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"Maybe I’ve lost it at last… Maybe my last lucid moment has past… I’m dancing with death, I suppose. But really, who knows?"
The haze of sleep was too thick to shake off in a snap. Jackson let out a hum in the warm fabric of his pillow.
He took a slow, deep breath. And exhaled through his nose, until he could feel no air left in his lungs.
Then, again, one more deep breath.
He turned around, to face the white ceiling. There was already so much light. The curtains were still half-drawn, but were no match for the brightness of the morning that flooded the room. It was probably past nine.
Jackson usually woke up much sooner, but today was an exception for two reasons. One : he had stayed up late every day of the week for work and he needed to catch up on some sleep for the sake of his health. Two ? Well. He had company.
If the singing Jackson could hear coming from the kitchen wasn’t already enough to remind him he wasn’t alone in his apartment, the drawn curtains should have ended any residual doubt.
Jackson usually left the curtains wide open. On some days he woke up earlier than sun, and so there was no risk of being bothered by the light, and the rest of the time the first rays of dawn straight to his face were his own personal alarm clock. He had been doing it for so long that the thought never occurred that it was a habit he could change.
Enter Park Jinyoung, and his determination to shut every pair of curtains in the vicinity come night fall.
It was one of the many things they did differently. One made his bed as soon as his feet hit the cold floor in the morning, the other came back to do it a few minutes later, already fully dressed and the fresh taste of toothpaste still strong in his mouth. One emerged slowly, and needed the familiar embrace of silence to concentrate and come to his senses after a full night of sleep, while the other couldn’t go a waking second without some form of background noise, be it music, the buzz of a microwave or a nature documentary playing on a television screen that no one was sparing a glance at. People were often surprised to find out which of these habits was whose.
Jackson had come to find, their brains were wired differently.
If you had asked him a few years ago, this would have been the full stop of his reasoning. People who work differently, people who don’t have the same reference points and comfort zones can’t understand each other. It would be like holding a conversation with someone who didn’t know your own language.
However, that would be carelessly omitting the fact that Jinyoung, like him, spoke multiple languages. Actually, they spoke most of the same languages. Jackson’s reasoning was flawed.
What Jackson had discovered as Jinyoung’s presence lingered in his life, and felt more and more permanent as the days unwound, was that no two individuals can say their brains are wired the same way. People grow up in different homes, collect different experiences, learn different lessons at different paces… In a way, in life, similarity was the exception, not the rule.
If Jinyoung and Jackson’s minds had functioned the same way, they might have lost the little moments. The thoughts that wouldn’t even bloom on their own.
Jackson had never wanted to close the curtains. And yet, when Jinyoung came over, it was usually on days Jackson could wake up later and catch up on sleep. So Jinyoung, knowing so damn well that Jackson’s eyes snapped open at the slightest ray of sunshine on his face or the softest noise, drew all the curtains shut to buy him some more time to sleep. Jackson would never have thought of that on his own.
Jinyoung’s internal clock seemed to be programmed with so much precision that Jackson wasn’t surprised to find the bed empty.
"They say you should stay with the devil you know… But when life needs a change and the one devil won’t, you fly to the devil you don’t…"
Frankly. It was the singing, not the sunlight that had dissolved the sleep haze from Jackson’s mind and body.
It was far away, it came from the down the hall, and it was muffled because of the closed door that separated the melody from him.
But Jackson would have woken up with a start even if the song had been playing from the other side of the neighbourhood.
He breathed in deeply.
That song.
It had been years since he had last heard it.
Jackson felt as if his body was being ripped from his bed and transported to a different time, a time when his own thoughts sounded foreign to him.
At twenty, you’re only a child.
But a child bearing all the pain of the world on your back. A child with a shattered heart, and frozen lungs that ache with every breath. A child crawling in the dark, desperately calling out in the void to a nameless hope, begging for a little ray of light.
A child that can’t hide behind the bliss of a castle of innocence. You stand in the ruins of all the lessons they taught you, that simply don’t hold against the assaults of coming of age lucidity, and you realise that all the woes they had told you to run away from are the reality of each passing day. So much for cautionary tales, when you recognise in the mirror, in the cracks of your bedroom walls, all the monsters your parents pointed their fingers at in the stories of neighbours and strangers.
When Jackson heard that song for the first time, he was slowly admitting to himself that he had become another story for someone else’s parents to gossip about. A cautionary tale.
