04-27-2015, 01:26 AM
He came back to the warehouse soaking wet.
There were leaves in his hair and his hiking boots, no matter how clean or waterproof they seemed to be, most assuredly squeaked and squelched right until he took them off along with his socks and left them at the door. Clothes were discarded along the way to his room. First his coat, then his shirt, then pants, and no boxer briefs so it could be presumed that either Elijah went commando that day or finally had the decency to protect his modesty long enough to put clothes back on in his room.
And he did, eventually, put clothes on.
He came back out in pajama pants and a tank top, feeling a dull ache in his muscles and a stiffness in his bones that only came from someone who knew good and well that they were going to have a headache and a need for chicken noodle soup the next day. Whatever the case, he had a grin on his face still- his constant companion. It was off to pick up his clothing- pants then shirt then coat and then socks and shoes and toweling off the trail of water he left getting in. It was like letting a wet puppy into the house and it just made a mess everywhere.
Clothes were dropped in the nearest thing that looked like a washer (except the coat, of course, his jacket wasn't machine washable and was beat up enough as it is. A little water won't kill it.)
So there he was, waiting for laundry to do as laundry does- wash itself and hope for the best. Elijah turned around, heading back to his room. Carefully, the young man retrieved a rather intricate box from underneath his bed. He sat it carefully on the nightstand. He took out a clipboard first from the drawer in his night stand. From the box he retrieved a piece of paper, no lines and a decent weight. Not cardstock, but not linen either. No, it felt solid. It felt real. Elijah chose his paper carefully but he was still trying to get the feeling of things. Trying to wrap his mind around language and this? This was a time where he needed language.
He retrieved a pen, something antique and expensive and something that Kalen had given him that Elijah had <i>just</i> managed to fathom the value of. Something that astounded him to say the least, a tool that he now wielded a little more comfortably. With little fanfare, the soggy young man started to write.
---
Kalen,
There are things I want to tell you. There are things that I need to tell you, but I don't have words for them, not when I need to say them. Not when I want to say them, I get tripped up and all I can think about is how desperately I don't want to be a disappointment or how badly I'm going to screw up or how scared I am of whatever has gone on in the past or what was yet to come.
I used to do this with Alicia, because there were things we needed to tell each other, but at the time neither of us had it in us to actually come out and say what those things were, but that information was important. Important enough to share. Important enough to make real. To put pen to paper and draw it into the world we live in because writing it gives it form and speaking it, defining it gives it meaning- whatever it happens to be.
I'm not here to tell you that I'm scared, but I want to tell you about some of the things that I'm scared of, things I have full intentions of facing down. There are things I want to tell you, but when the time comes I don't always have the right thing to say, so I'm writing you a letter. I figured that this would be easier; putting what I'm saying to paper makes it a commitment. It makes it real. It gives a part of myself that is tangible because it gives thoughts a form. I like writing letters, and I haven't done it since Alicia left.
She didn't take her journal back, and I feel wrong for having it. I don't read it anymore, and I thought about tearing out her pages because it didn't feel right to have important parts of her that I no longer had the right to see. This letter isn't about Alicia, but she colors it. She was important to me, and the person I am is colored by what I did to her.
Anyway, I wanted to tell you about me. Things I haven't told you about me. My dad says he wants to visit at some point, but I don't know where I'm going to send him. I still maintain an apartment with Jenn, mostly for her sake but also because I need a place to have one night stands and I don't feel comfortable bringing people to fuck over here. It feels a little like sacrilege, like I'm being disrespectful to the whole mentor/student dynamic by going out and bringing strangers here. This is probably where I could tell you of all my various romantic escapades, but that's something I'm saving for a different letter. I also feel weird telling my mentor about my sex life. I know we're both aware that I have one, but it seems odd to discuss my various lusts, feels dangerous now because there's secrets I know I need to keep.
I wanted to tell you about the last time I shot up. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed either. I know why I did it. I was at a party, it was after I drowned, after I died, after the world became too much and every wall growled threats that were guides that I didn't understand. I was hearing voices, threats- I wanted it to shut up. I'd been stealing my mom's credit card for months; she never noticed when a few dollars were missing from the account. Dad didn't know she had it, so she didn't ever say anything to him about when things went missing on it. She paid it off every month. It was one of those things she never seemed to notice.
