Feet, Don't Fail Me Now

Took 50 fucking dramamine Tuesday night, before work.

Fucked some orders up, pissed some people off.

Had ZERO short-term memory. Like a blank slate, erased every five minutes. Huge flashes of black would block my vision out. Kept talking about Andy and "Ian" (Jordan) when mom was yelling at me about different things.

Have you ever completely accepted the fact that you were going to die?

I did, five minutes after taking all those pills.

With the taste of them still bitter on the back of my tongue, dropping a cup for some order I had already forgotten, I realized, this was it.

I accepted my fate, and I wasn't afraid.

Disappointment: getting grounded for being on Skittles, which I lied about so my parents wouldn't take away my dramamine.

You know what? I'm still prepared to die.

I'm fucking determined.

Fuck it.

I love you, I love you.

Alex

Where is the love?

Jesus fuck, I haven't posted in a long time.

I kinda lied about why I made this blog. I guess I want help... I'm out of places to turn to.

That's the hardest handful of words I've ever had to type.

Anyway.

Since we last talked, Ian turned 16, I smoked a lot of weed, I turned 16, I lost my virginity, I tried to kill myself on Alex's birthday, and then Ian abandoned me.

I started talking to this new guy, Andy. Andrew. Over the three months we were together, I fell in love with him. Phone calls every night, staying on the line until we woke up for school, him listening through the phone as I slept, cute little inside jokes.

"You talk a lot of shit."

I ruined it, all of it.

Something my mom said to me the other day... "You shouldn't be crying this hard. Nobody cries like that unless somebody died."

Way to belittle my feelings, mother.

What I had with Andy was amazing... something new, a different kind of slow, patient love.

I love him.

...

You know something I've never done?

I've never ever ever never ever broken a promise.

That was something I told Alex I'd never do.

That's why Andy is so mad at me. I broke a promise I made to him. Also, I let Alex down. So.

Alex gave me this key, a little decorative jewelry-looking one, that never really unlocked anything. He used to wear it all the time. I believe it was December 31st, 2009, that he gave me that, on a chain. Since that night, I have never taken it off. I've always worn it around my neck. The chain he gave me with it has been replaced a few times, but it's the key that counts.

Last night, when Andy ended it all, I downed a shitload of dramamine. Passed out at 11 pm, woke up at 2 pm this afternoon. Went to Andy's, sat on his porch swing, and I told him I'd fix this.

He said he didn't see how.

I took off my key, Alex's key, and gave it to him.

He didn't want to take it. He tried to give it back. I'll probably find it in my car after school tomorrow.

Come Saturday, he'll find it on his porch.

Come Sunday, Andy's 18th birthday, I'll find it back in my car, and this will continue until he gives up and keeps the damn thing.

Or until I'm no longer alive to find it hanging from my rearview mirror, sitting on my dash, or laying in my black-shag driver's seat.

After all this, I realized something.

Alex is gone, for which I partially blame myself. Ian is gone, and this happened because I chose Andy over him. Now Andy's gone, because I broke a promise-- my personal moral foundation of honesty and of everything that is good and just in this world. I realized two things here:

1. I can't do a goddamn thing right. Everything I touch explodes, and I'm left to trudge through the aftermath with plenty of scars. Is it even worth it?

2. I had no one to call. No one. Not one person would answer the phone. I've called Alex's number plenty of times, annoying the piss out of some guy named Michael who has his cell number now. Every time I call Ian I end up in tears. Andy answers for a fraction of a second, then closes his phone. I'm not going to sit down and explain the entire situation to anyone else, because no one else is close enough.

I read somewhere once that suicide is the result when the pain exceeds the resources available to cope with that pain. Look who's run out of coping resources.

I wonder how many of these pills will kill me?

Dramamine will fuck your shit up if you take 10.

What if you take 50?

60?

I guess we'll see.

Forever yours,
Alex

Why Ian is the way he is

Why does Ian stay? Why does he still care? Does he still care?

I have no idea. Sometimes I think he's only still with me so that I don't hurt myself. He knows I don't break promises.

Over the summer, we both really needed each other.

In March, on the 24th of 2010, Alex killed himself. Three days later, Ian's grandmother, the woman who raised him and loved him the most and watched him skate and comforted him and was his biggest fan, passed away after fighting so hard for months against breast cancer.

