The Art of Being a F*ck Up - Chapter 32: Chapter 32

Does it always feel like this? I had to have been a person before Jonah; there had to have been things I wanted or dreams I hoped to achieve. I can't quite remember them now, not when all I have is this fatal heartbreak that still continues to threaten me almost a week after we broke up. I'm back on this threadbare couch, to the only home left to me, and I can't even find the strength to get up. My body's weak, I just constantly feel ill, and I've been crying more in the last couple days than I have in my entire life—more than I thought I ever could. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, but honestly, I can't escape the thought that I would rather just be dead.
Who's going to miss me now? It's not hard to guess that I'm too much of a coward to try anything like that, so I'm forced to deal with it head on even when I'm unable to comprehend this crippling grief. I love Jonah. How am I ever supposed to love anyone else, or stop loving him? If it wasn't beating I might think my heart had been ripped right out of my chest because it hurts so fucking bad, and the dark places my mind has taken me since is probably the reason I ended up back here again, at my dad's.
"It's the middle of the goddamn day, get your ass up!" He comes out of nowhere, trying to pull the blanket off. He hadn't seemed all that surprised when I showed up, but then, maybe he was expecting it. I think he can see my life unraveling, and while he still doesn't give a shit, that's something he can probably relate to. It's so fucked up that I owe him any gratitude, but I don't know what I would've done if he'd turned me away. For whatever reason, he hasn't been as hard on me this time, though I hardly pay any attention to him as I snatch the blanket back and roll over.
"We done talked about all this, we got a business to run, you can't keep calling off work. And what about school? You think they're going to give a shit that you broke up with your boyfriend?" There's no empathy in him at all when he addresses me. Why would there be? I don't think he's ever really loved anybody, not even my mom, so how could he possibly know what it feels like to lose what I've lost? None of that matters, I can already hear him telling me to be a man, but I've been doing that for so long and I don't have the strength to keep that up anymore either.
"I'm serious, you need to get up!" He tries yet again to pull the blanket back, but I just clutch it tighter, wanting him to go away. What good would it do to still give a damn about school, or work, or any of it at this point? My life's been on the same dead-end road since I was born, but at least I used to have a reason to keep trying, something and someone I could aim to be worthy of. Now I have nothing, and it's a terrible thought that cuts at me even deeper so I try to push it away, escape it, but I can't and I hate that my dad gets to see me like this.
"Leave me alone," I want to be mean, to sound tough or angry, but it comes out so soft and pathetic that I expect him to pounce on my glaring weakness right away. Instead he sighs, sitting on the arm of the couch quietly.
"Look, I told you, this is a good thing. This thing you've been doing for the past couple years with that guy isn't right—now's your chance to be normal." He pats my leg, continuing to make everything worse when he turns what I had with Jonah into perversion. I had stood up to him before, defended it, but that was when it mattered and I just don't see why it does anymore so I take it. I just fucking take it. Not even he can make me feel any worse, so I let him say his fill until he finally comes back to his point, "you'll be glad this happened one day, you'll see. You'll meet a girl, start a family, and forget this ever happened."
What does he expect me to say? The only time he can show even a modicum of empathy is when he thinks I'm anything close to what he thought I should be. When I'm most like him. After he waits a bit longer he finally leaves to go to the garage, and I'm back in the quiet I hate so much while I try to decide how I'm going to get through the next ten years, the next ten months. The next ten minutes. This is it, I've come to the very end of this dead-end road I've always been on, and I'm disgusted at myself, my life—everything. I'm powerless, I can't change it, there's nothing I can do.
What I can do, is drink.
I guess I'm more than what my dad thinks I should be, I guess we really are the same. All the things I hate in him, all the worst, I can see it in myself now that I'm not telling these lies anymore. I've become the thing I hate the most, but instead of letting that destroy me I get up from the couch to go to the fridge, to get a beer. What would be the point in fighting the inevitable? What reason do I have to resist the pull towards the fate I've always been destined for? No, like I said, I'm done fighting it, so instead I just surrender to it completely as I have my first drink. It feels right, it feels easy, it's familiar to me. So I have another.
Right now, as pathetic as it is, it's all I have to stop me from coming undone completely. I wonder what Jonah has. Is this as hard for him as it is for me? I've been dying to text him, to beg him again to take me back, or to at least make sure that he's alright, but I can't bring myself to do it. If I was still lying I would say that I didn't want to hurt him anymore, but that wouldn't be true, or, at least not completely. I think it would hurt me more than anything else, and the most honest thing I can say is that I don't think I could take anything else making me feel worse about myself. It would be too much and I'm scared of what I might do.
Besides, I'm sure he's fine, surrounded by the people who love him while I sit here in this rundown apartment, all on my own with nothing but my drink for company. It's not great company, but I am worse. A few more drinks help fill the time, but right when I go for another I hear a knock at the door. I freeze, not sure if my lonely mind imagined it, or if it didn't, that the knock is even at my door. I stand there, still frozen when it comes again, louder and with more urgency, followed now by a faint voice.
