Bourbon became that best friend I was searching for. It became a gateway into what I was looking for. In a couple of weeks' time I was a whisper in the wind of a person that I used to be. I couldn't tell you very much about the man I was before. I had become a person who was very much lost. I didn't know my face in the mirror anymore. It could have been a few weeks or maybe I'm hitting a few months. Now just because I was letting lose my personality, doesn't mean I wasn't still going to class. They were becoming a blur, but I was still passing well. I am intellectually gifted, so it's not like I have to work too hard.

I found solace in music I had never given a thought to before. It started with something innocent like Blink-182, I ended up with A Day To Remember, and Pink Floyd in my mind. I'm eclectic and I like it. I delved into books about suicide, drugs, and sex. I found a home in sadness; it made it easier to swallow the bottles of liquor, and to rationalize cigarettes. Actually I think it was more than sadness. I think it was more like the ability to hate, and the ability to be hated. I don't think that until this point that I have actually been hated. I have lived a life being a guy that everyone liked. It seemed that I was going out of my way to change that. To be honest that is exactly what I was doing. I was changing who I was, and I didn't give a damn what anyone else thought.

This made me more attractive to the girls who had daddy issues, and to the girls who thought they could change the bad boy in me; the bad boy that was there that I finally let breathe the fresh air. He kept up with school, he didn't talk too much, he was more recluse. He was still friends with Gerald, but it seemed that he was still friends with me because he knew I was going through something, and that's what bros do. I was being a man that had never voluntarily slept around with anything that walked, that changes when you let Jack Daniel's make your decisions. Well I'd like to say that, but it isn't true. I make my own decisions, and Jack helps them along. Jim Beam and Jack help me swallow any guilt that might remain after kicking her out of my dorm immediately after the frivolities are over with. It started with a girl I met on that evening I left looking for someone that I didn't know. She was a regular Jane Doe college girl. She was sitting on a bench waiting for someone I didn't know. It was pretty late. I hopped around the side, and sat beside her saying charming things that I couldn't place where they came from in my system.

It worked. She went walking with me. She had long red hair, and wore black skinny jeans, and a white top. She was pretty, and maybe if I hadn't lost my mind I would have asked her out on a date. Sadly I was crazy, and she wasn't going to be able to fix me. They always say the first time is the hardest. Well sure if you still feel your conscious. I drowned it, so I was able to throw her out fairly easily. Even with her tears streaming down her face from confusion and anger. The fact that I can't remember her name, and never took down her number probably says a lot.

I started working out more frequently. I was in love with the adrenaline rush. It's hard to say that's a bad thing. It made picking up girls a lot easier. There were plenty of girls on a campus that large, and the fact that I was able to pretty much take my pick was lovely. They filled a hunger in me I didn't know I had. A hunger that the good boy in my covered up.

I did continue to see Helga even though we didn't talk very much. Pleasantries were our main conversation. I did feel that I needed to remain near her. I didn't pursue her as an object to satisfy my hunger. In all honesty I think it was because I had some kind of respect for her. In a way I am drawn to her. I feel a kindred spirit in her. She doesn't talk unnecessarily. She doesn't question where my life is going, and she does push me for information. She is comfortable with what's there, and that makes it easy, worth it, and desired.

We mostly spent our time in her dorm. She has an electric fireplace in her dorm, and we will sit there silently. She will draw, or write. I read or watch something on the TV she has set up in there. Her parent's really decked out her dorm, or she did it herself. Eventually I might ask her, but today is not that day. Today I was sitting watching the fake flames in the fire while holding a book I had intentions reading. We usually did our homework together, again silently. We had already finished, and she was drawing something I could see on a sketch pad with some willow charcoal. She was pleasant to watch when she was focused. Her hand would flow across the paper when she was writing. When she was drawing she took her time her hand seemingly as light as a feather. The look in her eyes was one I had never seen in anyone else I ever knew especially in myself.