I never met Ian's grandmother. I wish, so hard, that I would have had the privilege.

I believe that the way she stood by him, the values that she instilled in him, really impacted his life. Even when she could barely hold herself up, she supported him. She was the only one who really watched him skate.

"Grandma, watch this!"

I'd imagine he said that so many times, and it's strange to put that kind of enthusiasm in Ian's voice.

Never once was his mother supportive of his skating. He lived with his grandma and grandpa for most of his life.

I think that his grandma's love for him is reflected in how he stands by me. Over the summer, I was really mad at Ian for something that I can't even remember, and I got a text a while later that read,

"Please don't leave me alone..."

I really believe that he feels alone. I do, too, and I think that's why he's still here. I've talked to him about his grandma before, and he was in tears...

I do love Ian, but I don't think it's quite in the way that I want to put it...

He's my best friend.

I'm not afraid of you, bright eyes.
Alex

Archery lessons.

No, not bows and arrows. I had a friend named Alex Archer, and he taught me a lot about stuff.

Alex turned 17 on March 24th, 2010. This was 10 days after I turned 15. He was my best friend.

On his birthday of that year, I went to his house to surprise him. I had moved, so he wasn't expecting me to come all the way from another town. His sister was cooking his birthday dinner in the kitchen downstairs, and she said Alex was in his room. I went to the second floor, to his room, and he wasn't there. The bathroom door was kind of open, so I knocked, waited, and pushed it open the rest of the way.

My very best friend, the scrawny track star with the emo-kid haircut whose parents abused him before he was emancipated, hung from the light fixture in the bathroom with a rope around his neck. His arms were cut and bleeding, razor blades scattered over the floor. His legs were cut through his jeans. His black shirt, that was a little too big for him, was smeared with bloody handprints.

Thank god his eyes were closed.

It was unreal, like I was reading it in a book rather than looking at this... mess...

I stood in the doorway for a long time, not moving, just shaking... not crying... Until Alex's sister, Elizabeth, came upstairs to see what was wrong. She closed the bathroom door, and we sat outside Alex's bathroom and cried for a long time.

Even writing about it, though I'm sure it will help me in the long run, is painful to me now. My hands are shaking as I type this.

I'm going to call Ian...

Love,
Alex

Ahh, young love.

Nobody's too young to fall in love. This emotion, the fireworks that go off deep in your chest, that warm, fuzzy feeling... It's a gift everyone should be able to enjoy.

Nobody I know knows that I have this blog.

All the names I've used on here have been changed, so that absolutely no one I know can find it. This is a secret, yet public, documentation of my life.

If anyone I know were to read these posts, my deepest thoughts, I'd undoubtedly be put in a hospital somewhere. :/

It's hard hiding your feelings from the ones you love, but sometimes, it's necessary.

Wanna hear a secret?

I love Ian. I have for a long time. I know him inside and out. He's been here with me through everything, to hell and back. Sometimes I feel like I'm bothering him with the things that I tell him, about myself. That's why I made this: because he doesn't know that I love him. He has no idea that my heart beats faster every time I think of him. He has no idea how often I do think of him. He has no idea how much I'd love to just hold him, just to stay there forever in his arms. Never moving, growing old together. Just falling asleep with him, just being with him.

I'm sure that, at the very last moment of my life, I'll tell him. I won't call an ambulance or my parents or anyone else-- the moment I'm sure that I'll pass away, I'll call Ian and tell him.

Never sooner. I would never be able to handle rejection like that from my best friend...

I don't even think he considers me his best friend. I feel like I'm just the annoying girl he has to put up with on a daily basis.

Holding all that in... It hurts.

A lot.

Cordially yours,
Alex

Introducing Alex "The Fonz" Archer

I only wish I was as cool as the Fonz. Anywho.

Let's get some of this "about me" junk out of the way.

I was born in a small town with some siblings, just like everybody else. The shit really hit the fan when my parents got a divorce. My psychotic, alcoholic, drug-addicted father decided he was going to file bankruptcy on the house that my mom, my younger sisters, and I were living in... he'd already moved out at that point.

So we had to move away from our friends and family, closer to where my mom worked-- another small town. I was seriously pissed off. My biological dad kept fighting for custody of me and my sisters, just so he could get back at my mom for leaving his lying ass. My youngest sister still sees him during visitation, but my other sister and myself are free. He traded us for her in a deal with the judge. Nice.

