Achieving Unbroken

-Chapter 25-

Achieving Unbroken
Chapter Twenty Five

—

"You don't know me,
Don't you think that I get lonely?
It gets dark inside my head
Check my pulse and if I'm dead, you owe me"
You Owe Me | The Chainsmokers

—

Jason
[Tuesday, June 18th, 2017]

My feet lightly tap each step as I quietly jog down the staircase, attempting to get up and out before anyone wakes up and tries to stop me. No matter how I feel, I have to go back to school, just for the next two days — if I miss finals, I'm fucked. I just have to keep my head down, drag myself through the next two days, and suffer in silence.

Shouldn't be too hard. I've been doing it for two months.

"Where do you think you're going?" A piercing voice stops me in my steps. Turning on my heels, I see my mom sitting at the head of the dining room table; the scarce lighting from her computer illuminating her weary face. She hasn't been sleeping at all, which I should have considered when planning my exit, but I thought she would at least be in her room. My shoulders drop as I let out a heavy sigh.

"School. Finals today and tomorrow. Pertinent to me graduating."

I've already missed enough school that my family had to make an appeal to the district to give me my attendance credit for this year. The past month, my parents have been forwarding me emails from teachers that contain PDF's of worksheets and lesson plans. Some of my friends have even come by, to see if I would talk to them... I didn't. But they still left me notes and homework.

It's given me something to do, something to distract me from the dangerous thoughts that are continuously threatening to swarm my head.

Yet, even with all of that taken care of, without finals, I'm easily looking at retaking sophomore year. And there's no way in hell that I would bargain with that.

I may be depressed, haunted, and whatever the fuck else you want to call it, but I'm not going to just... Fail myself. I feel like I've already failed everyone around me by ignoring them, pushing them away, avoiding them. But something in me won't let me screw this up.

"I— I thought that your father and I would be driving you," Mom shakes her head, eyes small, like she's trying to clear her foggy mind.

It's okay, Mom. The world is blurry to me too.

"I don't want a sendoff. I go to school, take tests, come back. I'm not getting sent to space to spend months at the international space station," I deadpan, arms flailing. Her face falls.

"I know, but— I just thought—" She sniffles, and I feel like an asshole. She's going to start crying, because one son is gone, now the other is pushing her away; the two boys that she devoted years of her life to are slipping from her fingertips and she's trying so damn hard to hold on. "I wanted to be there for you."

She feels like she's losing me. She feels like she has failed me, she's failed as a parent, she has failed herself.