Oye, Life!
Title: Oye, Life!
Author: lure007
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Luke takes a trip down memory lane.
Disclaimer: No one but Luke and Reid own each other. As for the rest of Oakdale, who knows?
A/N: Luke and Reid are living together. Established relationship. Luke is clearing-out some stuff from the attic when he comes across one of his old journals. No Beta. Feedback and sandwiches are one and the same :D
***
Luke settled cross-legged on the attic floor and started flipping through pages of the old notebook. He stopped when he got to the very last entry, frowning. He couldn’t remember writing it. A quick look at the date - December 2008 - set the scene.
Oakdale U election campaign. Noah leaving, again. Drinking. Grandmother. Brian Wheatly. Noah not believing him. Drinking. New Year’s Eve. Noah cozying up to Maddie. Drinking. Kissing Brian. Drinking.
Oye, Life!
They tell me you have all the answers. Well, do ya?
Tell me what to do when bonds break, then.
And you draw close once more to distances.
Restless. Anxious.
Tell me how to regain what I have lost.
How to fix what I have broken. Taken away.
How to forgive, forget. Stop hating myself.
Please. Tell me.
Waking up every morning, I wonder if the day will be any different.
I walk around feeling empty, cold, and numb from the routine of life.
Words become useless.
I am breathing, for sure, but not really alive.
Everything seems so dark, superficial, and completely pointless.
My body hurts from the aggressive tears pouring out of me. Day in, day out.
I am scared. And, alone.
As desperate as I am, sometimes I catch a flicker of light, of hope; somewhere deep within me.
I try to grab hold of it. That will be my sanity.
Luke focused on the next line for a moment, the last line in fact, and blew out a breath. He couldn’t help but feel like a spectator of his own mind of almost five years ago. Yes, he’d been left with scars from Noah and his parents he wasn’t sure would ever fully heal; yet, despite the odds, he’d held on tight and made it through the darkness to live a life of joy, inner peace and real self-love.
“Marco!”
“Polo!” Luke grinned, a familiar warmth spreading through him. Reid was home.
Luke let his eyes linger over the last sentence one more time, before shutting the notebook with an empowering sense of finality and exiting the attic. No matter what he makes of this life, or it of him, nobody, nothing, will ever bring him back to that place again.
The day it (too) deserts me, so will life.
***