She more focused than usual. She had forgoed the pleasantries today and went to nodding and a simple yep when I told her I was making coffee, and asked if she wanted a cup. She had long sense gave up on dressing for company when I came by. She had since started wearing sweat pants, and tanks in her room. They were all Victoria Secret pants, and she always had on colorful socks. Her hair was usually pulled into a low pony tail and threw over her shoulder, and she usually had on a very minimum amount of make-up. I like being around her because she was real. That was a hard trait to come by anymore. She didn't mind my drinking, and didn't complain about my smoking as long as I didn't make a mess, and opened the window. She might be a nice girl now, but she was still particular.

Between not giving a damn, and drinking myself to pieces, I needed company that didn't force to me to try to be someone else.

…..

I am a masochist I know it. I am madly in love with this guy, and I let him in here allowing himself to hurt himself. I don't know what went on, on the other end of that telephone, but I sure as hell would like to know. He's done a 180 in his personality. So I decided to help him the best way I can. From experience forcing someone to do what you think is best backfires. It is way easier to push back when someone doesn't want help.

When he started showing up at my dorm wanting to hang out I had to come up with a plan of action. It was obvious to me where he was off, but to someone else he just seemed like an ass hat. Sadly I know what it's like to be the ass hat. He's a work in progress, and I knew that t he just needed someone to be there for him in a way I didn't have. In a way I didn't have until I had trained professionals working on me. Not that I am 100% better, but I am at least well enough to know a basket case when I see one.

I can understand why. I can understand how it feels to feel like you have no one else in the world. Geraldo knows something is up, and he came by asking. I told him to be patient whatever happened would not fix quickly. He said Arnold was there for him in a time in his life where he had no one else, and that he would stick by, and wait it out. If I knew him better these days I would have given him a hug, Pheebs was like that for me. She was the only one who knew where I had been, and lied her ass off for me. She was honestly the best person I had ever known. I had never meant to fall apart just like he didn't. The hinges of our brains come undone when we think we can place an issue away, and our system defaults to another program.

He came over with his liquor and cigs, and made himself at home. He would stay for hours. He would do his assignments here, and eat here. Seems the only time he wasn't here was when he would go find his next aggression session. Girls on campus were in love with him. Happy when he came calling. They thought they could fix the bad boy in him. They didn't know that that isn't what needs fixing. Not really. He was beautiful, charming, and could make a girls knees weak just by looking at them. They opened their doors, and he then went in or took them back to his room where there was not a roommate. He's sleep in his room, and fuck in his room, but not much else.

He was running from something in there. What he was avoiding I wouldn't know. I never went there. I had no reason, he came to see me. If I went there I would be intruding on what he was pushing away. I was certain that I could help him, so I made a plan that wasn't really a plan more of an accommodation. I let him have his way most of the time, and let him breathe away from his demons. Eventually he would face them once he thought he could outrun them.

I was drawing most of the time, or I was writing. Today I was drawing. I always had my work pulled up so it couldn't be seen by prying eyes. I usually drew him, not that he would think anything about it in the state he is in. For my personal crazies, I like to keep it to myself, as I did when I was just a girl. I was drawing him as he was now; I was drawing over his eyes putting in the agony that only showed when he stared at the fake flames in my fire.

Oh the irony, the fake flames. Those flames that could symbolize so much, and nothing at all at the same time. He only looked this way when he was off in his mind, and when he did that I drew. I kept those copies near and dear to me because the meant he wasn't as far gone as he thought that he was. He was more human in those moments than in all the times I'd ever seen him. He does kind things still, he drinks my coffee, but he always makes my cup first. I pick up the food, but he takes it out, and lets me have mine first. I'll randomly find cash in my room, and I think it's a very no subtle way for reimbursement. It's not a lot, but it tells me that the nice boy is there.

He needs someone, and that's what I'm here for. I am not a person with a personality to give up. If it's a fight he's looking for he'll get one. He stayed for a while longer, then he got up and left nodding at me as he went. I'd go to class tomorrow hearing about the latest girl on his list. I'd manage to not find myself jealous because I did the same thing. I'd file it away in my big book of Arnold, and keep pushing on to find out how to help him next.