Our little arrangement💫

23: Duncan💫

Dreams. I don't have those anymore. Everyday without him is a struggle and it makes me angry. Why? That's the question I keep asking myself. I've had breakups before. Although I wouldn't exactly call them breakups. More like separation. It was different this time. Back then I didn't know what love was. I didn't know what it felt like to lose something so heartwarming. I checked my phone. Amber had called me ten times and I had answered the first three times but after that I didn't have the heart. It was usually just a check in to make sure I didn't do something stupid. After I wouldn't answer her calls , Erick started calling me too. I answered only once and told him to call me only when necessary. After that I got no more calls.

My dad came to check in once every hour and made me roll up my sleeves to check my arms. I was feeling depressed but I hadn't felt the need to do something like that since middle school. My dad knew about it and since then he would occasionally check that I wasn't hurting myself. For years he hadn't found anything and I thought that would make him forget but he never did. Part of me resented myself for making him like that, yet again if it wasn't for him I wouldn't have quit. After rolling up my sleeves for the third time that day , I grabbed the pillow nearest to me and started crying into it. It brought back major nostalgia from when I was a kid and used to hug my pillows.

After two hours of staring into space and imagining what Axel was doing, I decided to distract my mind by reading. I used to do it a lot when I started going to high school but Jake made me stop. He said that jocks didn't bother with that kind of crap, in his own words. It still made me go home and read without him knowing about it. I hid my books whenever he came over and made sure to never leave him alone and let him look around. My plan had worked so far and after that I had started dating Axel.

I could feel my heart ache as I thought of him once again. It was like my mind couldn't think of anything else. I could picture him in my mind and yet I couldn't see him upset or hurting at all. Since he was the one who ended things I didn't want to think that he would hurt. I didn't want him too. I cursed softly under my breath and buried my face under my sheets.

I could hear an engine start up outside and knew it was my mothers car. Her engine always groaned like that. I closed my eyes and got about an hour of sleep before heading downstairs. The house was always empty after nine and I'd end up eating out of the cereal box again, that I knew. Most days I hadn't eaten at all. I walked slowly down the steps and stopped once in a while to enjoy the silence and to keep my balance.

I could feel my sadness overwhelm me again and hurried to the kitchen to make myself something before the crying started. It was usually in the mornings when the rest of the world moved was awake and my thoughts were truly awake. I could keep them at bay by watching Tv but that only worked for a short while. I had forced myself not to drink or smoke but the temptation was getting too much.
As I walked into the kitchen, I had expected it to be empty. Instead it was my mother , sitting on the Albany wooden chair, paging through a magazine that looked worn out. She looked up at me and her look wasn't angry or demeaning. She looked almost sympathetic. Almost.

"Mom? I asked as I grabbed the cereal box from the counter.

"Sit down for a minute, she says as she takes the cereal box and pours it into a bowl.

I obey , watching as she makes cereal for me. Part of me protests but I know better than to argue. I think of my childhood when she always made me breakfast and part of my mind longs for my youth. My mind was racing , trying to think about what my mother wanted to tell me. I had a feeling that I would scream at her , my feelings were so unpredictable that anything could happen. After mom handed me my cereal I had lost my will to eat. I hadn't had a stable meal in days. The need for it had died with my love for life. As I stared at my food, mom handed me the spoon and looked at me smiling sadly.