However, more than that, Jackson remembered that the first time he heard that song, it was because of Jinyoung.
They had just become friends, after months of unwillingly tearing each other apart by dwelling in the mind of the other. Jinyoung had a leading part in a musical and Jackson was always around somehow, as he was trying to find his grasp on a world where the gravity had vanished, and for some reason Jinyoung was one of the only places where the ground didn’t seem to open beneath Jackson’s feet to swallow him under.
Jinyoung often asked for his help when he was running lines or memorising songs. He trusted Jackson to be his first audience, to be the eyes he looked into as he sang. To be his gravity when the thought of making a mistake in front of hundreds of people, of not living up to the standards of those he worked next to… made his ground tremble.
But it wasn’t then. They weren’t running lines when Jackson had heard that song.
When he had landed the part, Jinyoung had vaguely explained the plot of the show but as Jackson focused on the words of the songs, everything sounded so cryptic. Jinyoung’s role mainly had lines that interrupted other character’s songs, and so Jackson missed a great deal of the complexities of the story.
However, Jackson’s greatest fear at that time was the gaze of others. And especially those whose gaze he desperately needed to remain a clear point against the relentless storm of the mean voices in his head. So instead of asking for a repeat of Jinyoung’s explanation, he had pulled up his phone as soon as his friend had left. He had looked up the name of the musical, read the full plot overview then pressed play on the soundtrack album. Laying in his bed for hours, with his eyes closed, trying to imagine the stage and the actors’ faces, he had realised that Jinyoung’s intrusive lines that he had seen as disjointed and absurd were actually wicked, insidious, desperate —not unlike the voice Jackson had grown accustomed to, poisoning his mind.
While the album was reaching its end, and Jackson felt the clouds of sleep slowly seep through the cracks of his concentration, Jackson had heard it.
Maybe I’ve lost it at last… Maybe my last lucid moment has past…
Jackson’s entire body had frozen. The memory was fragmented, as Jackson remembered falling asleep not long after. That night, his mind had been so troubled that he woke up with so little energy, you’d have thought he had been up for days.
By the time he heard the song for the second time, he had mostly forgotten all about it.
With one more deep breath, Jackson kicked the bedsheet off his body and rolled down the mattress until his feet hit the ground. He grabbed the hem of the sheet and quickly made up the bed, before heading towards the door.
The hallway was cold, and if this was any other morning, Jackson would have run to get ready in the comfortable warmth of the bathroom. Not today, though, his target was locked somewhere else in the apartment.
That was one of the little details in the painting that assured Jackson he wasn’t dreaming or walking through a memory.
Long gone were their respective campus rooms, their lonely boxes that had turned to warm nests hidden from the world as they kept meeting there, even just to lay on Jackson’s bed without saying anything. Now, they both owned a place they could call home.
On that they differed too. Jackson had chosen to live near the city centre, where everything you could possibly need was within only a few kilometres, where he could feel the life flow of the streets, the skylines coursing through every step. Jinyoung had preferred the distance of the nearest periphery, not too isolated to need to constantly drive anywhere, but where the quietness allowed for longer walks and longer commutes, looking outside the window of a train as the dawn breaks over the cityscape.
Sometimes Jackson joked that it was like they had two houses because they somehow managed to end up at the same dinner and breakfast table at least twice a week. Mostly Jackson’s because they both worked in the city, so it was always more convenient to crash at the nearest address.
Jackson peeked through the kitchen door, opening it only slightly. Jinyoung was singing to himself, without a backing track or music coming through earphones. He probably wasn’t even aware that it was loud enough for Jackson to hear, maybe he didn’t even realise he was singing since it had become his daily language.
Jackson stayed like this for a minute, just looking at him as put the clean dishes in the cupboards and hummed the second part of the duet.
Jinyoung was on stage when Jackson had heard the song for the second time.
"It’s the first run-through, if you’re not there I’m gonna die."
That had been the —dramatic, but effective— argument that had brought Jackson to the auditorium that afternoon. It was raining, that he remembered very clearly.
There weren’t many people in the audience seats. Jackson was the only stranger, everyone else worked on the show’s production. But Jackson, maybe for the first time in his life, didn’t feel out of place in an unfamiliar space. He knew why he was there, he knew where the gravity in the room was. It was himself. He was holding the ground still, he was clearing the air of any poison. His gaze was the only thing keeping the earth from falling apart in that moment, and it was an unspoken secret shared only between the two of them.
