A Cure Of Mine by D.D. Dass (summer reads .txt) 📕

It wasn’t always like this. I wasn’t always like this. Two days ago I might have felt different. I might have reacted sooner. I might have been more. But two days ago has long passed.

Everything hurts. It hurts so deep, a razor dragged over my insides, darkness creeping through my mind, something wrong, dirty swallowing me whole. And I don’t really do anything about it. There is nothing I can do. Nothing, nothing, nothing, I think with a hollow smile, shakily unfolding my knees from my chest and stretching to snatch the empty journal from where it’s laid out in front of me.

The empty journal where I can speak to her, to Allison. Where she’ll listen. Where she will know.

Hands shaking uncontrollably, I begin to scribble messily, trying to control it, the opaque pain.

Allison,

You left me a letter. You left me a letter, and it’s driving me insane, flickering on and off again in my mind. Insanity, this is what it must feel like. Right? I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. How could you have done thing to yourself Ally? You were everything bright you know, like the light that lit up everyone’s darkness. And that light has suddenly died. It’s left this whole family in darkness. It’s different than when Mom or Rosa left. It’s worse. Does death follow me, Ally? I think so. Everywhere I go someone dies…Mom now you…Nathan won’t stop crying. It’s as if he doesn’t hear what I say. The sobs won’t stop! They ring and bounce along these cold, empty walls. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m fucking sorry. How could you do this to us –me? How could you just leave? You were fucking thirteen. Thirteen… The pain has wrapped itself around my lungs. But don’t worry. I’m…coping. Blades help, cigarettes ease, drugs…drugs fucking free. The pain at my wrists takes away the pain of your long gone presence…but only for so long. It’s become a pattern for me, I’m sure. I’ll wake up every day and wait for you to call me, when you don’t, I’ll drag the blades over my skin until that’s all I feel. I will go on with my day, sniff myself into a haze, and cut over again, back to the smoking and by then, the day is over. It’s over, but you stay with me. I still see you at times, probably because I’m going fucking nuts. Dad doesn’t notice –or he doesn’t care, but it’s fine because school keeps me busy. This disgusting Private school…The works distracts me. Everything else…well, I don’t know.

But at the end of the day, you’re the only thing that’ll make me better.

I hope you’re happy, wherever you are now. I miss you. Come back soon?

Your brother,

Isaac.

It begins there. It ends there. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. And for now…That’s okay. 

A Year Later: 

The tardy bell rings loudly as I plow through the student body, my skin tight around my body, smothering me with the force of their stares. As if I’ve gone crazy and maybe, probably, it isn’t such a wrong assumption.

Ally. With faltering steps, I feel myself reel in the opposite direction of my Maths class, and enter the boy’s bathroom. I don’t linger, instead I jerk into a stall, locking the door with shaky hands before sinking to the cool, linoleum floors. Blindly, I dig through the piles of course work until I find what I’m looking for. In a small case, the metal blades, my saviors, gleam viciously, in a small kit beside them: gauze wrap and tape. There isn’t a packet of white, grainy crystals, but I’ve never bothered with drugs during school, because even though my future is probably obscure and lost, I’m going to at least try to make something of my pathetic being…

 I don’t think about anything, not my father, who will be waiting for the chance to pounce me for being tardy to class again, not the tightly bound void in my chest or the emptiness in my life…All I can do is feel.

A sigh of relief falls passed my lips as I drag the blade harshly across the pale of my wrist, not being careful of how deep, just letting the hurt wash over me. Giddiness settles around the pain, and my head spins, but I know I have to get back to class, so I wrestle the gauze open and lay it over the gash, taping it in place. My stomach sinks as I tuck it cautiously into my messenger-bag and stand. Head still spinning, I hurry to my AP Calculus, smoothing my features into a carefully blank expression before I open the door.

Math isn’t my strongest point, but I like it this way because I have to actually focus on what the teacher, Mr. Lerwick says. That’s…good for me. So good. As I enter the class, I’m greeted by the bored stares of the other, rich snobs, and a smugly expectant Mr. Lerwick.

“Mr. Hastings, tardy again I see.” At the patronizing tone, I inwardly cringe, but outside I stifle my sigh and grip the tardy-pass in my pocket. It’s the tenth, and last, of Ash’s supply, which makes my heart sink a bit. My hands shake uncontrollably as I hand it over to Lerwick, who glances at it before shredding it into little bits and tossing it into the bin. My heart possibly hits rock bottom.

