't be fixed. It won't be the same ever again. You're just like the bottle on the floor. It hit a door it couldn't go through. It hit its breaking point.
And you did too.