I've done it two times. The first was almost too much, but I found out that you just have this moment when you're starting to feel like the world becomes a thin point and you have euphoria and then just nothing. It's what I took when I didn't want to feel anything. It sounds weird, because now I want to feel everything, experience everything- good, bad, whatever. I need the experience, enlightenment comes from understanding. Sometimes, the only way you can get something is to live it. The last time was at a party.
It's always at a party, I've found. It's always at a party and it fucking kills me because during those times nobody noticed anything. I could show up and nobody realized I wouldn't sit by a wall and nobody noticed that I was talking to things that weren't there. Maybe people did notice and just thought I was tweaking out. That wouldn't be too inaccurate either. Jenn and I took the whole me dying thing differently. She found God. I found other shit. Kind of a rift, but I remember her turning me down to go to this party, so I went with Megan.
Meg's my dealer, or she was for awhile. Hooked me up with a guy named Nines at a house party Megan invited me to. She said it was impolite to deal at someone else's turf, and Nines was the kind of guy that you didn't move in on. Megs wasn't stupid. Anyway, I got to this place and all I could hear was wailing, screaming, crying and loud thumping music and the whole place smelled like booze and something quietly rotting. Maybe that was just my imagination. The walls looked like they were decaying, falling apart. The room was crowded beyond crowded. In hindsight, I'm not sure if I was actually looking at the physical plane. It was hard to keep the two straight during that time. Sometimes, it just happened. Sometimes, it was easy to think I was crazy.
I was three weeks off from eighteen, so I meet Nines and I don't know how much he sold me but it was whatever two hundred would get me. The place was just awful, just intense and it felt like suffering and I wanted it all to stop. I remember the minute that I felt a needle in my arm; I'd always had good veins. the people at the blood institute always wanted me to donate, said I was a dream to work with. I don't know if I can actually donate blood anymore, but I figure I can. I'm rambling. There's this moment when your nerves feel like they're on fire and it feels like heaven. I wasn't doing anything but I remember feeling lightheaded, feeling my brain start to slow down and letting the world melt and everything felt like heaven right until it was too much. Right until I could feel myself slipping, could hear the world fading out, right until silence.
That was the worst part, that part when I knew the world went silent and the part when I knew everything that I dreamed about- that Nothing of a void could be creeping in and the world would fade into the kinds of waking dreams I was trying to forget.
And then the world came back. It came back hard and I threw up and I was panicking because I couldn't move my arms because apparently I had to be strapped down or something because they were afraid of fuck if I know. I might fall off the gurney? I might be violent? I remember my heart pounding. I remember feeling like shit, but not like death like everyone says you will when someone sticks you with naloxone because I have died before and this was nothing like it, even if I'd felt that before. Even if I got close, I know what it is supposed to feel like.
The doctor said I'd apparently taken close to 400 mg. Apparently, that's a lot. I had no idea, I just thought I should take all of it because it would make the world go quiet. I kept having to be reminded of how badly I didn't want silence. About how sound could captivate and give meaning. I don't know who called my mom, or how she worked her voodoo to get me out of the hospital. Dad was out of town doing something with the construction company.
She didn't look surprised that I was there, or why I was there. She just looked like she was inconvenienced, like this was just something that interrupted her weekend. We got in the car and everything hurt but I was alive, and I kind of liked the fact that I still hurt. Mom told me in no uncertain terms that we would not be telling my father about what happened. She didn't talk to me the whole way home. It's weird because I want her to be happy, but she doesn't ever seem anything other than bemused. Mom drove me to the ER three more times that year for various things. Those are other stories, though. Me being reckless and stupid and wanting to numb whatever the fuck was going on. Not owning up to reality and consequence.
I just wanted the world to be quiet. Sometimes, I still wish it would be quiet, but I realize that I can't stand being alone. I've always had ghosts or the spirits or whatever, even if they're in passing, there's always someone there. The idea of being truly alone scares the ever loving shit out of me. I won't keep going, but yeah. That's something about me that's important, something I wanted you to know.
Had fun tonight, played tag, got stuck in a tree, kissed someone because I felt it was the only acceptable response to said someone's presence. Sorry if there's water in the hallway, I'll clean it up but I might miss a spot. Tree climbing is exhausting.
Until later,
-Elijah
---
He waited for the letter to dry, for the ink to be at a place that it would not run risk of running. Then, carefully, Elijah folded it into three pieces and sealed it carefully. The letter was then addressed: To Kalen and slid under his office door.
After that, Elijah went to bed, face first into his mattress surrounded by paper and pens and stories.
