Devil in the Details

A house of cards, a supple heart
Is not a place to dwell.

Now you have your cake. Don’t hesitate.
Come on just do it,
Come on just do it

Put it in your mouth
There is only now
Tomorrow has to wait

But know there’s no backing out
This is gonna be reality
You can never dream it down

I have no way
Of telling the two apart

Well I made amends, in the general sense
With the devil’s in the details

And I know the cause, and I want to stop
But I can’t do it
I just can’t do it

There was love I meant
There were accidents
So tell me which is which

‘Cus I just can’t work it out
But for memory and clarity
We had better write it down

I have no way
Of knowing the truth
Which time dissolves

I put the past into the ground
I saw the future as a cloud
If theres still time to turn around
Im going to

Its just one day I fell asleep
And now all day all night I dream
I am the first one I deceive

If I can make myself believe
The rest is easy…

To wither in denial, the bitterness of one who's left alone.

Every Tuesday I go to Susans office, and it's always just when I need it. A couple days before I left for Mexico I got out of class and called my mom. It was the first of many fights I had with her over the phone, where I lost my control, and then I left myself sitting in the parking lot in my car at school, in shock because of the things we just said. I was in shock of how much I'm really hurting her. Right after I hung up I called Susan in panic and showed up unscheduled. It was my longest session with her, I didn't hold anything in. I felt like I had given her everything. It was relieving and scary to listen to myself. She was quiet after I finished talking. We both were for a while. She does that, she lets me sit there with the things I say and soak them up. She said to me, "I want you to take a look at the things you're saying to me, and I want you to see if you see what I see." I stayed quiet and shook my head. She said, "You spend almost all of your sessions talking about everybody else except for you."

When I got back from Mexico, she called my dad and had him join us. She had us say things we remember with each other. I let him do all of the talking, I knew he had a lot to do. He told her, "We were all we had after the divorce. We spent all of our time together." He said, "One of the most painful days for me was after his mom left, I had to take him to find a day care. It didn't matter what one, how expensive, where it was, I wanted him to be at the one he wanted the most, because it's what he deserved. He spent a lot of his time at day cares, after school clubs, carpools home. We were forced to be apart. I was the only dad ever showing up, and picking him up was my favorite part of the day. It was the first day leaving him there that was the hardest part." I remembered my mom had told me about that day, too. Except instead of dropping me off, she was parked across the street crying while I played on the playground behind that fence.

Susan asked me to tell him exactly what I told her about the drive to California before we left for Mexico. She said it would be important for him to know. I didn't know how to put that out and make it sound real, plus I had already said it. I didn't see the point in repeating it. I wanted him to know it, but I didn't know how to say it again. What I had told her was at one point in the car ride there, after all the arguing and yelling stopped, Matthew put in his head phones and pulled out his book. My dad stared forward while he drove. Susan put her hand on his. Alyssa was asleep against the window, and David was sitting up right behind Matthews seat. Eventually Matthew fell asleep too. He didn't lay his head anywhere he just let it hang from his neck, with his chin to his chest. David handed me a pillow and told me to give it to him. So I set it on his lap, but that didn't do anything. So a couple minutes later David grabbed it and held it up against the window next to Matthew and pushed his shoulder towards it so his head and the pillow would meet. Matthew woke up to the touch of it, realized it, and then just closed his eyes and went back to sleep. And just with that, the quiet in the car wasn't quiet tension anymore. It was just quiet. And all I could hear was the sound of the road. And the feeling of all of us together felt so good. I told Susan that no matter what, we will always love each other. And there was something about that car ride that made me feel the comfort of having a family that I don't get to see that often. Susan ended up telling my dad this for me, while I sat and listened, she didn't say it how I had said it originally. It was sort of modified to the only way she knew how to say it. My dad nodded and listened. But those things I had said just didn't have as much meaning anymore.

