17. SEVENTEEN
SEVENTEEN
“...Hello?” As though I’m twelve years old again, my voice is small. Small, helpless, and shaky. All the makings of a socially awkward tween who never learned how to properly interact with people. “Mom?”
All I hear is rustling on the other end until she clears her throat and speaks in that same distant voice she’s had for the past year. “Duncan?”
“Yeah…?”
“How have you been, baby? You’re feeling better after what happened?”
“...No, mom.”
The silence stretches on for what feels like an eternity. It’s exactly how I imagine being in Hell. “I wanted to talk to you, sweetheart. Are you… are you up for that?”
She hasn’t even said anything important and my eyes are already getting misty. “About what…?”
“Well, you see…” Another beat of hesitation tells me this won’t be good. Nothing about this can be good. “I was talking with your father, and… We might have found a solution.”
A solution to what? I should be asking her that, but part of me is still in disbelief that I’m even talking to her right now. “What do you… Mom, what are you talking about?”
“The church, baby.”
She keeps talking but for me everything is silent save for the sound of my own breathing. The church? The fuck does she mean the church? I know she isn’t referring to anything like that. I know it. She couldn’t be. My own mother would never say that.
Yes, she humiliated me in front of my entire family, but certainly she isn’t implying I go to conversion therapy to “fix” myself. That can’t be, can it? My mouth opens but no words are found, only ugly uneven breathing.
“Duncan?” Her voice is so grating through the phone speaker. “Duncan, baby? Are you okay? You need to breathe. You—”
“What are you saying?”
“Well, I—”
“Mom. What are you saying?”
“They just want to help you.” My mom’s voice trembles, she was always so good at playing the victim. “They can fix you. Get rid of this… this evil… Please, Duncan. We want our baby boy back.”
The thin wire that I’d been clinging to finally snaps.
“I’m right here!” Even though my voice breaks midsentence I don’t let up so easily.
“You could have me if you really wanted. But you don’t.
You don’t.” Tears stream down my cheeks, and for a moment I really am back to being a useless teenager hiding who he is.
“You don’t want me. You don’t love me. You don’t even care about me! ”
“That’s not true! We’re doing this because we care!”
The scream I let out makes Chalupa stop licking himself. “No you don’t! How can you sit there and say that to me after what you did?! Do you not realize I have spent every day since Thanksgiving wanting to kill myself? Life would be easier without me in it, would it not?!”
“We didn’t do anything to you! You did this all to yourself when you decided a path of sin was the path you wanted to take!”
“You’re seriously getting angry at me right now? It's the time for family and I’ll be all alone. You took everything I had. I don’t have anything else.” When I think of Haley—or even Finn—that statement feels like kind of a lie.
My mom scoffs. “You have nothing because… Because—!” All the fight in her voice dies down nearly instantaneously. “Because it’s what you asked for. You want to live in a delusion? Go ahead, Duncan. Just remember it’s what you chose.”
The call ends with a prolonged beep.
My living room doesn’t even feel comforting anymore. The hollow feeling in my stomach feels horrible. What do I have if not my family? Nothing is important when it comes to me. I’m a waste of air that takes up space, aren’t I? Because I’m so disgusting?
I really should just die.
Finn!! :)
I made it to work on time! Thank you for the sweatshirt. It’s very warm, and it smells like you!^^
I don’t care. I don’t care at all. He could’ve crashed and died and it wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing matters. Without replying to such a useless text I throw my phone on the couch.
Every muscle in my body feels dead. My brain wants to freak out and lose my shit, but the rest of me isn’t cooperating. The slow walk to my bedroom feels horrifying, and when the door opens I’m a stranger in my own space.
Just going to my bed makes me feel like some kind of shadow. The world could come to an end tomorrow and I don’t think I’d give two shits, which seems so unlike me. Everyone always said I was empathetic and caring, yet now I’m feeling the exact opposite about myself.
No one cares about me, so why should I care about them? God, what am I even thinking? That’s so selfish. I hate this. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.
Silent tears stream down my cheeks as I stare blankly at the ceiling. Nothing matters. Nothing matters, and I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to finally do what I should’ve done years ago.
When I’m dead I won’t have to worry about any of this. Shutting my eyes, all I see is a dark void of total nothingness. Trying to picture reasons to live doesn’t yield any results at all. Haley will be fine. Finn is… I don’t know what Finn is. He’d probably be okay.
But I’m not going to be. All that medication I never took that’s sitting peacefully in a cabinet is finally going to be useful. For once, I’m going to decide what I do with my life.
And what I’ve decided is to end it.