The rise and fall of a boy called Rave part 14

Living with it

I didn’t sleep that night, just sat there staring at the wall. Faye was so happy to see me when she woke up, you would think I had been away for a month not a week, I should have been happy but I wasn’t. I wasn’t anything, I was numb. I tried my best to play along with the emotions for her sake but she could tell something was wrong with me. She didn’t push it, she knew what she wanted to know about the work I did for the gang and just didn’t ask about the rest. I didn’t eat breakfast, I had no appetite. My dad greeted me like I hadn’t been away.

I went to have a shower to try and get some of the dirt off that only I could see. I had never felt unclean like this before, when I closed my eyes I could feel the blood on my body. No one gives you the emotional skills to deal with self loathing, not that young, and all I could think about was lashing out at someone, at anyone. I got out of the shower and saw the bathroom mirror, I could look at myself, I couldn’t look at my own eyes, in the end I turned it around so I could carry on. The flat was too small, I couldn’t breathe in it, I had to get out.

I went running, I tour my way across the roofs with a furry, it had been a while signs I had been out by myself. I liked running with Tazz but he couldn’t keep up with me when I went all out. I ran until my arms hurt, until my legs were on fire, until I had nothing left, and I kept running. In the end I stopped because I missed a jump and feel. I lay on the ground, I couldn’t be bothered to sit up, and cursed the world.

I blamed that depression I felt then on what I had seen Lacy do, on what I had help him do, but that is not quit true. What I saw was the course but it wasn’t the reason for it, that night had been the first time I had seen who I was. It happens so slowly, bit by bit you give up pieces of yourself to the person the gang that wants you to be until the is nothing left of who you where, and you don’t notices it happening. The more you change the easier it become to change, I had done things that damned me and I had like them at the time, and the trick is not to stop. You never stop, you never give yourself time to look back and see all that you have lost until there isn’t enough left of you to care, you fold the self loathing into yourself to keep you moving. I had stopped, I had seen the monster I was and the bits of myself that where left could barely stand it.

The next few weeks where hard, I could look at myself in the mirror anymore without hate. I focused on the day to day tasks, Lacy hadn’t been seen since we came back, he didn’t leave his flat, every day at the end of business I sent a lad to take him his next day’s supply. I work the corner and kept the money that was his, if he came down I would give it to him I said but he didn’t. Faye didn’t understand it, she seemed to think I was just in a bad mood and any second I would snap out of it and be fine again.

The first week she tried to snap me out of it with sex, I was a teenage boy no matter how dark I was feeling I could get aroused by a girl who was trying, but it really didn’t help. It wasn’t making love, it wasn’t fucking, I am not even sure if it was sex, it was really just masturbation using someone else’s body. Cold and mechanical with no emotion in it, I trust into here in simple controlled strokes. She tried so hard but I felt nothing, I knew I loved her, I KNEW it, but I just couldn’t feel it anymore. She knew, she didn’t enjoy it but I was a teenage boy so I was going to cum.

She tried again the next night and if anything it was worse. We lay there after staring at the ceiling not talking, the room filling up with all the talking that we didn’t do. We slept in the same bed but we didn’t sleep together. She tried again the third night and I was determined to put in as much effort as possible, I was GOING to enjoy it. Even without my soul in it I knew her very well, I used all I knew to make sure she came this time but it felt forced and dirty. As I lay next to her that night I heard her cry. I wanted so badly to reach out to her, to tell her everything was going to be ok, to tell her I loved her but my body wouldn’t do it, we both lay there in separate pools of misery. She didn’t try to have sex with me after that, and I am thankful for it because I couldn’t have said how much control I would have had later, I was angry a lot of the time then.

I should have had friends to lean on but they where there. Tazz was in as much of a self destruct as I was, that night had affected us all, and when you are walking alone in the gutter it is hard to pull someone else out. But misery loves company and I found myself sending more and more time with Tazz not talking about all the things we needed to talk about, we drank heavily when we were together. I should have had a Boss to watch out for me but Lacy was not there, he was nothing more than an addict now. Cain knew what I was going through but he told me that I had to pull myself together, if I did I would become what he needed, if I didn’t he would miss me.

I drunk to make it go away, I drunk because it made me forget, I drunk because I could sleep without dreams, and I drunk because I drunk. That was the only time on the estate that I considered picking up a needle to make it all better but I didn’t, I had watch Lacy descent and couldn’t do that to myself. I considered suicide of a bit, I would stand at impossible jumps and think about trying them just to see if I would feel anything before I hit the ground.

I don’t remember my birthday, well that is a lie I remember the start of the night. There was a party at the YMCA thrown for me, I was important enough to the gang for that. I walk in the door, found Tazz and got pissed, really pissed, we passed around a bottle of Lamb’s navy rum between us while Faye and Amy looked on worried, I had developed a taste for rum in those weeks which I still have today. I really don’t remember most of the night but I was told later that I made a speech about the end of the world, I don’t remember getting home.

I do remember the hangover the next day, I was rough but it would wear off, I was still young. I forced myself out of bed, something that was getting harder and harder even without the constant hangovers I was getting use to. I turned the mirror around in the bathroom first thing now and went to work making myself look presentable for the day. I sat with Faye and ate breakfast even if I had no appetite, the small talk we made was almost as bad as the silence.