A/N This is sort of Eli's inner monologue as he goes farther and farther being more mentally unstable... A short one-shot I wrote a while ago. Some parts are strange, but I did it more to where it would make sense from Eli's point of view. Enjoy?
Disclaimer: I do not own Degrassi, or any real world references made in this fic.
He likes to scribble scrabble on his notes. He likes the idea that somehow, somewhere in this mess, there was once a single line...
In fact he likes best how once upon a time there was nothing but a white blank page. And all the madness that you see now only came afterwards. No one knows where it all began.. They only see the mess that is leftover. When he scribbles on paper only he can see the starting point. Everyone else only sees the chaos he made, the chaos he left behind.
He doesn't bother listening in class anymore. The teachers words flow right through him, in and out of his ears like white noise passing through. He could at least appear to look thoughtful, to look like he's paying attention but does he? No. He's not one for pretending. He's not one to appear to give a shit when he really doesn't. It's just not his style.
He's drawing in his notebook. The turn of papers, the crackle of notes, the teachers words all fade into the background. He continues to draw on paper: swirls, and triangles, and circles, and madness. He's making a self
Portrait, of course no one but him will know what it is. They don't see things like he does.
A single line down the middle of the page, and then he sharply twists his hand up, the result is a curved V shaped thing.. Or an L for loser. He could make an H for hopeless maybe? Hopeless romantic like Fiona calls him. He hates being hopeless. Being a romantic sucks ass.
He draws lines onto the already existing lines and turns them into triangles, stars, and shapes. He draws them around each other, and in each other, and pretty soon all you can see is scribbles. A mess on paper. But he's smirking, he feels proud because he can still see that single line in the middle of the page... The mess that started all of the others.
He can feel his teachers eyes on him but he just doesn't care. He doesn't. Not in the slightest bit. Poor guy, he's standing over there probably praying to whatever God he seems to think exists that Eli doesn't have a mental breakdown in his room. Eli knows he should stop. He should pay attention he should act normal. But he doesn't. Damn teacher is probably too afraid of him to do anything about it anyway.
He has her books in his room, books that she let him borrow. The books that he was going to read so they could talk about, and discuss. They use to always do that. They used to talk for hours... They don't talk anymore but, he still has her books where she left them.
Two weeks pass by. A month passes by. Another week. He waits, and he waits for it but it never comes. She doesn't ask for her books back, and he doesn't offer them to her and that just fine.. He'll just keep them for now.. Something of hers to hold on to. To help him remember.. To keep a piece of her with him..
It's late at night as he looks through those books slowly, as though he'll find some trace of the girl he knew -the one who loved him back- in the yellowed pages. It's as he's laying in bed, in the pitch dark that he hugs the books to his chest as though they were a Teddy bear.
It's as he begins to tire that he swears that her scent lingers on the pages.
He falls asleep to the lingering perfume of her hair in his mind, and the sound of her laughter playing in his ears..
He pretends that he can't hear his parents worrying in the other room.. They worry and they worry, and they worry. All they do is fucking worry and he's so fucking tired of it.
He's tired period.
He wants his parents to laugh, and joke and go on like they used too.. Like before.
But it happened and now all he can see is hesitation in his mothers eyes.. The tears that she's fighting. And he wants to yell, he wants to scream at her to stop, but he doesn't. He's too selfish to ask her not to care.
And he's too tired to be angry about any of this anymore.
When he thinks that no one is watching him he stares at his wrists.. He places his thumb just over the blue vein set just beneath the skin there, to feel his pulse.. A reassurance that he is in fact still alive..
He trails his spindly fingers down the vein, and he wonders what it's like to be cut open.
Does your blood feel free?
Does it pour out like bad memories kept inside for you to hold? Does the pain turn into euphoria as you realize that you'll be leaving this hell hole?
He'll trace shapes and letters onto his wrist and ignore the concerned stares of his parents coming from the rearview mirror. They know that they have a crazy kid, there's nothing they can do about it.. One of these days he knows he's going to burn out, but until then he'll keep tracing, keep thinking.
Adam Torres is pissing him off. He loves Adam.. He does.
Adam is his best friend, and he knows that Adam cares about him. But lately he feel like he shouldn't. Lately he doesn't want Adam to care, he doesn't freaking want Adam to text him, or call him, or try to come over. He doesn't want to see him.. He doesn't want to see his best friend and he doesn't even know why.
He doesn't know when it started. Maybe it was when he pretended not to hear his mother crying at night.
Or maybe it was when Eli found that he could sleep until three in the afternoon and fall right back asleep for hours and hours.
But he doesn't want to see Adam Torres. He knows that it's selfish. He knows that one day Adam will get tired of his shit and give up on him completely. Maybe a part of Eli wants that. He doesn't even know anymore..