I spent a couple nights sitting on my bedroom floor calling my mom in desperation. She told me over and over, that all of this, everything I'm holding myself back with, is all just excuses. Every time I end up calling her, I would end up breaking things around me out of frustration, and our voices were raised like they've never been before. It kills me every time, because she takes on everything I do. Every time I would hang up on her, and all the days I spent ignoring her calls, it was killing me. But I didn't know how else to handle it. When I went for a couple weeks without a phone, there was no other way to get a hold of me. I wasn't at home often, I didn't make any effort to talk. To anybody really. Susan had some messages on her machine she played me for one of our sessions. All the messages were left in secret. One was from my Mom expressing how worried she really is, there were a couple from my step mom talking about her concerns about the medication. I hated hearing them. The fact that there were always eyes of concern on me. I know it's not how things work.. You can't just disappear from everyone and expect no reaction towards it, but it's what I needed to do. I see losing my phone as a blessing for me. I would have to say I'm okay or else she wouldn't really listen and if I'm not okay then its not really understandable. And when she wants to be worried as hell, she bites her tongue so I'll call her back tomorrow. I was so frustrated at what I do, and what she does, and what we became. I hated her asking how my dad and I were. If I say bad then she asks why. I say why and she tells me otherwise. If I say were doing good, I'm lying. If I say were bad, I have to talk about it, when I talk about it I start to hate listening to myself, hearing my reasons, and my problems, and my so sorry voice. It was madness. Everything she'd say to me I would shoot down. The only thing we talked about that felt real was my unhappiness. The only thing she'd ask, the only thing I'd tell. I miss her so much. She said she made herself sick over me not calling. She said she had nightmares, and would wake up telling Walt, "He hates me." Walt would have to remind her, "Hes your son."

It was like a ping pong table between me, her, and my dad. Everyone checking on how I feel. It was everyone telling me how to feel. Nobody listening to what I feel. And then me questioning what the hell I even do feel. In the session with my dad while I held my face in my hands Susan said, "Do you know why Michael is crying, Tom?" I felt she was going to link it back to him and hand over the blame, like we were in the appointments my Mom used to tell me about that they would go to for their marriage. The one that led to their divorce. She says, "Why are you crying, Michael?" I didn't lift my head and I didn't say a word. She looks at my dad and says, "Because he's hurt." I was thinking, what does this have to do with him? He's not my problem. My dad has never been my problem. When I lifted up my face, my dad shrugged, and he said nervously, "I.. I know. He is." All I felt was pity as Susan handed me another tissue. It was disgusting, and I hated how it felt. I kept repeating her question in my head and kept feeling like I needed to provide an answer. Why are you crying? And so I asked myself, why are you crying? Is it because of the memories my dad was saying to us? Because I miss him too? The times Susan asked him to say were the most important, was it his loneliness in his voice? Or was it the fact that the whole reason I'm here, and the whole reason I'm this mess, wasn't even created on my own. That not even all of my problems are mine. That I would cry to Susan about my dads pain, and Davids pain, my Moms pain. How I convinced myself there's no way I could be happy on my own. Not without my friends, not without Stephanie. I felt like all I was built off of was other peoples problems, and the way everybody else felt about me. Maybe it was the fact that the problems in myself were just too hard to admit. The fact that I can't speak up, that I lost who I was, that I always feel like I'm acting. The things I put on myself, and the things I can never forget. The people I miss and the people I can't ever let go of. She put her hand on my knee and talked in a soft voice, she said, "This isn't going to last forever." She would repeat, "I know you're hurting." My dad stayed quiet, and when she would ask him to speak he would say, "Well you know, what he's feeling, are things we have to learn to deal with every day. I know it can be hard adjusting to lifes changes but.." I stopped listening. And I started double thinking everything I just had thought before. This sharp pain came back that I would feel whenever my emotions were misinterpreted. The more he spoke the more he made me feel like nothing I have felt was real. Susan always tells me to try the medication because it would give me a thicker skin. I've been thinking for so long about what that means, and what I do that makes my skin so thin. Was showing up at Davids wrong when he was saying to Alyssa that he was done living again? Was it wrong for me to leave the house because my Dad just sits there and watches it happen? How problems left undone start to feel like my responsibility. How I payed too much attention to the car ride to California, while David was throwing up, and Matthew was bitching, and my dad was yelling. And is it wrong to carry the feelings you have for someone, on your back? I didn't know anymore.

But today I know what she meant by that. My life is my own. And how I feel isn't weighed out by what everyone else feels, or what they're doing. I've been taking time to focus on myself so that one day, what I want and what I need will be the same thing. Not a whole lot has happened around me the past few days, but I've made a whole lot of change in myself. I never realized how right my mom was when she would tell me that positivity could lead me to a whole other place. I never realized how much you can have, once you stop fighting it.

Take it easy, love nothing.

'Now they're spreading out the blankets on the beach
That weatherman's a liar, he said it'd be raining
But it's clear and blue as far as I can see.

