He knows heartbreak, knows it like the back of his own hands, but it never gets any easier the more that he feels it. It's never been an easy time with his family, so no one is surprised when he gets out as soon as he can without looking back. Sure, he appreciates them for being there in their own shitty way, but he doesn't feel like they're family, or at least they don't fit how he thought a family was supposed to be. School was a hard time, dressed in a bunch of worn out and ripped clothes from the charity shop, constantly feeling like he doesn't have a place in the world among these people. Their lives are regular, full of problems like what to wear on dates and who was hooking up with who, not whether or not they were going to have food to eat that day or if they were going to have to give up their bed because their mother was passed out drunk again.
He searches for a long time for the kind of family where hell belong, where he won't have to worry about any of that stuff, and he finds it in a small town and a bunch of men who shouldn't fit together but do somehow. Somewhere along the way, probably between learning how to ride and making his way through the country sleeping wherever he can manage, he learns how to use a computer to make his life a little easier, a way to get a little extra money because people are stupid and they're always going to need help with their own computers. He uses that as his in, stating with more confidence than he feels that if they want to move up from the small-fish stuff they're going to need him, and against all odds it works. Until it doesn't. It all seems unimportant, in the end, but the fact is that he tried. This is the first thing he can remember in a long time that's been good for him, the first time in probably forever that he feels like he has his own place in the world, and he tries to keep it but it slips between his fingers like sand in an hourglass no matter how hard he tries to fix the mistakes he's made. He remembers moments when his mother was lucid, alert enough to know that he was there and the way that she would laugh low in her throat and tell him that he wasn't going to be anything special, that in the end he was going to be alone. He tries hard, so hard, to prove her wrong even though she's not around anymore to see that he's worth something, that he's not nothing, but it seems as if the more he tries to change it the more he just messes it all up.
The scars around his neck, faint unless you knew what you were looking for, seemed to pull him down like weights sewn underneath his skin, and he thinks about doing it as he pulls the razor down from his face and presses it into the thin skin of his wrist but he's never been good with the sight of blood, and ends up dropping it into the sink with a sob that catches in his throat and tears that burn at his eyes. He should've ran, should've tried to prolong it as long as he could, but if he leaves he'll be alone and a life looking constantly over your shoulder isn't living. When everything is said and done, when his mistakes come into light and the family that he's always wanted has chosen his death, all he hears is the rasp of his mother's voice in his ears, telling him that she was right.
The pie tastes like ashes in his mouth as he chews and looks into the eyes of the man sitting across from him, sticking to his tongue with a thick smoky taste and almost choking him as he swallows, and his mind is quiet as he stands up slowly. It doesn't really hurt, when the sharp edge of the scalpel slides into his skin and tears through muscle. He registers it mostly as pressure, at least until the blood begins to spill down over his skin and it feels like someone has gotten their hands around his lungs and squeezed. He has a lot of regrets in life, so many days spent wishing that he was someone else, hours spent with the metal of a gun pressed into his chin as his hands shake, but none of it matters in the end. The only thing that matters is that it's going to be over, and he thinks that he doesn't particularly mind that it's going to be like this. He was never going to have a normal life anyway, there was never any chance of him settling down and having a family of his own, he wasn't the white picket fence and three kids type. He had never been in love, so he wasn't going to leave anyone behind who needed him. There was no one waiting for him, no one who would care that he would be found upon a dirty floor with his clothes stained with blood. There would be no tears shed over him, no stories in the paper, no hands clasped to mouths as they heard the news. All the people he loved, everyone who he considered family, not one of them would give it more than a passing thought. He would simply be just another person to dispose of after their usefulness had run out.
He dies just as his mother said, alone and unimportant but it was okay, because at least for a little while, he had finally gotten to know what it felt like to have people care about him, and that was enough. He dies with blood flowing down the front of his shirt and his chest pressed to the floor, choking on the blood that filled his lungs and trickled from the corner of his mouth with every harsh exhale, but it didn't matter, because he didn't have to try anymore.