Chapter Thirty-Eight
Ryden
“We don’t belong in the gold river, we belong by the sand –
Soaking up the moments we’d never understand –”
Arc & Sheild Records: ‘Dismay’
Composition By: Ryden Spectre
It makes it worse that I’m grieving.
You think I don’t know that?
I’m a fucking addict, through and through.
I lost my mom, what, twice now?
Not my choice.
Never my choice.
Grief, man, it rules your life.
You can’t run away from it, you just replace it with more pain. Fill it to the brim, let it overflow and bathe in it.
And you want to know the worst thing about trauma? The sickest, most inhumane thing it does? Your remember all the good moments. You crave the beginning, before things turned dark.
That’s why you run back to it.
Time and time again.
I knew Corban beat the shit out of my mom.
I knew she went back.
I knew she left her son.
I knew she loved her son.
I understood her better than anyone now.
And that’s why it burned – it fucking burned.
I would’ve given anything to sit down with her, despite the anger, and hold her hand. Tell her, I get you, ma. I don’t want to forgive you, but I get you.
I hated her. I loved her. I missed her.
I needed something to quell the anger.
But Scarlett, my Dove – she got it all wrong.
She wasn’t a distraction to me, never. She was the end goal. She was the passion burning in my veins, the reason for this – for everything.
I never used her, I couldn’t if I tried. I gave too much of a fuck. She was the only woman in my life I ever had room for.
Her and, well…
I sighed, forcing away the urge to turn back and look at Scarlett Emory-Blake, seated alone, feeling probably worse than I felt.
She wore her defenses on her chest like a badge, I let them show – that’s who the fuck I was, that’s how I created music.
She wasn’t an artist, but she sure was the damn muse.
I wish I wasn’t such a burden in her life.
Sometimes, I wish she let me go.
Maybe she’d be happy. Maybe I was just some moment of weakness when she first met me. She was suffering, she needed an outlet –
Why could she use me but I couldn’t use her?
Isn’t that what we’ve done our whole lives?
Use each other as stepping stones to the next big break? To escape everything and everyone? To soar, to fly –
We were each other’s wings.
Mom used to be –
NO, FUCK, NO.
I had to move. I have to move on. I have to move on.
She’s a broken home. A broken past. A broken woman.
A broken Ryden.
Maybe that’s why my music resonated with people.
Maybe I built my empire off the agony of life.
Did I want that? Is that what I was created for? My legacy?
I’ve met fans, so many goddamn fans across the world who’ve been raised by the pits. Loveless, parentless, abuses galore, discarded –
Discarded.
Discarded.
Huh.
I whistled at Dean. “Throw me that pen and paper, will you?”
He tossed it over, and I scribbled lyrics for a new song: Discarded. Yeah, I’d write that.
I’d cope.
Again, and again, and again.
Let’s face the music. I was a fucking addict, and I wasn’t getting out of this life, this hole.
I thought, for once I goddamn thought… maybe it would get better.
Above all else, maybe my dove would help me.
A moment of weakness.
Fucking hell.
Way to break a man who was already in pieces.