1642734778_punk-57-pdf

“When everything is painful…” He drops the backpack and sprays the
inhalant on the rag. “You start to ask yourself ‘what’s the point?’ No one
cares, and you start to care even less. You just want the pain to stop.”
He brings it to his nose, and I lunge out, knocking the cloth out of his
hand and grabbing the can.
I wrap my arm around him and pull him into me, both of us starting to
cry. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” I whisper.
I drop the stuff on the floor and hold his frail, shaking body as tears
stream down my face. What the fuck? How did we get here? He wasn’t like
this as a kid. Neither of us were like this.
He breathes hard, and I think about all the times I didn’t think of him
and all the things I wasn’t seeing. All the times I ignored what was
happening because of the fear of being alone, empty, and ashamed of who I
was.
We were kids once, and we liked ourselves. We were happy. How did
that change?
I pull away and toss the stuff into the garbage, wetting some paper
towels for him to clean off his neck.
Handing them to him, I lean down on the counter and try to calm the
sobs in my chest.
This is crazy. How can he hurt himself like that? He has to know it gets
better. The world will open up, and we won’t feel so trapped. You just need
to hang on.
But I look over at him, seeing tears coat his face, bags under his eyes,
and him staring off. He absently wipes the blood off his neck, looking
completely fucking empty and like he’s done hanging on.
I wipe my tears away and try to steel my tone. “It won’t always be like
this.” I want him to know that.