The Fighters Journal (Chapter Ten)
As it were, it took about ten minutes of being back on campus before someone noticed my new hair, and about ten seconds after that for them to comment on it. Admittedly, I was laughed at a lot. And I didn’t know if it was actually because they thought it looked bad or if it was just that they never expected me to do something like dye my hair partially blonde, so all they could do was laugh for lack of a better response. In the end I decided that anyone who laughed was just trying to disguise their true lust for the skunk hair and that’s what I repeated in my mind whenever it happened. It made me feel better. But what made me feel even more content with my decision was whenever I’d see Alex. He would smile; all big and dorky; the kind of smile that is reserved for moments when you can’t help but smile and it’s adolescent and unrestrained and practically perfect. He never said anything and generally didn’t comment on anything in particular, he just smiled as he looked me over.
It was nice.
After breakfast, the first rec. time, and lunch the following Friday Alex walked into my office at 1:24pm and took off his shoes to sit cross-legged in one of the huge, faux-leather chairs. The weekend and the week leading up to the day had been normal. Rian visited both days, I took Alex out for Taco Bell during his weekly off campus time, and nothing out of the ordinary happened during Group.
But when Alex walked in there were no smiles.
No journal, either.
My heart immediately sank.
Alex looked down at his lap for a while before he sighed heavily and let his head fall back so that he was staring at the ceiling. I just kept looking at him, trying to read his expression but all I could see was the scruff of his unshaven face and the taughtness of his jaw line that told me his teeth were clenched. His breathing was even; too even; controlled. I’d seen it too many times in my lifetime - hell, I’d done it myself- so I knew what he was doing. It’s how you act when you’re trying not to break down. You build up these walls inside your head that act like dams for the thoughts threatening to overwhelm your entire existence and you commit everything you have left inside of you to holding together the broken pieces as reality slams itself relentlessly against those walls. Because you know that once they come crumbling down the flood will come and you will drown and that little shred of whatever you had left will be gone and you will feel like nothing. Like dust floating in a stream of sunshine or the pebbles at the bottom of the ocean that never get swept up to shore; alone and unconditionally irrelevant to the world around you.
A small sob escaped him for just a second. Another crack in the dam.
He clenched his fists and I held my breath while I waited for the flood.
“Do you love me?” he finally asked.
Of all the things he could have said, of all the things I was expecting to hear when he finally spoke, this was among the things I was not expecting. It took me so long to answer that he briefly looked down from the ceiling to look at me as I struggled for words before nodding ever so slightly and returning his gaze upwards.
“Of course I - I care about you very much, Alex, I-“I tripped all over my sentence while I desperately tried to find a response that was neither a lie, nor a bunch of sentimental crap to try and appease his thoughts. Why couldn’t I just answer him? I knew I loved him as a friend, as a patient, but I couldn’t definitively say whether or not I loved him, loved him. I’d never told anyone who wasn’t blood related that I loved them and it crossed my mind that maybe I didn’t know what love felt like or maybe I was just scared to admit something that seemed so sacred. I didn’t want to be another person who tossed around the word as if it was something meant for casual conversation instead of one of the single most important things you can tell someone. “I can’t answer that.”
Alex didn’t look at me. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to say it unless I know for sure that I mean it,” I said.
“Do you love me as a friend, then?” He asked.
“Of course I do.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” I replied, confused.
“Why do you love me as a friend?”
I thought about it and couldn’t really put reason into words. I thought about the drive to Inverness and how excited he got over horses, and birds, and animals that get high, and how he smiled when he was really happy, how he described the world and saw it as something beautiful despite the fact that it had chewed him up and spat him back out before dumping him in Rose Hill. I thought about his dimples, and the way he pushed his hair out of his face, and how he talked about Lisa and Rian, and how despite having every reason not to he still got up every day without question. I thought of all of this and more but couldn’t turn any of it into an intelligible response. I wanted to be one of those parents who had the luxury of telling their kids “because” when asked why the sky is blue, but Alex wasn’t a kid and I wasn’t his parent and I couldn’t tell him I loved him “just because”.
“I can’t explain it,” I finally conceded.
“You can’t explain it?” Alex snapped, looking at me again. “Are you serious? It’s a pretty damn simple request, Jack. “
I felt helpless. I’d taken all kinds of english and language classes throughout my lifetime but none of them had prepared me for the moments where everything I’d been taught would fail me and words would become utterly useless in trying to convey an emotion. Because we know what love is, we can describe it as best we can, but we will never truly be able to bridge the gap between feeling and relaying how it felt to feel it. “I’m sorry.”
He made an angry noise and turned back to the ceiling.
“Why did you even come here today?” I demanded.
“Because it’s Friday, obviously. Sessions are on Friday,” He replied in a monotone voice.
“Yeah, but I also recall telling you that you didn’t have to come - that these meetings were your decision and you could choose to not attend them if you didn’t want to,” my face was flushing with anger but I was trying to keep my voice leveled, professional. “So why are you here? Did you come here to yell at me? To make me feel like shit? What do you want from me Alex, because I’m trying, man. God knows, I’m trying. Do you just want to yell at me? Do you want to hit me? I don’t care what you do just tell me how I can help you, Alex, please.” He shook his head over and over again as his jaw line got tighter and I could see all of the tendons strained in his neck and his hands were still clenched and I could practically see the walls he’d built around himself breaking down.