There were leaves in his hair and his hiking boots, no matter how clean or waterproof they seemed to be, most assuredly squeaked and squelched right until he took them off along with his socks and left them at the door. Clothes were discarded along the way to his room. First his coat, then his shirt, then pants, and no boxer briefs so it could be presumed that either Elijah went commando that day or finally had the decency to protect his modesty long enough to put clothes back on in his room.
And he did, eventually, put clothes on.
He came back out in pajama pants and a tank top, feeling a dull ache in his muscles and a stiffness in his bones that only came from someone who knew good and well that they were going to have a headache and a need for chicken noodle soup the next day. Whatever the case, he had a grin on his face still- his constant companion. It was off to pick up his clothing- pants then shirt then coat and then socks and shoes and toweling off the trail of water he left getting in. It was like letting a wet puppy into the house and it just made a mess everywhere.
Clothes were dropped in the nearest thing that looked like a washer (except the coat, of course, his jacket wasn't machine washable and was beat up enough as it is. A little water won't kill it.)
So there he was, waiting for laundry to do as laundry does- wash itself and hope for the best. Elijah turned around, heading back to his room. Carefully, the young man retrieved a rather intricate box from underneath his bed. He sat it carefully on the nightstand. He took out a clipboard first from the drawer in his night stand. From the box he retrieved a piece of paper, no lines and a decent weight. Not cardstock, but not linen either. No, it felt solid. It felt real. Elijah chose his paper carefully but he was still trying to get the feeling of things. Trying to wrap his mind around language and this? This was a time where he needed language.
He retrieved a pen, something antique and expensive and something that Kalen had given him that Elijah had <i>just</i> managed to fathom the value of. Something that astounded him to say the least, a tool that he now wielded a little more comfortably. With little fanfare, the soggy young man started to write.
---
Kalen,
There are things I want to tell you. There are things that I need to tell you, but I don't have words for them, not when I need to say them. Not when I want to say them, I get tripped up and all I can think about is how desperately I don't want to be a disappointment or how badly I'm going to screw up or how scared I am of whatever has gone on in the past or what was yet to come.
I used to do this with Alicia, because there were things we needed to tell each other, but at the time neither of us had it in us to actually come out and say what those things were, but that information was important. Important enough to share. Important enough to make real. To put pen to paper and draw it into the world we live in because writing it gives it form and speaking it, defining it gives it meaning- whatever it happens to be.
I'm not here to tell you that I'm scared, but I want to tell you about some of the things that I'm scared of, things I have full intentions of facing down. There are things I want to tell you, but when the time comes I don't always have the right thing to say, so I'm writing you a letter. I figured that this would be easier; putting what I'm saying to paper makes it a commitment. It makes it real. It gives a part of myself that is tangible because it gives thoughts a form. I like writing letters, and I haven't done it since Alicia left.
She didn't take her journal back, and I feel wrong for having it. I don't read it anymore, and I thought about tearing out her pages because it didn't feel right to have important parts of her that I no longer had the right to see. This letter isn't about Alicia, but she colors it. She was important to me, and the person I am is colored by what I did to her.
Anyway, I wanted to tell you about me. Things I haven't told you about me. My dad says he wants to visit at some point, but I don't know where I'm going to send him. I still maintain an apartment with Jenn, mostly for her sake but also because I need a place to have one night stands and I don't feel comfortable bringing people to fuck over here. It feels a little like sacrilege, like I'm being disrespectful to the whole mentor/student dynamic by going out and bringing strangers here. This is probably where I could tell you of all my various romantic escapades, but that's something I'm saving for a different letter. I also feel weird telling my mentor about my sex life. I know we're both aware that I have one, but it seems odd to discuss my various lusts, feels dangerous now because there's secrets I know I need to keep.
I wanted to tell you about the last time I shot up. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed either. I know why I did it. I was at a party, it was after I drowned, after I died, after the world became too much and every wall growled threats that were guides that I didn't understand. I was hearing voices, threats- I wanted it to shut up. I'd been stealing my mom's credit card for months; she never noticed when a few dollars were missing from the account. Dad didn't know she had it, so she didn't ever say anything to him about when things went missing on it. She paid it off every month. It was one of those things she never seemed to notice.