He was always an asshole, for the first 13 years of my life, up until I never had to see him again. I don't miss him, and I'd be glad if he wound up dead in a ditch somewhere like the lying meth-head he is.

Oh, and, here comes the drama-fest.

So I started, freshman year, attending a new high school. My high school experience began with zero friends, the new kid. But I was optimistic, and eventually met some pretty neat people, mostly guys.

Girls are shallow, we all know. They be hatin. Don't need to be jealous, ladies. It's obvious. I see it.

Anyways. Soon, I got really close to this one guy, Tyler. We dated for a few months, things were great, until I went on vacation and he called me, told me he was cheating on me, and hung up on me. Cool.

I was devastated, until I met Ian.

Ian quickly became my best friend. He's a skater, and he's fucking awesome, not even kidding. I don't know what a lazerflip is, but... shit, kid.

After the breakup, in like, early June, I went to the pool with Ian. (Ian never really got in the pool, the entire summer. Jeans? Really, skaters? God. I don't get it.) Tyler was there. Ian sat across the table from us while we talked. I got kinda mad, and I punched him.

Ian just kind of sat there like, "Wtf..."

A while after that was resolved, me and Ian (being 15-- kinda young, huh?) started dating a little bit. By "a little bit," I mean, we were never really public about it, and we never really got that far. We mutually decided we were better off being friends-- and after dating on and off all summer, we could go right back to being best friends. I loved how nothing changed at all. That's why we worked so well together.

Well, in September 2010, I lost my virginity.

Woah, slow down there, Alex. You just said you and Ian stopped dating. And you're 15. Slut.

Calm down, readers. I'm not a slut, and me and Ian weren't dating. On September 13th, 2010, at about 4:00 pm, I was raped in a library bathroom. Yeah... it was Tyler.

At about 5:00, before I could tell Ian about it, I was watching him skate out front of the high school. We had argued earlier that day about him smoking cigarettes, so we didn't talk much the rest of that day. After he went home, I sat in my car in the high school parking lot, blasting the radio and crying my eyes out.

I went home around 8:00 and lied to my parents about why I'd been crying. Told them some bullshit story about how a girl at school was starting rumors. They left me alone.

10:00 pm: got on Facebook and started talking to Ian. I asked him if he'd heard the song, "Kristy, Are You Doing Okay?" by the Offspring.

http://www.6lyrics.com/kristy_are_you_doing_okay-lyrics-the_offspring.aspx

In case you haven't heard it, there's the lyrics. I cry every time I hear it, no joke.

He knew. And he said he'd take care of it. He said he was going to beat the shit out of Tyler (who had the nerve to show up to school the next day). I told him not to do anything, but he said something had to be done.

I said something to one of my other friends about it, a slip of the tongue, if you will. I denied it straightaway. She (oh, look, another girl spreading a rumor, even after she's told outright it's not true, and even though she doesn't know what really happened.) told her dad about it, who is a cop. He told my stepdad about it, who is also a cop. Word got to my mom, and she went to Ian's house and asked him if he knew what had happened.

Ian spilled everything. Told her who it was.

I got off work and a police officer pulled up next to me and asked me to go to the station for questioning. I freaked out a little, but I went (having absolutely no idea that anyone but Ian knew).

They took my clothes from that day, I went to the hospital to get shots and birth control and everything, and Tyler got arrested on Friday of the same week.

So now it's January, and that day in September still feels like it was yesterday. All I've got left is Ian.

God fucking damnit that was long. If you're still with me after all that, thank you.

Now you have some idea of why I'm this fucked up, and you have some idea how important Ian is to me. You'll hear more about Ian in the future. Promise.

Love,

Alex

And Alex said, "Let there be a blog."

Alex saw the blog, and it was good.

Alright, to start this off: Alex, why did you start a blog?

Have you ever wanted to be in a sitcom? Then you could just look back on your life whenever you want to. I'll be posting on here pretty much every day, documenting my life, for future reference and the entertainment of anyone who reads this.

All the world's a stage, after all.

My life gets pretty damn complicated, so good luck keeping up, and I truly hope you do. I want people to see my mistakes, to learn from them, and maybe help me out along the road.

Sincerely,
Alex