“Well, take your seat then.” Obediently, I sit at my constricting, wooden desk, just beside a blonde, Annabel I think her name is, from the Cheer team. She eyes me with glinting blue eye, and it prods at my brain, like a parasite, eating away at my numbness and leaving me cold and open.

My wrist gives a throbbing reminder when I pressure it on the desk, the pain sinking back into place. Annabel eyes me more but I try to ignore it, slowly taking my textbook out and finding the right page. A piece of paper lands in my line of vision, directly on the section I was about to read and I tense, trying not to react as I unfold the paper.

‘We kno wat u do in tha bthroom, faggot.’ I squeeze my eyes shut so that lights burst from beneath, effacing the words for the second. Snarky retorts flicker through my mind, but I can’t bring myself to let the note go or even open my eyes, so I don’t. For whatever time, I fight off the pesky emotions, and soon enough, it’s – I’m not about to break anymore. I’m about to roll the useless paper into a ball when a hand snatches it away and Lerwick comes into my line of vision.

“Mr. Hastings, mind if I share this with the class?” My throat tightens and I shake my head mutedly, though Lerwick doesn’t pay any mind, but instead clears his throat and recites the note. The class roars in laughter and – “Do you get off on this?” I ask quietly before I can stop myself.

Lerwick registers my words and turns impressive shades of red. “Remove yourself from my classroom!” 

“With pleasure,” I reply bitterly, jacking my messenger bag over my shoulder and shooting through the doors. I don’t think about my father then. I don’t think about the endless disappointment and anger that I’ll be faced with at home. Especially for that stunt. It’s familiar to me, the snarky Private school teenagers having their fun…its okay, being loathed, especially when the feeling is mutual. Need blazes through my insides, chewing at my skin, urging me to speed my pace out into the parking lot. I stumble into the brand new Lexus, light-headed even as I drive to an outside of town gas station, where nobody will recognize the pathetic wreak in the unnecessarily expensive car. There, I unbuckle, scrapping my nails over the glove compartment until it falls open and I struggle through paperwork until my hand lands on the small baggy hidden far back.

My throat tightens with anticipation as I crinkle the plastic, everything sane and logical fading like my vision around the edges. The movements, embedded into my memory, are easy and practiced as I line a narrow white strip, already powdered down for the worst of days. I shut my eyes as I lean down and inhale deeply through my nose, the breath leaving me in a puff as frenzied bliss begins. Every snort is a safe-haven, working to loosen the black, sharp claws of my demons.

There, hidden by the confines of tinted-windows, the tiny crystals enter my bloodstream, white covering the black. Inhale, inhale, inhale. It continues like that until there was nothing left but dilated eyes and endless spaces of nothingness. For what feels like a long time, I sit there, staring at the vast, stretching worthlessness. The strings of my mind are cut, not to be mended by the inky hurt for what I hope is the entire night.

Something loud snaps me out of my blissful reverie and with flickering blinks, I look up to find traffic building, car-horns of obnoxious…what is it called again? Road-rage…With another blink, I unbuckle the now contracting seatbelt and manage to push myself from the car, movements languid and jerky, but still smooth. I smile bigger at that, wondering, as I open the gas stations heavy door, if it’s possible to be smooth and jerky. I never decide, instead I tell the older cashier what brand of cigarettes I want, unable to stop the impossibly sad smile on my lips.

“Bit young to take up bad habits, kid? Stuff kills you,” she tells, batting her eyelashes weirdly. I don’t bother telling her I’m already eighteen, but instead pull out my I.D, sliding it forward with a wider smile.

“Bit old to be flirting with me, yeah? Your advice is unwanted, thanks.” She looks shocked as she pulls back, falling into a rack of card of something I can’t really recognize. I frown a bit, still unsatisfied. Wordlessly, she pushes the packet under the glass and I snatch it quickly, diverting my gaze as I leave behind a twenty. She doesn’t try and stop me, but I don’t care, all I want is the poisonous chemicals everywhere, something less than what’s floating in me now, something easier. 

I trek down an unfamiliar alleyway without thinking. You never think, idiot my conscious hisses, but I shrug, lighting the stick between my fingers and inhaling again.

“Hey, faggot!” On instinct, my eyes flit towards the sound to see three brawny men approaching. Something still works correctly in my haze because I turn and run, but I’ve never been an athlete and probably should know better. The first hit lands between my shoulders and I stumble under the force, crumpling like a rag-doll. Kicks, punches, whatever else fall heavily over my body, making my head swim, one particularly brutal kick to the face has my nose bleeding, or at least I think it’s the kick and not the coke.

The pain works as a piling wave of release for