Eli doesn't want to hear about the new MMA thing that Adam ordered on pay per view. He doesn't want to go out and be social. He doesn't feel like going to The Dot and being around a bunch of people who he really couldn't care less about.. It's like anything Adam suggests infuriates him. Because he doesn't get it! He doesn't! He can't and he probably won't. So Eli continues to be an ass to him, he continues blowing him off.. And he doesn't feel anything. He doesn't care.
He'll go off with Dave. His new friend who he always seems to be having more fun with, and gets along with. Adam deserves a friendship better than the one he can offer him. And they'll laugh, and play video games, and do their whole little radio thing. He'll forget all about him, except on occasions to shoot him pitying glances and occasional text messages..
And Eli will be all alone.. Like he wants to be. At least .. That's what he thinks he wants.
He thinks about getting a pet. He has Cece drag him to animal shelters all over, for days. He thinks that maybe he can find a little broken animal to be his friend. A cute little kitten won't abandon him. An adorable puppy would never leave his side. That's all he wants really someone who won't leave his side. He wants a friend..
He doesn't understand why he's so hell bent on getting a pet to become his friend when he does nothing but push away his only human friend.. How the hell could he take care of some poor, innocent little animal, when he can barely get himself out of bed in the mornings? How can he take a dog for walks, go play fetch, or even pet a little animal when he spends hid afternoons alone in his room underneath the covers.
Laughing darkly to himself he realizes he's way more messed up than he thought.
Eli Goldsworthy is becoming scared shitless that he is boring.. Boring, boring, boring. That's why Adam seems so distant whenever they hang out now. Why he can't keep a conversation going with just about anyone anymore. He's boring. It never occurs to him that he's just sick in the head. No. He's boring..
And he decided if he reads a bunch of books, and dresses more different, and listen to even more obscure music that he'll become interesting.. Then everything will be okay again.
So he reads and he reads. He reads poems, and novels, even poetry. He googles quotes, and memorizes them. He writes down quotes in books, and movies. He watches independent films, and watches the classics.
He reads, and writes, and watches until his thoughts aren't his own anymore. Until he is nothing but what other people have put into him. He is the combination of everything he's ever known.
He thinks and thinks. He thinks things that others have thought already. He thinks things that he's never thought of before. And he doesn't understand his thoughts, he doesn't understand his mind. He doesn't understand himself.
He thought that by reading, and learning and thinking that maybe he'd figure things out, he thought that maybe things would start making sense again but they don't. Everything becomes more confusing, everything befuddles him and everything means so many things. Everything is madness.. But then a part of him realizes that things never made sense in the first place.
Feelings are a peculiar thing.. He doesn't feel them. He spends his days going through the motions of a person. He doesn't cry and cry after Julia, though he knows he'll always love her, always miss her. He doesn't even cry after her. He thinks that maybe instead of him feeling his emotions, his emotions are feeling him. They create a fog around his personality but never truly penetrate deep enough for him to get a grasp on them.
It should hurt for him to think about her. It doesn't. Maybe after all this time it still hasn't quite sunk in that she left him. She left him, when he needed her the most, she left him and ran straight into the arms of a new guy. And she's trying to make herself forget all about him. He feels tinged of hurt when her thinks about her, but mostly he feels tired. He's just tired.
He always sort of idolized her. She was perfect in his eyes. There was nothing that she could do wrong, nothing that she could say wrong. She could have asked him for anything and he wouldn't have hesitated to get it for her. Because he loved her... Loves her still, in spite of everything. He probably always will.
It's all too much. He feels angry. He's so angry and he doesn't even know why. He sits there in his room, his mind a panic, his hands are shaking. He's breathing rapidly and his hands are just shaking. And he needs to move, he needs to do something, anything but he doesn't know what. He doesn't know why he's panicking, he doesn't know why he's this bundle of chaos he just is. He runs his hands through his hair, and some strands get stuck on his ring, he feels hair being pulled out of his head and he just stares at the strands still stuck to his fingers.
His mind slows down. Before he knows it he's pulling out more strands. Tiny strands , single strands. He uses his fingernails to snap them out quickly to make it sting. His fingernails scratch over the strands of hair and, and he slides them down to the end of the strand. And he pulls the hair out. It hurts, in a good way. And he's laughing. And then he's not..
And he's pulling out strands, and strands. But when the high finishes he stops. He gets up and looks at himself in the mirror noticing a tiny hairless spot, the skin looks red and angry. It's irritated. He doesn't know why he did it. And he doesn't think that it's crazy. All he thinks is that he'll just have to comb his hair differently for a while.. Until it grows back.
He inhales the cigarette smoke softly. He's sitting there, poisoning his lungs trying to remember a quote out of a book he read once.
"I smoke to die."
He's been lost in his head a lot lately, but right here, as he lays down, right here as the nicotine buzz settles over him he feels.
And he knows that everything will go on.
After a while he becomes more used to things. His parents and Adam seem to mistake this for him getting better.
He's not.
He keeps on waiting to do something wrong. Mess everything up. Because history repeats itself, my God it does.
..And we all know that history loves him oh so well.