A/N: Okay. I'm making a huge mistake and I'm writing again. And I think I'm finally onto something. I hope so, anyway. Thank you for clicking on this story and giving it a shot. I really hope you enjoy it and trust me? You guys always have before (I think/hope?) and I'm gonna try again.
For starters, this first chapter is only the prologue. I feel like it's a little cliched and weird. But I feel like I know what I'm doing. Gah. I'm so nervous. Akdhakjghagh.
Just read it. I'm going back to my corner. FFFFT
Loneliness is a disease.
Loneliness is a chronic illness that begins as a knick in the heart and slowly begins to split and tear and bleed with every painful, adrenaline-filled beat. It turns the soul so cold it burns all those stupid enough to come into contact with the afflicted subject.
And love is a monster. Cruel and tremendously forceful, love is a monster that sinks its fangs deep into the heart and feeds greedily from its nervousness, getting drunk on the adrenaline rush as it rips through the life-sustaining organ where you harbor all of your affections.
More unnerving is that love and loneliness are rivals, competing for your damn soul. If one doesn't devour you, the other will. Except love can always throw you back up when it's done with you; regurgitate you like you're a chunk of bad meat, summoning loneliness to your being like a shadow that stalks you everywhere you go.
Eventually, one way or another, all of us have to experience these two demonic forces fighting for dominance within you. You get no say in it. They're unavoidable. Either loneliness wins, eventually shriveling your heart into nothing but a rough black stone, or you give into love and allow its destruction to rip you into oblivion. You learn to accept that it has driven you absolutely crazy and you find comfort and peace in insanity because, if you're really lucky, you're not facing it alone. The reason behind your lack of rationality and frantic heartbeats is some other poor soul who is stuck in the exact same rut. You collapse into it together. You get lost in the dizzy, rose-colored mirage that the world is perfect and whole so long as you are together. And, until loneliness returns, ready to dish out revenge, you just might think it's impossible for anything to tear you apart.
Nobody can be free of this. We are all diseased. We are all tripping over our own feet and struggling with every passing day to tame love in such ways that loneliness can't slip back in.
I knew it back then - back when I had nothing and was nothing - and I know it now. We need love to survive and we don't have to be lonely.
But back then it wasn't quite so clear to me. I would learn the hard way; through endless trial and error. I would learn while wanting to tear my hair out as my future unfolded before me and I slowly began to cave in. At that time, to me, loneliness was a friend I had learned to accept when I came to the bitter realization that love - in all its unnerving splendor - had abandoned me the very day I was born. As much as I wanted it, no matter who it was from, I just couldn't get a grasp on it. My interest in love was a fleeting and fickle thing. Eventually, avoiding it altogether was the only thing I knew to do with it.
With the circumstances of my birth nothing more than a mystery to me, I began this life alone. Wherever I ended up, I was the only person ever on my side and, even then, I was often full of doubt. No one had ever protected me nor were they going to. Still, I had to keep striving. I wanted nothing more than to find my place in this world and I believed, with everything I was, that I would make it.
I just never expected all of the fucked up shit I'd have to go through to make it happen.
Growing up, I was a ward of the state, constantly shuffled around from home to home in a shitty foster program. From my experiences, most of these people were only in it for the tax benefits and couldn't care less about the children they took in. Some of them had too many children. Some of them didn't have kids at all. Some were older and filthier than dirt and others were young, clean, prim, and proper. Many of them were broken homes trying to right their wrongs with a "good" deed; yet I never saw how taking in a parent-less child was supposed to unfuck them up up when placed in the midst of something already damaged.
I lived in every kind of home, from shotty urban apartments to pristine rural mansions outside the city. Never once did I consider a single one of them home, regardless of how kind anybody was to me. Never did I find myself feeling any semblance of a connection with the families who had me signed over to them. Perhaps with the exception of once, a bond never formed between myself and another human being.
Some might argue that this was my own fault. Up until I turned eleven, I was a quiet, obedient kid. I helped around my foster family's homes and did my best to get along with them, even if I couldn't get close. I would help them with cleaning and meals - especially the family's with too many kids - and when I wasn't, I was keeping to myself. I preferred to be alone with a sketchbook or reading material or - if I was particularly lucky - a world map. I liked to take myself exploring beyond the walls of different homes, which always had new smells to get used to and people who didn't understand my quiet, antisocial demeanor. I wanted to see so much more than the same cycles over and over. I wanted to visit a place where pollution and city lights didn't mask the stars. I wanted to go somewhere where it never snowed. I wanted to witness oceans, deserts, and meadows.
I was halfway through my eleventh year of life when things started getting seriously fucked up. For ten years, I'd managed to lay low and had dealt with my foster parents as best I could. I knew they couldn't understand me. I knew they didn't know enough about me and all the other families I'd been through before. I was never anywhere for very long and the lot of it frustrated me. It fucking pissed me off all the time that these people couldn't get it. I wanted - needed - someone to understand. Soon, the loneliness I felt when I realized that they couldn't turned into a bitter rage. Abandoning my trust for these people, who were constantly filtering in and out of my life, I continued to close myself off. For a time, I even stopped talking altogether.
