Pulling the journal from my back pocket, I drop it on the white sand before sitting down. The cool breeze and faint spray from the waterfall feel refreshing against the humid air.Tie Me Downby Taylor Ray Holbrook bumps through my headphones as I draw my knees up, resting my arms on them and taking a much-needed deep breath. I watch the waterfall, thinking back on everything that led me here.
I think about my mom, and the way she left me when I was a kid. Five, maybe six years old—my memory from back then is a little foggy most days—she left with sad eyes and a heavy soul. Elsie Gray was a beautiful woman with a wild spirit. I don’t remember too much about her, but the memories I do have go one of two ways. She was either happy and always laughing, taking me to do this or that, letting me stay up late at night to bake with her or watch a movie or dance with her in the living room. She’d tell stories and dream about my future with me. Or, she’d lie in bed for days at a time, lights off, curtains drawn. She’d barely emerge to eat, and it was as if talking or moving pained her.
I’ll never forget the last day I saw her. It had been an exceptionally warm day, and I was playing in the field like I often did, when she stepped outside, a suitcase by her side and make-up running down her face. Dad stood in the doorway she just walked out of, a bottle of cheap whiskey, half empty, dangling from his fingers as he watched her with a dejected expression. I always wondered why he didn’t stop her.
Why he didn’t fight for her.
Looking back with a mature set of eyes, I now know what he knew. She never would’ve stayed. No matter how much he fought. Mom was plagued with demons she didn’t know how to live with, weighed down with a husband and a kid she never wanted to begin with. Her getting pregnant with me was an accident, and deciding to keep me was a drug-fueled, manic pipe dream for them. Dad, like me, was a famous musician, on the road often, drowning in his vices. Most days, I don’t know who I’m more like; him or her.
Lachlan Gray was a fucking legend. A rock god. Women fell at his feet and men wanted to be him. Mom, I’m almost positive, was a groupie he met on tour. I have no way to confirm that, but when I was a teenager, I found a bunch of pictures in a box sent to me after he died. Pictures of him, pictures of her, pictures of them on a tour bus, backstage, surrounded by huge crowds. Elsie—whatever her fucking maiden name was—met bad boy drummer, Lachlan Gray, then followed him on tour, fell in love, and eventually had me.
She left when I was young. Too young to lose a mom. Then a couple of years later, he died. His reckless lifestyle finally caught up with him. It was only a matter of time, though, right? The greats don’t live forever. Our sins catch up to us eventually. It’s not often that I think this way, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder what my life would’ve looked like had my mom not abandoned me, and had my father not died right before my eyes. If I didn’t move to the States to live with an aunt who couldn’t give a shit less about me or my wellbeing.
Honestly, I’d probably still be fucked up. It’s in my blood. Nature versus nurture and all that.
JOURNAL ENTRY NO. 1
I don’t even know what the fuck I’m supposed to be saying in this thing. Dr. Weaver told me to write when my feelings got to be too big… but what does that even mean? All of this feels utterly pointless. Talking about how I feel… what is that even going to solve? It’s not like if I speak the words into existence, suddenly my troubles will vanish. That’s not how the world works.
That’s a lesson I learned the hard way a long fucking time ago.
But fuck it… here goes nothing.
I vaguely recall the time when my mom was still in my life. I was so young when she left us that the memories are foggy at best. But there is one night that stands out vividly in my mind. One night, when even in my young mind, I knew something wasn’t okay. Something wasn’t right. Her moods fluctuated often. There were days when she would wake up before the sun, clean the house, turn on music, dance with me. She would bake and play with me. We’d run for hours in the field. We’d laugh.
Those were the days I remember feeling the happiest.
But then, it would be like the darkness came. It would suffocate her. Hold on for dear life and drain every last bit of light out of her until she was a shell of herself. Days would pass, and she wouldn’t get out of bed once. She’d be angry. Extremely emotional. She wanted nothing to do with me.
Her fucking kid.
I remember telling Dad how I was worried about her, and how I wanted to try to help her. Don’t remember how old I was, but I couldn’t have been older than five. Five years old and concerned for your fucking mother. That’s not how it should be.
“She’s fine, Caspian,” he would assure me.
“She’s just a little tired,a bhobain.”
“Go play. Mind your business.”
To this day, I don’t know why this specific memory stands out as much as it does. Or how I remember these little details as much as I do. But three days later, she left. Three motherfucking days after my piece of shit, drug addict father told me to mind my goddamn business, that she was fine, she left me forever.
I never saw her ever again.
When I started touring, I tried looking for her. Never found her.
I’m convinced she left our house and killed herself. My guess is the voices in her head, the same ones that plague my thoughts from time to time, got to be too loud, too much, and she couldn’t take it anymore. Silenced them in the only way she knew how. I’ll probably never know the truth. Know if she’s alive or dead. But that’s my theory.
I don’t know which would be easier to swallow… her truly being dead, having taken her own life, or her being alive. Living in a world without me, perfectly fine.
If she is alive, maybe she’s happier. Maybe she has a new husband who the world doesn’t know. Who doesn’t have vices of his own. And maybe she even has more kids. Ones who don’t wallow in the same darkness she knows all too well.
Maybe we were the problem, my father and me.
Maybe it was us all along, and that’s what I am the way I am. Maybe it’s why I so carelessly offered a deadly concoction of drugs to a stranger in my hotel room and didn’t even bat an eye when she died. Maybe I am to the world who my dad was to my mom.
Toxic.
Wounded.
