*_Finding Hope_*

Every thought burned in my mind as I closed all the pain deep inside myself. I didn’t go home that night after I left my mom standing there on the front porch. Instead I went to a bar, to drown all the pain and to find what little pleasure there was in that dark drink that I favored so much in times like this. I will never understand why Sarah played me the way she did, and I will never forget how she burned a deep scar into my heart. However, all that tortured and mindless pain was dissolved after a few drinks, and after so long I lost track of how many I had, while the hours just ticked away.

“J…. hey J, wake up. ALEX!” someone shook the sleep from me. I opened my eyes to find Howie leaning over the side of my king size bed. “Yo man, are you alright? Where did you go last night? You have your mother worried sick.” His voice blurs through my head as he continues to ask questions about last night.

“What time is it?” It seems too early for Howie to come barging it my room to wake me up. Howie just shakes his head as I try to sit up in bed, and fail horribly. My head is pounding worse then ever could be imagined, and my mouth feels like cotton.

“J, it is noon. Where were you last night?” He moves from where he is standing, to pull open the shades that are blocking the bright afternoon sun. Then he looks back at me in disgust as I shield my eyes from the intense sun. It feels as if someone put six huge spotlights right in front of me and turned them all on as bright as they could go.

“I went to my mom’s place.” I try and avoid the fact that I lied to my mother by not going home, instead I went to a smoke-filled bar. “Is there a reason why you come breaking down my door and jolting me awake by yelling in my ear?” Tylenol, I need like ten pills of Tylenol to get rid of this wicked headache. I reach over to my night stand, open the small wooden drawer and dig for the big bottle of Tylenol that I keep in there for this reason.

“Yeah AJ, you totally missed practice today, and Kevin is pissed. I tried to tell him what happened and that you were probably just really upset, but he knew better. He said that you were probably in bed, with a hangover…I tried to believe that wasn’t true, but it is a pathetic, true fact. Why didn’t you just stay with your mom last night? She wanted you to stay with her, because she obviously knew that if you didn’t stay with her, you would end up in a damn bar!” Howie yells at me, then takes a moment to regain his smooth, regular tone of voice and says, “ Look man, I know what it feels like to be toyed with, but man, this isn’t the way you deal with it. Drinking isn’t an answer, it’s just a quick fix.”

I am not in the mood to handle any of this shit that Howie is crying about, and so I yell at him strictly, “Howie, I don’t need your lecture on what is right and wrong. And I don’t need you telling me what I should do about this fucking situation either, what I need from you is to leave and make sure to close the door tightly behind you!”

“Fine! If you want to deal with this alone, then go right ahead. Sometimes I wonder how I can ever try to help you, and then I remember that you never want to BE helped. You just remember that I tried to help you, several times, and you just kicked you best friend out the door!” he walked to the door and said harshly, “Tell me when you are ready to actually work this out, and I will THINK about coming back!”

The slamming of the door boomed in my head as I rolled over to climb out of bed. I know that Howie is angry with me, but sometimes he just needs to realize that I can handle things by myself without him, or anyone for that matter, holding my hand.

Just then the telephone rings, but it seems to far to walk to answer it so I just let is ring. I move to the bathroom where I gaze at myself in the mirror. There are black circles under my bloodshot eyes, and my face seems to be tinted yellow. Suddenly I feel sick to my stomach as I move to the toilet to throw up everything that I have eaten in the last week, or at least it feels that way. I can hear the answering machine pick up and someone calling my name, I can’t figure out who it is. It sounds kind of like Brian, but the voice echoes too much in my head to know for sure. After a few minutes the answering machine cuts off the echoing voice and the house goes dead quiet.

“Fuck it all, I don’t need this shit.” I say to myself as I turn on the cold water in the shower. I watch the water wash down the glass doors for a moment then turn around to look back at the mirror. The bathroom is painted a light blue, Sarah’s favorite color. “Stop it AJ! She is a fucking bitch, I don’t need her, and I don’t need to be reminded of her by every little fucking thing!” I strip off my boxers and step in to the cold shower; the water cuts through my skin, piercing my bones. After a while I lose feeling in my body and just let the water flow over me. It feels like eternity before I open my eyes to turn the water so that it becomes very warm, almost to the point of burning my tender skin. I pick up my shampoo and begin to wash my oily hair; I scrub my hair until my arms are tired. After rinsing out the shampoo, I pick up the body wash, but after looking at it I realize that it isn’t mine, it’s Sarah’s. I throw it out of the shower without looking and pick up my body wash to continue washing all the dirt from my body.

After getting out of the shower and getting dressed, I find myself standing in the kitchen, hovering over the open refrigerator. Nothing looks good to me, so I close it tight and look around the house. Everything is in its place, just the way Sarah liked it. All the plates are stacked just perfectly, and the silverware is in precise order. All the blankets in the living room are folded into perfect squares and are stacked in a basket that Sarah bought. The pillows are thrown on the furniture to give the room that perfect effect. Sarah hated to find one thing out of place, so she was always finding ways to make every thing in every room…. perfect.

“Damn it, man pull it together….I gotta get out of this house.” I shake my head to clear every thought of Sarah from it. Then I grab my keys from the hook and walk out of the house towards my truck. I don’t know where I am planning to go; because all I know is that I just need to get away from it all. I want to disappear, to fall into this black hole inside me so that I can finally be at peace with myself. So I start my truck and put it in drive. But before I leave my driveway, I hear my cell phone ring, so I open my window and throw it out on the lawn. After that is done, I pull out of my driveway, leaving the ringing cell and the “prefect” house behind me.