Hey there guys... I hope you all have recovered from last week? Thanks for all of the good discussion around it, no matter what your opinions were. If you're not on tumblr, we wrote a big long posty-thing on there that helps to explain a lot of what was going on. If you haven't read it, please please do. I think it will help. You may have to scroll down a bit to find it. Our blog name is heavy-80. And now, moving along...
Part III, Chapter 7: And If I Lie
Somehow the tears won't stop. I think I might actually be losing my mind, for real, but I can't be here, in Tegan's bed, half-naked and bloody when she gets back, I can't. So I get up and go to the shower. I turn on the water, hot, and start cleaning up the surprising mess and there's a sharp sting and I watch bloody water swirl down the drain and I hate myself, holy fuck. I'm beyond exhausted, and I lean my head against the hard plastic wall and I really can't stop. The valve has broken, maybe, and now I will just always cry? Uncontrollably? They will lock me up in a hospital. Drug me until I drool? Why not? It's better than this.
I am crying still when I hear knocking, then pounding, then Tegan's voice. Who's in there? Sara? Is that you? The edge of fear in her voice tells me that she's seen the bloody sheets and what will she think? I can't call out to answer her over the spasms in my chest; I sink down to the floor and draw my knees up. Just leave me in here, just leave me. But she's coming in now.
"Sara, what the - oh my God, what-" I look up at her, quickly, at the fear in her face, her eyes wide. She thinks something has happened to me, something bad. She's ready to be angry. No, God, just go away! Go away. . .
But she's opening the clear plastic door now, she's frantic, she's coming in, and now what?
"Sara! What happened? Are you. . . what. . .?" She can't even say it; she's shutting off the water and then she's kneeling in front of me, and she takes my face between both of her hands and turns my eyes to her and I look at her, her scared eyes. "What happened? The bed. . . . you're. . . why are you crying? What happened?" I look down, and I can still see ribbons of blood swirling down the drain. I can feel the panic rising up in her. I think I'll be sick but I can't let her think what she's thinking. It's better for her to know the truth than to think that. But, God, she can't be in the shower with me! Why doesn't she understand? I need to get away from her, from this situation, if I can stop sobbing like a fucking insane person but I can't, and that scares her more. "Sara! Tell me!" I shake my head. "What happened? Are you. . . tell me! You have to tell me!"
"It's nothing," I manage to get out. "Nothing happened. . ." Her eyebrows draw together. "It's not. . . I just . . . I just came in to sleep and I . . . got my period and. . . Tegan, you have to get out of here!" I cry, panicking again. She's having none of it.
"Why are you crying in the shower if it's nothing?! It doesn't look like nothing!"
"You can't be here! We can't be like this! Tegan! This is why, this is. . . it's why everything is fucked now! You have to get out!" God, I hear my voice and I'm practically wailing now. I'm getting cold, I'm wet and naked, and I need her to leave me alone. She tries to put her arms around me and I push against her, roughly, too roughly. Her face, shocked.
"Sara, you're not okay!" she says and she doesn't look much better.
"Get out! Leave! Fuck, Tegan! Go!" Why won't she go? Someone will find us like this, and things are bad enough. She backs up, stands, looking down at me, glossy eyes. She's angry, yeah, but more hurt. She just looks at me for a long moment and then grabs a towel and drops it around my shoulders.
"You'll get sick," she says, and leaves the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
. . . . . . . . . .
The bus is so quiet now. There's the driver up front and then me, alone, in this huge bed in the back. It seems so pointless but there are no beds left on the other bus. It's late, so late. I can't sleep, can't relax. I try one position, and another. I lie on my back and stare up at the shifting patterns of light and dark in the skylight above the bed, and my eyes won't close. I try lying curled on my side, with the pineapple pillow supporting my shoulder, but the pineapple pillow digs into my heart. I keep holding it, though. I need something to hold. I wish Sara were here to hold me, or Jamie. . .
We're on the highway and it's night. Jamie's gone. I told her I didn't want to see her again and she left and it doesn't matter how sorry I am because it's done and she's gone. There's no way I'll ever meet anyone else who just accepts me that way, no matter what, and loves me like there's nothing wrong with me. I fucked it all up and that digs into my heart too. Sara's on the other bus with the boys because she didn't want to be alone with me, and the sting of that makes me feel sick because there is something wrong with me. I almost lost my mind when I saw the blood and then saw her crying in the shower. What had happened to her? Had someone hurt my sister and if so, would I soon be going to jail for murder because I swear, I swear. . . I tried to talk to her, tried to help. When she looked at me, her eyes flashed. Fear and anger. How can I stop myself from reaching out for her? And how can she recoil from me like that? She pushed against me, pushed me away.