Left by the lamp, right next to the bed
On a cartoon cat pad, she scrached with a pen:
"Everything is as it's always been, this never happened.
Don't take it too bad, it's nothing you did,
just once something dies, you can't make it live.
You're a beautiful boy, you're a sweet little kid
But I am a woman"

So I laid back down, wrapped myself up in the sheets
And I must have looked like a ghost
Because something frightened me
And since then I've been so good at vanishing

Now I do as I please, and I lie through my teeth
Someone might get hurt, but it won't be me
Should probably feel cheap, but I just feel free
And a little bit empty

Now it isn't so hard to get close to me
There'll be no arguments, we'll always agree
And I try to be kind when I ask you to leave
We'll both take it easy.

If you stay to long inside my memory
I will trap you in a song tied to a melody
And I'll keep you there so you can't bother me.'

Little Lion Man

'Weep for yourself, my man,
You'll never be what is in your heart.
Weep little lion man,
You're not as brave as you were at the start.
Rate yourself and rake yourself,
take all the courage you have left, that you wasted on fixing all the problems that you made in your own head.

But it was not your fault but mine
and it was your heart on the line.
I really fucked it up this time.
Didn't I, my dear?

Tremble for yourself, my man,
You know that you have seen this all before
Tremble little lion man,
You'll never settle any of your scores
Your grace is wasted in your face,
Your boldness stands alone among the wreck
Learn from your mother or else spend your days biting your own neck'

Lights of the cars go by in a stream, seems like I stand pretty much unseen. But I open my eyes and beams come out.

I've been feeling like my pain is more than just something I feel, but what I am. And not only have I kept myself trapped in it, but the people around me have, too. It wasn't intended really, but eventually I lost one thing, and others were taken away, and I've ended up on my own for a while. I go to class, and then I come home. I go to work, and then I come home. And if you can't find me there, I'm at Cammishas or driving. I haven't had a phone for a couple weeks, I haven't checked any social networks for days. I haven't called anybody, to see anyone. But sometimes I don't even want any of those things back. I liked the fact that nobody could see me or get a hold of me, that I didn't have to be anywhere, that I didn't have to make any plans that I wouldn't follow, that nobody was depending on me. And I wasn't depending on them. That I had nothing to check that would trigger my anxiety, I didn't have to wonder what they were doing. And I wasn't really reminded that they were still there. Some days were easier than others. Some nights Cammisha and I would drive by parties Avieta was throwing on our way home and I'd drive through a row of cars parked all over and list off whos were whos and then we'd speed off, and I'd forget about it. Or at least try to. But no matter what excuse I would come up with for why I wouldn't go in, it was really just I was too scared. It might not of been long, but it felt like forever. And I was scared to face my own friends. I hated the weekends before. So much. I hated hearing about every ones plans, and feeling like I had to have a million of my own. The fact I wasn't involved, the fact that it's because I stopped involving myself. Nights ended in disappointment, or anger. But the past few nights, work was the only place I wanted to be. And it did feel like enough. Dinner with my coworkers, and some nights ended early. It was all okay to me.

Every other day in first period, early in the morning, Jackson and I sit at our desks in the back of the class and pass a plastic bottle of some drink mixed with vodka back and forth, and then we'd move on to the next class drunk. He'd bring it because he had some things to forget, but I'd do it because I was more comfortable that way. And I knew how to talk that way. It's what I do with anything I put in my system. Take this so it won't hurt or even if it doesn't hurt, and this so I can focus, and this to calm my nerves, and this to make me sleep. I smoke because it brings me back to things I used to feel, without anything else. Sometimes without any of it, I just don't want to be awake. Anything to hide my shaky hands, and shaky voice. I feel like I've completely dropped any social skills I ever had. I used to feel like I always knew just what to say. I used to live off of that energy that I would get from being around people. And now all I try to do is stay hidden. Maybe I had my turn, living like that. But maybe I'm just wating for my turn all over again. Today the sun finally came out, and it's amazing how much that can change how we feel. Today I spoke first, and I did it without anything there to help me. I saw friends that missed me, and made plans I meant. Tonight I came out of my room, and I sat on the front steps watching the lightning across the field with my dad. I know that I don't have to be alone. But I know that's never what I wanted from the beginning either.

Sometimes it's hard to break out of what you're in when people are watching your progress every day. Listening to your plans, and watching for the mistakes in the things that you say. I needed to do this more than anything else, because it taught me something that I haven't been able to figure out from the start. That my life is mine. And what I feel does not have to be provided by everyone else. It's not their choice. What I'm doing is for me, what I want is for me, and being away doesn't mean losing it all. This is the first time I have ever put myself first, and already it's put me into a whole different perspective. For once I'm ready to sort out my own problems. For once I'm ready to start building off of what I want.

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.'

You've got wires, coming out of your skin.

I miss being able to look at things for what they are, instead of picking them apart with what I know.