I've done it two times. The first was almost too much, but I found out that you just have this moment when you're starting to feel like the world becomes a thin point and you have euphoria and then just nothing. It's what I took when I didn't want to feel anything. It sounds weird, because now I want to feel everything, experience everything- good, bad, whatever. I need the experience, enlightenment comes from understanding. Sometimes, the only way you can get something is to live it. The last time was at a party.
It's always at a party, I've found. It's always at a party and it fucking kills me because during those times nobody noticed anything. I could show up and nobody realized I wouldn't sit by a wall and nobody noticed that I was talking to things that weren't there. Maybe people did notice and just thought I was tweaking out. That wouldn't be too inaccurate either. Jenn and I took the whole me dying thing differently. She found God. I found other shit. Kind of a rift, but I remember her turning me down to go to this party, so I went with Megan.
Meg's my dealer, or she was for awhile. Hooked me up with a guy named Nines at a house party Megan invited me to. She said it was impolite to deal at someone else's turf, and Nines was the kind of guy that you didn't move in on. Megs wasn't stupid. Anyway, I got to this place and all I could hear was wailing, screaming, crying and loud thumping music and the whole place smelled like booze and something quietly rotting. Maybe that was just my imagination. The walls looked like they were decaying, falling apart. The room was crowded beyond crowded. In hindsight, I'm not sure if I was actually looking at the physical plane. It was hard to keep the two straight during that time. Sometimes, it just happened. Sometimes, it was easy to think I was crazy.
I was three weeks off from eighteen, so I meet Nines and I don't know how much he sold me but it was whatever two hundred would get me. The place was just awful, just intense and it felt like suffering and I wanted it all to stop. I remember the minute that I felt a needle in my arm; I'd always had good veins. the people at the blood institute always wanted me to donate, said I was a dream to work with. I don't know if I can actually donate blood anymore, but I figure I can. I'm rambling. There's this moment when your nerves feel like they're on fire and it feels like heaven. I wasn't doing anything but I remember feeling lightheaded, feeling my brain start to slow down and letting the world melt and everything felt like heaven right until it was too much. Right until I could feel myself slipping, could hear the world fading out, right until silence.
That was the worst part, that part when I knew the world went silent and the part when I knew everything that I dreamed about- that Nothing of a void could be creeping in and the world would fade into the kinds of waking dreams I was trying to forget.
And then the world came back. It came back hard and I threw up and I was panicking because I couldn't move my arms because apparently I had to be strapped down or something because they were afraid of fuck if I know. I might fall off the gurney? I might be violent? I remember my heart pounding. I remember feeling like shit, but not like death like everyone says you will when someone sticks you with naloxone because I have died before and this was nothing like it, even if I'd felt that before. Even if I got close, I know what it is supposed to feel like.
The doctor said I'd apparently taken close to 400 mg. Apparently, that's a lot. I had no idea, I just thought I should take all of it because it would make the world go quiet. I kept having to be reminded of how badly I didn't want silence. About how sound could captivate and give meaning. I don't know who called my mom, or how she worked her voodoo to get me out of the hospital. Dad was out of town doing something with the construction company.
She didn't look surprised that I was there, or why I was there. She just looked like she was inconvenienced, like this was just something that interrupted her weekend. We got in the car and everything hurt but I was alive, and I kind of liked the fact that I still hurt. Mom told me in no uncertain terms that we would not be telling my father about what happened. She didn't talk to me the whole way home. It's weird because I want her to be happy, but she doesn't ever seem anything other than bemused. Mom drove me to the ER three more times that year for various things. Those are other stories, though. Me being reckless and stupid and wanting to numb whatever the fuck was going on. Not owning up to reality and consequence.
I just wanted the world to be quiet. Sometimes, I still wish it would be quiet, but I realize that I can't stand being alone. I've always had ghosts or the spirits or whatever, even if they're in passing, there's always someone there. The idea of being truly alone scares the ever loving shit out of me. I won't keep going, but yeah. That's something about me that's important, something I wanted you to know.
Had fun tonight, played tag, got stuck in a tree, kissed someone because I felt it was the only acceptable response to said someone's presence. Sorry if there's water in the hallway, I'll clean it up but I might miss a spot. Tree climbing is exhausting.
Until later,
-Elijah
---
He waited for the letter to dry, for the ink to be at a place that it would not run risk of running. Then, carefully, Elijah folded it into three pieces and sealed it carefully. The letter was then addressed: To Kalen and slid under his office door.
After that, Elijah went to bed, face first into his mattress surrounded by paper and pens and stories.