Ironically, I loved people. My mind and body just couldn’t tolerate their proximity. I liked to see the best in everyone. I wished for a world free from ugliness and judgement where every kid had the same chance to wake up as an adult feeling like they’d made it. Like I had made it, despite coming from the most improbable background. I knew too well what it felt like to be on the receiving end of hatred, to have people mock and sneer, point out your differences for no other reason than it made them feel good for a moment. I often wondered if they knew the harm that fleeting moment inflicted upon their recipient. Did they know their harsh word, their lack of compassion or acceptance, could result in an evening, a month…a lifetime of their target feeling like a worthless fuck, or did they simply not care?
After grabbing a scotch, I padded to my favourite spot – the terrace. I didn’t drink scotch often, only when I needed to settle stirrings of nerves in my stomach. I didn’t know why I’d been feeling them lately, though I had my suspicions. Still, I would worry about them another day. Pulling up a seat under the wooden gazebo, I propped my guitar against the table, set down my drink, and yanked my notebook from my back pocket. To me, a notebook felt like a friend, someone I could share my most intimate secrets and feelings with. Our relationship was synergistic and beautiful; the pages needed to be filled as much as I needed to fill them, and I’d carried one with me for as long as I could remember. I had cupboards, drawers filled with them, stuffed with lyrics that would never see the light of day again, songs that would never be heard, memories too painful to share.
I loved it here, this spot east of the infinity pool that appeared to fall into the rolling green hill below. As dark skies veiled the city, the moon shone just brightly enough to create the illusion of crystals surfing the delicate waves of the ocean ahead. Fuck, I was lucky. I never forgot that, for even a second. I had everything a man could ever want, more success than I could have longed for back as a lanky twelve-year-old with a broken guitar, crafting rhythms in the damp air at the back of the garden shed, and there was no reason for it. No reason why I deserved this life and the dude smashing his set at the local dive bar night after night didn’t. I wasn’t the best musician in the world. Hell, I hadn’t even been the best act in my year of Next Up. There were thousands of artists with more talent and drive than me scattered across the globe who would never reach the level of success I’d seen. Why? Luck. Pure and simple.
I slapped the notebook on the table, opened to the first blank page and smoothed out the leather spine. I felt better already. Calmer. I preferred the dark, my pages lit only by the faint glow of the string lights above. I bit the cap off my pen and spat it onto the large table, then waited for the words to come. Sometimes it took a while - minutes, hours, even weeks. Other times they’d hit me like a knee to the gut in an unexpected and, often, inconvenient moment. Tonight, I knew what I wanted to say and, more importantly, who I wanted to say it to. So, I took a sip of the drink I probably shouldn’t have poured, let the smoky flavours warm my throat, and poised my pen.
Home
I wanna go home
My head tipped back, eyes closed, as I took the dry air into my lungs. I spent almost all my time here, hidden away in the hills of LA, when I wasn’t out on the road, but I’d never called it home. Home wasn’t a place, certainly wasn’t the house I grew up in with two parents who’d never let me forget I was their greatest regret. On some level I didn’t think they’d meant to, didn’t think they were inherently bad people. They just…didn’t understand me. I could be difficult and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t stop the shutdowns or the outbursts, or the weeks I’d spend mute and motionless in my bedroom. I had so many thoughts, so many emotions and fears but I couldn’t get them out. Still couldn’t, without a pen in my hand.
As my thoughts shifted, nudging the cobwebs off memories I’d buried at the back of my mind, I remembered the day I’d turned up at school with a black eye, courtesy of my mum. She hadn’t given it to me out of anger, more despair. Hopelessness. The day before, I hadn’t been able to face school for the fourth day in a row. She’d come home from a night shift, likely dreading the act of having to wake me, and I hadn’t surprised her. As usual, I wouldn’t, couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. She dragged me upright on the bed, shook my shoulders. She begged and pleaded with me to snap out of it, told me the school were on her back about my absences. She’d started crying, helpless, said for what must’ve been the millionth time in my life that she shouldn’t have had me, then started slapping and grabbing at my head and face while continuing to cry. Her begging turned to yells, and I knew what was happening, was aware of every strike, every shout, but hadn’t felt a thing. I had this uncanny ability to completely zone out, desensitise myself from my surroundings.