My blonde hair and blue eyes in no way resemble their brown hair and green eyes. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I was adopted. Maybe that’s why they don’t like me, because I’m not their flesh and blood. But who exactly am I? Who exactly are they? I’m unsure.
I haven’t been sure since I turned thirteen and everyone decided they didn’t want to be my friend anymore at school. A few months later, I was diagnosed with depression after I stopped doing… Well, everything. Even with medication, I couldn’t quite find my place in the world anymore. Honestly, I don’t know if the diagnosis is right or if the doctor just wanted to find something that would explain my lack of dedication for life and my parents’ general disappointment in it.
I don’t know why, but it just seemed like everyone was suddenly walking forward in a straight line while I was moving against them in an unsteady and crooked path that no one else could see. And the more I stayed on that path, the more my family, and everyone else, didn’t want me around anymore.
I became invisible.
I’m not certain how long I stand in the hallway, observing my family eating dinner but it’s long enough for my mother to glance up and look right through me.
Guess I really am invisible.
After another couple of laughs, I decide it’s time to leave. I backtrack to my room to grab my wallet and car keys then head for the front door.
“Be back by ten,” my mother calls out without looking in my direction. “I mean it, Tristan. If you’re late this time then…”
Then what?
She never finishes.
I jerk open the door and walk outside. Then I drive and drive and drive until I end up in a town over an hour away. I’m not even sure what compels me to go there. I know why other people go there—to get high. I used to fear places like these but my fear’s been dwindling lately.
I can’t feel very much fear anymore.
In fact, I don’t really feel anything.
I end up parking at a gas station and climbing out of the car when a few guys stroll by, heading inside. One of them I know from school. I say hi and they wave back. And just like that, everything changes.
“I know you, right?” A guy named Clayson says it. He’s in the same grade as me, but the other two are older I think.
I shove my hands into my pockets. “Yeah, I go to school with you. We’re in the same English class.”
“Oh, right,” He nods his head, but clearly he doesn’t remember who I am.
One of the older guys reaches into his jacket and retrieves a bottle of alcohol. He twists off the lid, takes a swig, then passes it to the next guy. When they‘ve all drank from the bottle, Clayson offers me a drink.
“You cool?” he asks as he extends the bottle to me.
I’ve been drunk a couple of times and have gotten high on my mom’s pills she keeps stashed in her purse, so I barely hesitate before grabbing the bottle and sipping from it. I fight not to gag from the burn as I hand the bottle back. Things start moving in a different direction after that.
We end up going to a party out in the middle of a dilapidated neighborhood. I’m drunk by the time we arrive and am more chatty than usual. The night seems to get darker the later it gets, alcohol turning to drugs.
“You want a hit?” the guy having the party asks me as he holds a joint in my direction, the pungent smoke funneling through the air.
I haven’t caught his name yet and I’m so drunk I can barely tell what he looks like, let alone where I am or what’s going on around me. I should hate the feeling. I really should.
But I don’t.
Hate it.
Just like I don’t feel.
Anything.
I end up taking my first hit without too much thought. For the briefest moment, when the smoke singes my lungs, I swear my life stands still. There is no future, no past, no worry, no hate, just motionless darkness and me in the center of it, like a star in the universe.
I just took my very first hit.
I’ve officially done drugs.
What does that make me?
Bad?
Good?
Nothing?
Rowdy music plays from a stereo, shrieking lyrics that mix with my thoughts.
Why can’t I figure out who I am?
Another toke then another, wishing I could stop feeling the damn emptiness and loneliness eating away at me. Maybe that’s why I keep going, keep taking hit after hit. Maybe I’m searching for a way to fill the void. Or maybe I’m just trying to speed up the dying process. Who really knows at this point since my mind is too far gone.
Suddenly, the music stops and cursing takes its place.
But I don’t move.
Why am I here?
Time is endless.
I am endless.
Life is endless.
I’m an endless disappointment.
Where am I even going in life?
“Dude, did you hear anything I just said?” The voice jolts me out of my thoughts.
I’m sprawled out on a tattered plaid sofa, straight out of the seventies, with the hood of my jacket pulled over my head and my eyes fixed on the stained ceiling. Smoke filters the room and saturates my lungs and the drugs burn deep inside my chest and veins. I’m not sure how long I’ve been there, how many minutes have ticked by since I’ve dazed off, but nothing seems to have changed since then.
“No.” My voice is an echo and I wonder if I even said it aloud. Maybe it’s just me having a conversation with myself.
But then a guy with bloodshot, bleary eyes and shaggy hair appears in my vision. He has a smile on his face that says his life just stood still for a moment too. “You’ve been lying there for like three hours.”
“What?” Through the haziness inside my brain, I realize there’s a fuller meaning. It’s been three hours. I glance at the clock and then jump from the sofa. “Shit, I was supposed to be home like two hours ago.”
The guy laughs at me. I don’t get what’s so funny, just like I can’t remember his name.
“Just chill, okay,” he says. “You’re already late, so you might as well make the most of it.”
I should care. Why don’t I care? What does that say about me as a person?
I check my phone for messages and see that there’s not so much as a missed call from anyone. As the loneliness crawls under my skin again, I sit back down, deciding to stay.
The first call or text from my parents is when I’ll rush home.
The guy sinks down on the sofa across from mine as I put my phone away and blink around at the room crammed with people. Beer bottles litter the floor and from somewhere in the house, I hear people shouting about turning the music back on.