I play it over and over again in my mind. Sara, you're not okay. . . she jerked away from me as I reached for her, her eyes panicked. Get out! Leave! Fuck, Tegan! She pushed me away.
So I'm in this huge bed and I need to sleep because we have another show tomorrow but I can't. Now that I'm off the stage, and the adrenaline and the pressure to perform and get through it and survive it have all passed, this huge weight is on me again and it's crushing me and I can't move. What is happening to Sara? Is she sleeping? Is she lying awake in a bunk on that bus when she should be with me? Just last night she was with me, in this bed. My hands on her body, then her legs over my shoulders as I pressed my tongue into her, and after, she kissed me for so long, I swooned. Her fingers on my skin in the silver light at the back of the bus. I smelled her hair, tasted her lips and was able to forget how fucked it all was because we were made like that and it was just us, just who we were and it wasn't our fault, it wasn't. And now she's gone and I see her eyes when she pulls away from me. I see her, in the shower, her hands pressed against her face. Get out! Get the fuck out! she says. . . And then I see Jamie's face for a moment, shocked, her eyes shining, and just when I think that my guts can't take any more, I can see my mother's face, in my imagination, when she finds the video.
I don't want the driver to hear me. I cover my face with a pillow and wish someone were there to hold it down.
. . . . . . .
Jamie didn't really believe the video was gone for good; she could only hope that fear of being sued would be enough. It amazed her that she had managed to get through the conversation without diving across the counter and throttling the girl in the shop.
She'd held it together until stepping into that alley, but once the seal was broken, that was it. She was in tears at the check-in counter; she was in tears through the security check. She had a headache by the time she was seated on the plane, and she sat with her hood up and her head against the window and wept until, emotionally exhausted, she fell into an uneasy sleep.
Some time later, she was roused by a gentle touch on her arm; she turned to see a young man in the seat next to her. She hadn't even noticed him sit down. The flight attendant was in the aisle with the food cart.
"Chicken or beef?" she asked briskly. Jamie was feeling faintly nauseated by then, so she shook her head.
"It's a long flight," the man next to her said. Jamie sighed.
"Chicken," she said hoarsely, and the flight attendant placed the plastic tray in front of her.
"Rubber chicken. My favourite," the man said, and Jamie's stomach twisted at the recollection of Sara's words in Tegan's kitchen. It seemed like years ago.
"Yeah," Jamie said wearily. She wasn't sure she could manage a conversation, even if it was with a pleasant guy with a charming accent.
"You alright? You were. . . I mean, it's none of my business. . ." he said, somewhat shyly, as he peeled the foil cover off of his tiny, soggy dinner. Jamie stared at her tray, its plastic-wrapped utensils, sleeves of sugar, bread shaped like a football. She peeled back the cover on her tiny cup of orange juice. Her heart literally ached, and she wondered how it was possible that people didn't die from what she felt at that moment. Or maybe they did. Maybe that could happen soon.
"Uh. . . not really. . ." she murmured, unable to say more. The young man pulled open the plastic wrapper and removed his knife and fork.
"Want to talk about it?" he asked gently. She drank some juice, swallowed the swelling in her throat.
"I don't think I can," she said. "I'll just like. . ." But it was too late; quite suddenly, another wave of tears overcame her. She covered her mouth with her hand, struggling to suppress it, surprised as the young man rubbed shoulder for a moment.
"Aww well. . . a broken heart, then?" Jamie took a few deep breaths, swiped the tears away with her sleeve and, after a moment, nodded. What else could she call it? "Leaving a boyfriend behind in London?" he asked, his voice soothing, light. She was too tired say anything. She shook her head, leaned back in her seat, ignoring her spongy chicken fillet and cubed vegetables. "Well. . . going hungry won't make it better." Jamie sniffed, sighed, and in her mind she heard Sara's voice. Tegan, don't you ever buy food? She half-heartedly prodded at her chicken and picked at the plasticky vegetables. She made a few attempts to eat the lifeless entree and gave up, moving on to the cup of yogurt. It was not pineapple flavour, but as soon as it passed her lips, the memories of Vancouver, Tegan sitting on the bed, grinning as Jamie talked to her sister. . . the taste of Tegan's mouth. . . everything after. . . it all struck her, and her neighbour looked on with a saddened expression as Jamie doubled over her tray and quietly started to cry again.
