Page 12 of Unbound
Music used to be my escape—hours of me, the sound of my guitar, and lyrics holding my attention. Yet somewhere along the way, it’s turned into another piece of my life I can’t control, as if the music that once brought me relief only causes me grief because it feels as though it’d become a dependence and in turn, holds me hostage. I’ve been playing the guitar since I was six and singing just as long. Most of the time I can reach a place where nothing else exists but that; only it’s harder now.
Beck’s voice breaks through my thoughts, the darkness of the night fading, seeping through me, shading my decisions with the weight of my actions I made. “Where to now?”
I tell myself leaving is for the best. She’ll be happier without me. They’ll all be happier without me.
“I need my guitar,” I mumble as he pulls out to make the drive to my house, blue dawn glowing throughout the car.
“Do they know you’re leaving?”
I shake my head. I haven’t told anyone I’m leaving today. It’s not like it matters anyway. It never will. While the setting sun destroyed the light, I did and said things I shouldn’t have yesterday. The shit I just pulled with Sophie, it can’t be taken back, and the reality is, it’s time I’ve moved on.
Opening the door to his car, I step out, the early minutes of the sun breaking over the dry land giving me just enough light to see the lock to get my key in the front door of my childhood home. Pulling the key out of the door and into my pocket, a lady bug lands on my hand and I flick it away. I hate bugs.
My mom isn’t up yet, but I see the pictures on the walls as I climb the steps with heavy legs, it feels like they’re watching me, judging me for all the fucked-up choices I’ve made in the last twenty-four hours. If Mom was awake, I know what she’d say. She’d tell me to grow up and start acting like a fucking man. And she’d be right. I’m nearly twenty-one. I should be acting like a man but I don’t. I act like a fucking jerk because it’s who I am, who I’ve essentially become.
My shoulders bow and my back bends as I make my way inside the house. There’s a photograph of my father on the wall and it catches my eye. I look like him, in some ways. A resemblance in appearances is the only thing that’s ever tied me to him. It’s been over a year since he passed away and while I miss him, I can’t forget the way I treated him the night he died.
“Rawley, stop blaming everyone else for your problems. If this garage isn’t what you want for your life… you know, that’s fine but you need to figure your shit out. If you decide you do want to work here, be here. That’s all I ask of you.”
What did I say?
“Yeah, well, I’m so fucking sorry I don’t have all my shit figured out at nineteen like Red, but stop trying to make me into him! Fuck off.”
That night, my dad died of a massive heart attack and I was never able to right the words I said in anger.
Memories from that night might be one of the reasonswhyI’m leaving. No, I know it is because ever since that night, I’ve been asking myself if there are some things you can’t come back from and yeah, I think there are. I think there’re places your mind can take you, dark places you’ll never find your way out of.
That’s where I’m at now. Lost, unbound… unable to make a distinct thought stick, so I move through a life I don’t understand, get lost in substances I shouldn’t and hold onto memories that haunt me.
Maybe that’s why I’m leaving. No, I know it is.
Rubbing my eyes, I sniff, my chest tender, raw like it’s been split open, tears sliding over chapped lips. Soft steps down the hall and to the left, I enter my room. There’s a towel from yesterday near the door as I step in and when I bend down to pick it up, I realize it’s still somewhat damp. Though I can’t quite remember, I think I pushed it up against the bottom of the door after my shower so Mom wouldn’t smell the weed I was smoking.
Against the wall near the window is my bed, its sheets and blankets on the floor and a condom wrapper on my nightstand.
Couldn’t tell you who I’d been with the night it was used, but it’s there, a reminder of the fact that most of the time I’m in here, I’m wasted.
It’s easier that way. These days my brain won’t stop. I don’t sleep anymore, a curse I’ve put upon myself, but even when I attempt to sleep, there’s only chaos. A constant chatter of thoughts I can never truly decipher into anything besides the knowledge I’m haunted by my own choices. Ones I’ve essentially created and ignore for what they are. Demons.
Glancing around the room, my eyes catch the Rolling Stones poster on the wall and then my trash can below it, filled with pictures I’ve destroyed, memories I’d give anything to forget. Pulling at my hair, I turn to sit on the edge of the bed and I try to make sense of what I’m doing, but I can’t. This is it. My decision is made. I’m leaving, and I don’t plan on coming back, but the only emotion I have is guilt for what I’ve done and how I treated Sophie.
You’ll never be enough for her. Hell, you’ll never be enough for any of them. Love isn’t enough. Nothing you do is ever enough. Leave and never look back.
Sophie and I met when we were ten, waiting at the bus stop one cold fall morning. She handed me a grape Jolly Rancher and gave me that sweet Sophie smile and from then on, she was all I knew. That all ended senior year when she went away with friends on spring break. She came home after that week, crying, devastated by her actions, but I’ll give her this much, she told me the truth. She slept with someone down there. She said it was a mistake; she was drunk and didn’t intentionally do it. Fuck that shit. She knew what she was doing from the moment she wrapped me around her finger that cold morning at the bus stop.
That night after she told me, I tried to fuck her best friend, Kate, with the mentality of “you fucked me over, I’ll do the same.” Only I couldn’t. I didn’t have it in me to hurt her like that at the time.
I didn’t break up with Sophie right away. She ripped my heart out that night and then I let it fester, the infection spreading until the fever took over and made me hallucinate. At first, I thought I could forgive her. Told her people make mistakes. But then the fog cleared and reality set in. It hit me a week later. The devastation was practically mind-numbing and I was pissed, livid… hurt, and I don’t even remember what I said to her now, but I know I purposely hurt her to keep from showing how much it killed me that she cheated on me. I destroyed her like she destroyed me.
After we broke up, I did sleep with Kate. In my mind it was justified. You fucked around on me so now I get to fuck around on you. I didn’t even try to hide it, and Sophie let me. By her not saying anything, telling me to stop, it was as good as her admitting she deserved it, so why wouldn’t I?
I picture her after I leave, living a life, making plans that don’t include me, the way it should be, but the thoughts of her with someone else, loving someone else, they dig mercilessly into my stomach. It’s like a weight drops in my gut and I choke out a cough. My chest throbs at the memories, distorted images of the life we once had. Of football and making out under bleachers. Of love and laughter. River kisses before the sun went down, crackling bon fires and her hand in mine, haunting thoughts of the girl she is now, who would have given anything to have me love her the right way, not the unsteady way.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell myself. “It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over.”
It doesn’t matter what I tell myself. My tortured heart still hangs on, still in love, still caught up inif you run, I’m going to chase you.
I close my eyes and try to stop thinking. I rummage through my room and nightstand looking for what I need. Wallet, keys, the dime bags I know I shouldn’t have in here but do. Finally, I reach for my guitar, the only thing besides my truck I own. My truck, fuck. Yet another thing I’m forced to leave behind. Mostly because no one knows this, but I totaled it driving high two weeks ago outside Portland. Hit a telephone pole at eighty. I have no idea how I’m still alive. Maybe punishment for everything I’ve done? One thing’s for sure, I might never know what saved me that night.