“You can’t help me,” he whispered.
“Why? Why can’t I help you?” I pleaded.
“Because I can’t be saved, Jack!” Alex shouted. “You can’t save me, don’t you get that? I’m gone. I was gone before I got here and nothing you can do will ever fix me because I am irreparably broken and the sooner you understand and accept that the less I’m going to hurt you when I’m finally dead.” He looked out the window as the sun shone through the blinds and created horizontal shadows across his lap. “There’s nothing you can do. I’m damaged goods, a fuck up, on a road that only leads to one end and it is not an end that see’s us together in it. You can’t save me, Jack… so you should just let me go. I’m no good for anyone, and I’m definitely no good for you”
“This isn’t up for discussion,” I said curtly.
Alex looked at me; eyes as dead as the day he’d walked into my life. “You should just give up on me.”
“No.”
“Jack…” he sighed. He fucking had the nerve to sigh, as if discussing how he should just be killed was an everyday casual conversation over breakfast and not heartbreakingly painful. I was picturing leading him to the opposite end of the Rose Hill campus where the medical ward was that housed the room with the table specifically situated for euthanizing patients and standing there watching the needle that would remove him from this planet forever slowly go into the IV that I would have had to help put there. I was imagining watching the life fade from his eyes until he was gone and his body became just another body destined to be worm food instead of being the amazing person I cared for who’d lived and breathed and smiled and whose laugh I’d never hear again. I was imaging having to stand there and watch him be dead until the coroner was certain he would never live again and then having to help carry his body to the morgue. I was imagining digging his grave and watching them lower him into it and seeing Rian crying, and his parents crying, and knowing that there would never be another person in the history of the planet that would ever be like him and it would be my fault because I gave up on him.
And he was fucking sighing.
“I’m not going to give up on you, Alex,” I said slowly, looking out the window, too.”I realize that you’ve probably had a lot of people in your life walk away just because you told them they should but I absolutely refuse to be one of them, and I refuse to believe you are broken beyond repair. Your life does not exist in terms of black and white; it’s not either or with you; it’s not I’m broken so I must be dead. It’s I’m broken, but I’m not broke. And you can sit there all you want and tell me that you are broke but I’ve seen the part of you that still gets excited over the simple beauties of life and the part of you that trusted to give me your Journal and the part of you that cares so deeply for your friends. Those are not characteristics of someone who is broke; those are characteristics of someone who still finds something left in this world that they’d want to live for.” I looked back to stare at his clenched jaw because he was still looking at the ceiling,” But I do love you, Alex… in one way or another - I love you. And whether that means anything to you or if you love me too or-“
“I don’t love you,” Alex said quietly as he cut short my rambling.
“You don’t love me,” I repeated, choking on the lump in my throat and fighting back the acid that had risen into my mouth and made me want to throw up. “You don’t love me.”
“I don’t love you,” He repeated.
“Okay,” I said quietly.
I was thankful that he was still staring at the ceiling so he wouldn’t see the pain on my face that no amount of self-discipline could have masked. My hands were shaking. Or was my whole body shaking? I couldn’t tell. I was throwing everything I had in me towards not crying but my vision was blurring and I was staring out the window again so I could attempt to focus on something other than the burning ache of his words replaying over and over in my head. I hiccuped back a sob and put my shaking hand over my mouth for an extra barrier against the onslaught of hurt. And once again words failed me as I felt the kind of pain that not even a poet laureate could describe. Because now I knew that I did love Alex. Funny how when you lose something you become acutely aware of just how much it meant to you, and more often than not it’s only once it’s gone that you can truly appreciate what you had. I started silently shaking my head as I emerged full force into the denial stage of grief. How was that possible? All of the smiles, the laughs, the talks, everything he said about me in his Journal. How could all of that have meant nothing?
If you’ve ever been hurt so badly that you don’t know what to do with yourself, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that it felt like my body was physically falling apart. Like my lungs were collapsing in on themselves, my throat constricting, an ache flowing through every extremity and limb that made me want to curl into a ball in the hopes that maybe if I made myself small enough I could extricate myself from the pain that had replaced everything else inside of me. And the worst part of it all was trying to pretend like none of it was happening. My heart dutifully pumping and beating in my chest while my brain did what a brain does and interpreted the acute and all encompassing feeling of a breaking heart.
I had closed my eyes in an attempt to deter my tear ducts from letting me cry and I took one last ragged breath before I let my hand fall back into my lap and turned to face the boy who I never intended to fall in love with and now wouldn’t love me back and I did what I did at my family’s funeral and I clenched my jaw and pushed it all down.
“Is there anything else you need to talk about? We have a little over an hour left and these sessions are yours,” I said, my voice tired. Each word hurt to say, every second that passed more painful than the last.
“Are you going to give up on me now?” Alex asked, looking down from the ceiling.
“No,” my voice shook. “I’d never give up on you, Alex.”
No matter how badly he hurt me.