I'm bleeding. Internally. My organs have shredded and now I'm filling up with blood and at some point it will rupture. It all needs to escape, it all needs to leak out somehow, this building, building aching pressure that's suffocating me. Maybe it's already leaking out through my eyes as I just cry and cry and can't even stop when I'm sure that I'm past the point where everything should have stopped. It hurts, everything hurts, being here hurts and I just don't want to be anywhere. I want to be gone. I wish I were dead. I don't know how I can even stand this long enough for the plane to land. And when it does, then what? I feel half terrified that the pain will swallow me, and I will panic and lose my mind as we are trapped somewhere thousands of feet over the Atlantic. What could anyone possibly do? Sedate me? I'd had Xanax prescribed to me once before, and now I wish to God that I could swallow half a bottle and disappear into a barely conscious haze but instead, my entire body trembles as the tears drip into my hair and I breathe shallow, panicked breaths and my hands clench at the sleeves of my hoody just to have something to hold. Calm down, just calm down. . . I'm thinking of all the things that people do to numb this kind of pain, and they are things I've shunned and rejected my entire life, things that have always filled me with contempt, but maybe I don't care anymore. Maybe I should just drink myself blind. Black out, pass out, forget? Is that how it worked? Maybe for the first time I can actually understand why people would want to stick needles in their veins and drug themselves away to sweet oblivion.
Where am I going? What will I do? What the fuck is left of my life? I abandoned school and my family and all of my friends to follow Tegan around the fucking world and now there's nothing left and my family already thinks I have completely gone off the rails. And now I have. I have.
My mind tortures me. Every five minutes shows me vivid pictures of Tegan the last time I saw her. Tegan's eyes, normally so warm, so sweet, always sweet to me, were then flashing with anger, with pain and resentment. Accusation. You betrayed me, she cried through the bathroom door, and I felt rows of needle-sharp teeth pierce my heart because that was incomprehensible, a complete impossibility. I can make mistakes, yes. I can omit things. I can fuck up. But betrayal? I would give my organs to Tegan if she needed them; I would stand by and guard the door for her while she lay naked with her sister, if that's what she needed me to do; I would and did push down my own gut-wrenching love for her because I thought that's what she needed. Betraying Tegan is not even something I'm capable of doing. Even if I wanted to. And I've never wanted to.
So by now they must be in Hamburg. Did they go onstage as scheduled, last night? I don't know how that would have been possible. Sara had run off and Tegan had locked herself in the bathroom and before I left I heard her make a sound that made me think of an animal dying. Something was dying. She couldn't have gone onstage. Thinking of the pain that she must be in right now makes me ache to go back to her and to comfort her and hold her like I did that first night in Vancouver but I can't force myself back into her life just because I know she needs someone. I never want to see you again. . .
But that was the point, wasn't it? She needed someone and I was there. I guess part of me knew the whole time that she needed someone, and that it didn't matter that it was me, that I wasn't especially what she needed or wanted. I could have been one of thousands of other girls who happily would have done it and the outcome would have been the same. Wouldn't it? She needed someone to hold her. She needed someone to fuck her and make her feel human again. How could I be so stupid to think that she actually loved me? Who am I? I'm no one. I was no one to her for years and I'll be no one to her again, just like that. I can't believe I let myself think that who I was actually mattered to her.
But she needed someone to know her, to know who she was, and love her anyway. And that was me, right? I did that. I'm still doing that. That was me, and not just anyone. That has to mean something. My destroyed heart needs to know that that meant something.
But now it doesn't even matter if it did. It's all fucking gone. It's over, it's all wasted, and there's nothing left. Love someone from the front row, for years. Then, incredibly, unbelievably, have a chance to love her up close. Then lose it, because she belongs to someone else, but at least you still get to be close. You have a warm, loving friendship, an understanding. So you learn to stand it because of that friendship. But then losing that friendship. . . losing it in a way that's just not true. Did I make bad choices? Lies of omission? Yes. But betrayal?
I'm crying again. The guy next to me, a nice guy, looks at me and I can see that he really would talk to me if I'd let him. But why? What does he want? People want things they can't have. They don't want the things that are right there in front of them. It's a waste, all the things I wanted, the things Tegan wanted, everything. What happened to them? Wasted love. What could be more tragic than that? All the things that are neglected, lost, abandoned, thwarted, destroyed, broken, wasted. . . when you compare all of those things to this, this fucking soul-crushing ache I feel in my guts when I look at her, well. . . all of those things just diminish like. . . fuck. Minutia. Talking to my mother on the phone about all the school I was missing, a few months ago. . . it made me insane because how could school fucking matter to me when. . . God, I can't.
So I will go back to my parents' house and wait for the new semester. I'll go back to school, eventually graduate, I guess. In the meantime, maybe I'll meet someone and try to love them when I really know that I never really will because there is none left, no space for anyone else. Eventually that person will realize that they can only have the leftover pieces of me. Which is all I could ever have of Tegan.
I feel like this pain is just going to smother me when I feel a tap at my shoulder. It's my neighbour again and he's handing me a little bottle. What is it? Red wine. He gives me a warm smile. I open the bottle, wondering if I'll ever care about anything ever again.