"Brent? It's me, can we talk?" The concerned voice drifts in, filling the dead space with a kind of life it's been devoid of for too long. The kind of life I'm in desperate need of. Without thinking about it too much I stumble over to the door, looking through the peephole to see with my own eyes a very plump Lilah on the other side. She looks mortified as she lingers there with one hand on her stomach like always, and the other pressed up right against the wood. Again without thinking, I put my own hand up to the door too. She speaks softly, as if almost sensing it somehow, "please."
I reach for the handle and pull the door open before I can stop myself, coming face to face with her. She exhales in a combination of relief and distress, and then her fingers creep forward through the air to touch my face, but I only step back. It causes her pain, the rejection, I'm not sure why, but she's no different than anyone else—I'm only capable of hurting her too.
"What do you want?" I ask flatly. Has she come to hold me accountable? Because I already know what a horrible piece of shit I am, I didn't need her to drive all the way across town to tell me too.
"What do you think I want? I'm here to take you home." She says evenly, no indication to what she's been told or how she really feels or what I should be expecting. "I don't understand why you'd come back here—you know you don't belong here."
"Where else was I supposed to go?"
"You could've come to me." She steps forward, into the doorway, unaware of how much like my fiancé she sounds. Or, my ex-fiancé, now.
"Didn't you talk to Jonah? I'm sure he told you everything I did, how am I supposed to ever show my face around you guys again? I know he's like a son to you, I'm guessing you hate me too." I had said before that Jonah was trying to make me into something no one could love, but the reality is that I did that all by myself. Yet she's such a good person, someone who actually does a good job at being everyone's hero, so here she is trying to save me when we are both so aware that I'm beyond her saving and her mercy.
"I'm sorry things are so bad right now, I am, but you know that's not true. I could never hate you, do you know how worried I've been? Do you know what that feels like?" Her carefully collected demeanor falters for a fraction of a second and I see something else. I can't tell exactly what, but it's enough that I don't pull away now when she reaches over. She doesn't say anything else for a long time. "Everything will be okay, honey."
"It'll never be okay again," I tell her softly, biting back the emotion she threatens to bring out in me.
"Of course it will, we just have to get you home. We'll figure the rest out together, we can get you help."
"Help?" Like what? I only hear Jonah saying that exact same thing when she speaks, and it hits a nerve. I pull back.
"To get you through this—to get you sober. This isn't you, none of this, I've seen how unhappy you've been for months and I wonder if maybe this is partly my fault. Maybe I should've done something sooner, I don't know, but let me help you now—I want to."
"It's way too late for that, I'm so tired of trying to make everyone else happy when all it does is fall to shit! You think a good cry or AA is going to fix that? I'm the problem here! It's me." Again, why would I try? I still haven't found a way to make it through the next ten minutes and her trying to drag me through some stupid fucking program makes me sick. "I know what happened was fucked up, but all I've ever wanted, literally the only thing I've been trying to do, is to keep everyone from getting hurt! I can't do this anymore!"
"You are not the problem." Lilah cuts in, assertive as she tries to keep me grounded. I push her away though and cover my eyes, feeling the pressure building. She doesn't seem to care. "Did you ever stop to think that all this time, when you were trying to keep from hurting everyone else, that you were only hurting yourself? That matters, you matter."
"No I don't!" They are the saddest words I can say, and I don't fully realize how much I mean them until they've crossed my lips. Jonah's gone, the same with all my friends, and my own family hates me. I mean nothing—I'm worth nothing. I'm not worth fighting for or worth holding onto, and to finally say it out loud makes me start crying all over again. I hate that she sees me like this too, and I turn to retreat farther into the apartment but she only follows.
"Why would you say that?" More than a slip, when the stakes get far too real she relinquishes that careful control to maneuver directly in front of me. "Honey, please, you're scaring me. How can you say you don't matter?"
"Nobody wants me, no matter what I try to do, or how hard I try to be what they want, it's never enough! I've screwed it all up and I can't fix this!" I yell. Or maybe I don't, it comes out all muddled and mixed with my anger and my hurt and all those bad things. My chest heaves and all I want is for her to be gone, but she won't get out of my way. "How did I hurt everyone I care about so much? Who the hell am I anymore? I'm worthless! And I can't stand to live like this another second, so you tell me who could love me now!"
"I love you!" Lilah grabs both my arms tight. My heart is broken and I still just want to die, but she forces me to look at her as she sheds her own tears. She may not have all the answers after all but what she does have is certainty. "No matter what happens, no matter what terrible things you think you do, that doesn't stop, and I will always want you. I do! Come home."
"I can't, I can't go back there," it's practically a whisper but I'm running out of the energy I didn't have to start with to fight her.
"Yes you can, please, just don't give up on me," she fights like hell, for reasons I can only guess at. She fights like a mother. I want to push her off again, to accept what I know I deserve, but I fail to and she wraps her arms tightly around me. She pulls my head down and tucks it under her chin, kissing my hair. "There, I've got you. We're going to get through this, don't worry, I know it hurts now but I promise—everything really will be okay."