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I’d been so hopeful lately that I hadn’t been crying much, but when I realized that I was never going to see him again, the floodgates reopened. If I’d thought I’d been crying a lot before, that was nothing compared to now. I cried every single day. My days divided into when I could and couldn’t cry. I couldn’t let anyone find out, so I always dried my eyes and washed my face before facing my parents, and I fed the school counselor loads of bullshit every time she tried to talk to me. I was completely oblivious to everything around me at school, but I went through the motions so no one would know. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about him already, anyway. I wasn’t sure what was worse, school or home. At school I deadened my senses and emotions to keep myself level, and that was annoying and tiring, but once I got home and fell apart in the locked sanctuary of my room, the pain rushed back. I’d throw myself on my bed and cry into my pillow until I passed out, for I was always tired now that I didn’t sleep anymore. Then I’d be dragged from the barest taste of sleep to perform some function: dinner, chores, homework, whatever, and I’d put on my fake grin until I could escape back to my private hell. Sleeping was one of the most difficult tasks of the day. I’d weep until my eyes blazed with pain, but if I tried to close them, horrific images lit on the insides of my eyelids. When I did sleep, the same images taunted me in nightmares. Over and over, I saw him screaming and crying and bleeding. I saw him die. I also dreamed about my own problems: I dreamed that I told my father I was gay, and he beat me up and told me never to come home again. Once I dreamed Roger’s knife was at my throat again, but this time he killed me, and he called me a faggot while he did it. I awoke crying every morning, with the sticky tightness of dried tears around my eyes and on my cheeks and a foul taste in my mouth. I would cry softly as I awoke and turned off the alarm clock, as I gathered my things for the day, and while in the shower. And in the shower, no one could hear me bawl. I dried my eyes when I dried my hair, and I once more hid my feelings behind my face until I could unleash them again at 2:30. It tore at my heart to do this, for it was the loneliest feeling I’d ever had; I was completely alone in my grieving. My parents didn’t want me to be upset, but since I was incapable of happiness anymore, I had to fake it. Right now, I needed to be as obedient as possible, needed to do everything right, because someday there would come a time when they would find out about me, and they’d never love me or be proud of me ever again. I had no one to turn to. No one knew I was grieving someone I’d loved as more than just a friend—no one knew how completely and horribly my heart was broken. I wasn’t sure if you could recover from losing someone you love that much. How could I ever love anyone again?
Whether I realized it or not, I was slowly succumbing to the same madness that had taken Roger. –It must have been my fault. It was my fault Roger was gone—gone and suffering somewhere. Because I should have realized how sick he was, and I should have gotten help for him before it was too late. But I didn’t. Goddamn worthless faggot—I’d been too caught up in whatever trivial ego-problems I’d been preoccupied with. Maybe if I hadn’t been so disgustingly obsessed with him I could have helped him. Maybe if I hadn’t been so fucking selfish all the time. I’d probably made things worse. Yeah, all those times I yelled at him and scolded him and punched him—what the hell was my problem? You miserable freak, how dare you put him down—you aren’t worth one fourth of what he is—and you didn’t know what was really going on, so what gave you the right to tell him he was ungrateful, to call him a thief, to call him an alcoholic? No wonder he fucking drank! You don’t deserve him—you never did. How dare you even dream of him loving you back? You sick fairy, you don’t deserve to be around him. You don’t even deserve to live. I hated myself. I hated every single thing about my existence. And I hated that I would never change. Even if Roger recovered, he would still spend the rest of his life suffering the trauma, the guilt, the loneliness that nothing could ever take away—because nothing would take back what his birth mother did to him, nothing would bring back his father, nothing would take away the scars across his wrists and arms. And I would never be straight. I’d kissed a man (and while he was asleep, you gross monster)—I couldn’t turn back now. I would never be able to love myself, and I would have to deal with that every day for the rest of my life. The days of my parents’ love were numbered. Someday they would know, and it would all be over. Every hope they’d had for me, every pleasure they’d ever taken from me, would be gone after one sentence. I would have no one in the entire universe to turn to— —for even my God hated me. I found all the passages in the Bible that discussed homosexuality. In Leviticus 18, sleeping with another man is listed right before where it says screwing a donkey isn’t a good idea. In Genesis 18, God wants to destroy two cities—Sodom and Gomorrah, anyone?—because, it is implied, the inhabitants are all gay. Unless I’m mistaken, there was even a passage that recommended burning homosexuals to death. So I was going to Hell no matter what kind of life I lead—and for something I didn’t even want and couldn’t control! It didn’t make sense to me, but that was what the Bible said, so I believed it. It’s hard to look forward to anything when you know you’re going to burn in Hell for the rest of eternity. Sorry, Roger, I won’t be able to pass on your message to your father like I promised. But at least maybe I’d see Roger there. After all, you can only try to kill yourself so many times before you succeed. Suicide sent you to Hell, too, or so I’d been taught. At that point, I figured I had more of a chance of seeing him again in Hell than I ever would on Earth. Somehow it was hard to imagine that Hell could be much worse than what I was facing now. Maybe Roger had been right. Maybe the best heaven that could be offered was nothingness. I finally understood how much pain he’d been in for so long—after all, I was Depressed now, too—and I understood why he’d had such strange views on death. Was that really what happened after death? If I died, would all of this go away forever? He was right. It did sound wonderful. Thoughts of death obsessed me for the next few weeks and months. Now that I was trapped in the same sort of despair that had tortured him, I started to think that maybe the best decision would have been to let him do as he wanted. Maybe I should have let him kill himself. He wouldn’t suffer anymore after that.
My life from that time was lived through a screen of smoky fog, all my senses hazy from exhaustion and misery, all my thoughts preoccupied with my suffering beloved, my worthlessness, and whether or not this was ever going to change. I remember little from that period, except for why I remembered so little. I woke up each day wanting to die. |