'When I'm gone following my own fullmoon" - Series, Part I
There's nothing left for me
For a time there he could pretend to be okay.
And he did it, pretending that is, quiet successfully.
Pretending to sleep quietly and peacefully at night (the old concealer of your mother safely tucked into your school-bag, carefully applied each morning).
Pretending to enjoy three full and balanced meals a day (no one questioned or commented on how baggy your already loose clothes got or how much more your cheek bones seemed to be pronounced, sharp enough to cut through glass).
Pretending to be his usual annoying, loud, obnoxious, spastic - unwanted, too aggravating, irritating, disrupting, imposing, dumb, idiotic, ugly – yes, yes … just … just pretending to be his usual self (and if his laughter, becoming sparser everyday, sounded strained and cracked even to his own human ears, no one cared, no one … no, no …).
Pretending not to count his fingers obsessively, to not check them over again and again, to not flinch from physical contact at the slightest opportunity with his heart beating like it might explode, mind dizzy and sight blackening because his lungs seemed to implode (bite your tongue, break your skin, draw blood and just don't look, don't look, don't, don't, don't look!).
He was quiet good at pretending to be okay, considering, that, well...
He was not okay.
He was really really not okay.
Not since that night. It has been nearly six months since then, since the pack saved him from the Nogitsune's possession.
Six. Months.
Six freaking months of really not being okay.
… he was just about done.
It was time to stop pretending. Once and for all.
It was finally enough.
Enough.
The turning point was the night he cut too deep, slitting his wrist so hard and resolute that he cut through a major vein. Seeing the blood, hot and sticky, pooling around him, flowing freely down his arm was like a slap in the face.
The knife fell down, echoing hollowly in his darkened room.
It was to this image that his father looked in a scant few minutes later and called an ambulance, horror, terror, guilt, fear and panic so painfully obvious and heartbreaking that even through the light-headed haze in his mind, he cringed in bottomless guilt. It took his breath away seeing the last member of his family in such a state because of him and his desperate action. Nothing but his fathers face, his pleading words and desperately pressing-down hands could have flipped that switch in his mind to fucking think of the one person in his life that he still loved and was loved by. There could have really been no better catalyst to finally sit him straight – well, right.
Straight ...
Straight was no option for him. Really, promise.
And he would be damned to let the old man grieve over him like they both still mourned a mother and wife.
It was his father who anchored him back to life. And it was because of his father that he didn't fight the treatment. For his father he sat through hours upon hours of counseling, observations, check-ups and family talks – talks of the breaking-down-kind.
For his father he tried living, not pretending.
Never again would he be the source of his fathers despair.
Never.
But desperation clung to him like an all-compassing odor. It took his appetite and disturbed his sleep. It still sometimes let him reach for the blood-encrusted knife beneath his bedside drawer and paint painfully red lines on his all to thin and pale skin.
It also never seemed to bother the pack.
He sometimes asked himself when 'my friends, my pack' became simply and resignedly 'the pack' but never fond the energy to truly ponder on it. Instead of trying to fit in or have any kind of contact with the pack he invested himself completely in school, his therapy, taking care of his father and finding out who he really was.
Not even Scott, his allegedly best friend for life, his 'brother from another mother', noticed that the bitter and chemical scent of medicine from his Aderrall was substituted with a faint honey herbal aroma.
Not that he had any expectations anymore, considering that passed by pat of his life.
Hah ...
It was strange to stop pretending.
He didn't eat when he wasn't hungry, except for breakfast and dinner with his father. A father who after diner set down beside him and rubbed his back or brushed through his growing-out hair.
He didn't laugh or smile when he didn't feel like it and started chatting and skyping with the friends he met online instead of forcing himself to pretend to be someone he could never be again.
He wasn't loud or clingy, keeping to himself and discovering what he liked and disliked, who he wanted to be, inside and outside. He still loved his online-games and super heroes – batman forever! - but he also found out that it relaxed him to take long baths and that once immersed, he could completely lose himself in creating a painting or writing a text. He continued learning archaic Latin and started on French.
And the first time he forget to count his fingers while watching a football game with his father he cried later in in relief and utter happiness.
Not pretending also meant he had more time for his education. A fact that had the consequence of the school contacting his father two months later and giving him the chance to graduate a year early with honors. His father let him decide for himself. Two days later he told his father he agreed.
It also meant he cold go to college starting next term. A very big point in favor that decision and the hours and determination of extra work graduating early required.
His life went from a suffocating downwards spiral to a brilliant golden path. He loved it.
Even if the pack never knew anything of the changes he went through, the life he built for himself. It didn't matter. His father had his back and nothing else mattered.
He accepted a full ride to Cambridge University in great Britain. He packed his bags and collected his diploma.
It was time.
Finally.
Seventeen years old High school graduate Genim 'Stiles' Stilinski hugged his dad close to him, already missing the only parent he still had. Bags on board and phone charged he clung to his dad until his fathers gruff voice told him to get his skinny arse on board and that he would visit his son on Christmas for 'a very British Christmas'. It was with tears in the eyes and a teasing smile on his trembling lips that he allowed a flight attendant to show him his seat and sat down.
No time for regrets.
No need for regrets.
He chose life, and Stilinski men were nothing if not resilient and stubborn.
It was time.
His time to live.
Now.
See in you in Pt. II ~