When I reached twelve, I started getting into fights. I would fight anyone who tripped the wrong wire. Foster siblings, classmates, social workers - anyone. I saw everyone as a threat and I took quick action to protect myself. In no time at all, it became impossible for me to stick with one family for more than a couple of weeks. I was the ultimate problem child and counselors and therapy were shitty wastes of time that left me making no improvements. The more families I ended up with, the more schools I switched, the worse I got. I was boiling over with rage and nobody knew what they could do to help me or if I'd be okay by myself once I hit eighteen and was no longer a part of the system I'd grown up in. Hell, I didn't even know if I'd make it to eighteen.
By the time I was fifteen, I had come to accept that I was alone and I was never going to be adopted. This was relatively easy information to consume. I had already been stabbed once in a fight. It was a shallow wound for the most part; done with a box cutter. And, for once, it wasn't my fault. Some of the students in the new school I'd transferred to didn't take to me too well. They were "creeped out" by the new kid and how little he was. They were threatened by his quietness and bored, narrowed eyes. Keeping my head down didn't appear to be working for me anymore.
For a time, I tried my damnedest to keep my anger under control. I didn't want to switch schools for a third time that year, but I wasn't going to laze around and let a bunch of jerks throw me in a trashcan. So I fought back. I got stabbed. And all that happened to them were two days of suspension and a week of lunch detentions. Because why would these children, with their perfect mommies and perfect daddies and perfect homes, ever need to stab some weird orphan who doesn't talk and eats lunch by himself? I spent a week in the hospital over a stab wound and got expelled for supposedly instigating the fight. I was never even offered a chance to explain or defend myself.
From there, I knew without a shred of doubt that this world was a disgusting place and I worked to find a single redeeming quality about it. If I had to fight my way there, so be it. If I had to die for no more than a simple taste of a better life, it would be worth it. I just had to know that there was something else out there. I had to know there was more to this world than spite and violence and that even without love, there could still be happiness.
But that was before I had any idea of who I really was and who I would come to be. That was before I ever considered that anyone would find me.
December 25, 2007, by some miracle, I made it to eighteen.
With even more fights under my belt and a title as a lost cause, I was released into the cold world without a single cheer. No well-wishing, no pep talk, no boost of confidence. Not that I wanted any of it. I was ready to not rely on anybody for anything. Unhindered.
Finally, I was on my own; homeless and jobless in the heart of Boston, Massachusetts.
I began my search for work immediately, temporarily crashing in shelters for the night when the snow and the cold became too much for my body to handle. It was difficult. Most people weren't keen on hiring an eighteen-year-old high school student, fresh out of foster care without a plan.
I get that it wasn't my smartest move, but I was desperate to get out of that shit hole as soon as possible. Plus, I knew I wasn't going to college unless some random stranger wanted to drop a fat wad of cash in my lap to cover my tuition. So I knew I needed to at least try to finish high school. All issues aside, I was an honors student with straight As and I was so fucking proud of that. The trouble I got myself into never stood in the way of good grades. Had I not had such a bad record of violence and detentions, I probably could have gotten some decent scholarships. Unfortunately, nobody was looking to hand anything over to a shitty brat like me and I accepted my situation for what it was. I wasn't too worried, though. I knew a lot of people made it through life having never stepped onto a college campus and I was already making plans to sneak into busy lectures to improve my world knowledge if I could. I'd heard someone talking about it in the shelter once and, from there, decided I could do it too.
When school started back up again, I still hadn't found any solid work, but I was able to pick up odd jobs here and there for cash. I spent most of it on food, cigarettes, and thrift store clothes and when the shelter was full, I would sneak into my school's library for the night. At one point, I even made nice with a janitor and he would turn on the showers in the men's locker room so that I could cleanse myself of the day's filth. I'd offer him a cigarette as payment and thanks and we would smoke silently together when there was nobody around to expel me or fire him.
To say the least, it was rough. My last several months of school were a nightmare as rumors circulated about my circumstances. I didn't have any friends and I was trying to graduate without further incident, so I had nobody to defend my case, not even myself. On top of that, I had to become a master of self-control to avoid decking someone in the face or slamming their head into a locker. Their gossip was more or less the truth and so there was no denying it. I obviously didn't have much, given that I wore the same clothes way too often and had been spotted by classmates numerous times while wandering the streets or reading in laundromats.
I tried my very hardest to ignore their whispers and, as time went on, I was able to tune them out as if they were nothing more than mere radio static.
And then, one day, after months of searching, my luck finally improved. My life was changing and things were looking up for once. The spring brought with it a fresh start; however, I had no idea how drastically my life was going to change. I had no way of knowing that all of my goals and expectations would be so easily shattered or that I would enjoy every damn second of it, including the shittiest parts.
So there you have it. My tragic back story. A past I grew from, but have not forgotten. A mere glimpse at who I was before I discovered myself.