Candy

'Deep down inside me, buried beneath everything, I could sense a feeling I'd never felt before. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know if it was a good feeling or a bad feeling or something in between.. I wasn't even sure if it was a feeling at all. It was just something - an unknown shade, a barely perceptible signal, like a flickering candle on a distant hill. I knew it was there, but most of the time it was too faint to see, and even when I could see it, I couldn't tell if I was seeing it or hearing it or smelling it or feeling it. It was too many things all at once: a light in the darkness, a crying voice, the scent of freshly washed skin, some wonderful oblivion. It didn't make sense, and neither did I.

'I didn't want to keep my thoughts inside anymore. I wanted to let them out, to give them some air, to see how it sounded outside of my head. At least some of it, anyway.'

'The weeks went by with a weird sense of timelessness. Days seemed to last forever, with long stretched-out mornings, interminable afternoons, and never ending nights. Yet at the same time, when a new day dawned and I looked back at yesterday, it seemed to have passed so rapidly that it was hard to believe it had happened at all. Tomorrows on the other hand, were centuries away.'

'But explanations don't change anything, do they? They don't make you feel any better. You either like something or you don't, and if you don't like it, then knowing why it happens doesn't make any difference - it's still going to happen and you're still not going to like it, so what's the point?'

'One of the worst things about feeling helpless is the constant intrusion of doubt. Even when you know there's nothing you can do about something, even when you're absolutely sure, when you've considered every possibility, over and over again, knowing full well that you're wasting your time. Even then, you still can't help feeling that you're wrong.
There must be something you can do.
Surely..
There has to be something.'

The days past, as they do, and life went on

"You can lie to me, but you can't lie to your conscience."
Wanna bet? I thought

"That's all there is to it."
"And that's what you want, is it?"
"That's how it is. What I want doesn't come into it."

"This, me, what happened, why it happened. It's so stupid. It's nothing. I mean, I used to be alright. I was okay. Nothing bad happened. I wasn't beaten up, or raped, or abused or anything. Nothing happened. I got myself here." She shook her head, "All I got was a little bit of jealousy, a little bit of rejection, and a lot of self-pity. It's not much of a reason for ending up like this, is it?"
"A reason's a reason."

'It was all riddled with problems. Big problems, little problems, awkward problems. Problems that scared the hell out of me. I wasn't sure if I even wanted to keep trying to deal with them. But want didn't come into it. Nothing came into it. It was just there. It was going to happen no matter what.
As inevitable as night follows day. It could never be anything else.'

'We left the house behind and hurried away into the night. There was something between us then, something that hadn't been there before and wouldn't be there again. I'm not sure what it was. But I think it something to do with the balance of things. We were both changing, each of us in different ways, and neither of us could know what those changes meant or what they might mean to us in the future. I suppose we were still trying to work out how that made us feel- about ourselves, and each other, and everything.

'It wasn't simply that we were changing either, but that the changes themselves kept changing, too. It was like being on a seesaw. One minute I was this, and Candy was that, the next minute she was this and I was that.
Up and down.
Down, up.
Scared, calm.
Calm, scared.
In control, out of control.'

'She was making some tea, I was sitting in front of the fire. We were talking. But that was okay, wasn't it? Being normal. What's wrong with that? Nothing I told myself. Nothing at all. But I wasn't so sure. I knew that things weren't normal and all we were doing by pretending was avoiding the inevitable truth. And this is the thing that bothered me the most - I wasn't so sure I wanted us to be normal. I didn't want us to be abnormal, I didn't want all of this chaos and underworld crap. But that's where we'd come from. The problems were a part of us. Part of what we were. And I was afraid that if I lost it completely, we might lose some of ourselves.'

'It's like I've been stuck in this place for so long, this place where every thing's numbed and dead and you don't have to think about anything or care about anything. And I can't remember what it feels like to be outside of this. I don't know what it's like to be normal anymore.'

"You get all these dealers rambling on about their gear and their works and God-knows-what-else, and it's just so boring. It's like listening to a bunch of computer nerds or something. Except these computer nerds are all whacked out of their heads and some carry loaded guns."

'Why are you doing this? I asked myself, but I knew I didn't know. It was a question full of questions. Why do you do anything? Why do you like music? What do you take drugs? Why do you hate yourself? Why do you die? Why do you fall in love?
I had no answers. I didn't matter that I didn't know why I was doing anything, I was just doing it.'

'I remember it all: every word, every breath, every tick of the clock. Everything that happened is with me forever. I can never forget it. But that doesn't mean I can live it again. You can't live what's gone, you can only remember it, and memories have no life. They're just pale reminders of a time that's gone- like faded photographs, or a dried-up daisy chain at the back of a drawer. They have no substance. They can't take you back. Nothing can take you back.
Nothing can ever be the same as it was.
Nothing is.'

'I was always afraid. I was afraid of everything. My thoughts, my doubts, my desires, my lies, my honesty. It was like a battle in myself. I didn't like what I saw. I didn't like what he wanted. But I couldn't stop seeing him. I couldn't stop being him.. I didn't know what he was. His feelings were wrong, and mine were right; but then mine were wrong and his were right. It was madness. It was too many things to know: light, dark, crying, laughing, hurting, needing, hating, loving.

How do you explain that what's in your mind isn't yours? How do you explain that even when you did do something, the only memories you have are the secondhand memories of someone else.

I don't know what's happened with Candy. I don't know if she's lost her mind. I don't know when I'll be seeing her again. The only difference now, for what it's worth, is I know that these things don't matter. I know that I don't have to feel frightened of not knowing - I just have to be here. In love and faith. I just have to believe.

It's not easy - living in a void, living and dying inside of your head. Wanting what you want so much that you would give up on everything else just to get it - but time still passes, and the days go on. And as long as there's still a tomorrow, there's always a chance.'