The run-through was reaching its end, Jinyoung was standing on the side of the naked stage with some of his costars, as the two lead actresses, playing mother and daughter, walked forward.
Jackson could see that Jinyoung’s hands were shaking a bit. He remembered that his big, climactic number was only a few songs away. He had heard enough times the tremble in his voice, as he channelled the anger, the despair and grief of his character to guess that it was the part of the show that scared him the most.
And then, those opening piano notes, and the words that rose in the empty auditorium tore Jackson’s gaze away from Jinyoung’s nervous, agitated figure.
Maybe I’ve lost it at last… Maybe my last lucid moment has past…
Jackson had never listened to a song the way he listened to every word that the actress uttered so perfectly, so profoundly.
Before he could exhort his body to keep it together just a little longer until the saddest numbers, warm tears drenched his cheeks.
In that moment, he couldn’t quite find any words, in any language. In that moment he felt like a child. A sobbing, heartbroken child, tugging at the sleeves of adults whose faces he couldn’t make out through the tears, searching for an answer. Asking why it hurts so much, if it will ever go away. A child who became an adult, still crying out for the same answers, still trying to make it out of the dark tunnel.
And as the two characters center-stage argued, as the music rose louder and tenser, Jackson found he couldn’t separate the whirl of insidious thoughts in his mind from the words the two actresses threw at each other.
"Things will get better you’ll see..."
"Not for me."
"You’ll see."
"Not for me !"
‘"You’ll see !"
"Not for me !"
"You’ll see…"
Jackson’s head was spinning.
Then, the song turned quiet again.
And the last words that were sung before the show carried on as if nothing had shaken in that moment, Jackson took with him everywhere for months and months.
As if a lock had been pulled away from a crumbly, overflowing pipe, Jackson didn’t stop crying. As one heartbreaking song followed another, he only cried harder and harder until the end of the run through. Despite Jinyoung staring right at him during the last group number, he didn’t wipe his cheeks.
In fact, Jackson didn’t stop crying for months.
"But there'll be no more crying, not for me. Things will get better you'll see. Not for me, you'll see…"
Jackson finally pushed the door and slipped inside the kitchen.
"That’s not your part." he quipped, his voice still low and thick with sleep
Jinyoung whipped around, one coffee mug in each hand. A smile took over his face as he opened his arms wide. Jackson laughed and slid down the shiny tiles of the floor to meet his embrace.
Jackson closed his eyes.
It had been years now, since the last time they had struggled to find their gravity. They had encountered it in themselves along the way. They didn’t feel like children anymore, most days at least.
Jinyoung put down the mugs on the counter behind him, and used his free hands to gently lift up Jackson’s face.
There was a gleam in his eyes that Jackson would run home to, even if it meant racing across the ocean water.
"Maybe we can’t be okay." Jinyoung kept singing, his smile turning softer, and his words clearer as they would be on stage —but today, he was Jackson’s star only. "But maybe we’re tough and we’ll try anyway. We’ll live with what’s real. Let go of what’s past and maybe I’ll see you at last."
Jackson smiled back. He felt Jinyoung’s hand travel to the back of his head, pulling him closer, in the crook of his shoulder, and swaying around in a strange, lopsided slow-dance.
In the warmth, the last reel of memories rolled.
The show had run for several nights. Jackson had been in the audience for every single one of them. And every time, he would close his eyes when the familiar piano notes started playing, and he listened to every word carefully. Then, when Jinyoung’s heatwrenching last song and the climatic number came, he just cried his eyes out.
"I tried to chase a normal life. I realise now, I have no clue what that is." Jackson hummed to himself
"That’s not how it goes." Jinyoung laughed
After the last show, Jackson hadn’t heard the song again. The memory of it did cross his mind occasionally but he had never taken any time to listen to it one more time. It was almost surprising that he had recognised it from the first lines after so many years, especially in the midst of his slumber.
After the last show, Jackson had kept crying for some time, so had Jinyoung.
Heartbroken children find the answers they long for, not in the hermetic and stoic façades of adults —window-dressing, a coat of stability and maturity painted over a crumbling wall— but in the deepest, most suffocating corners of their own pain.
He looked up at Jinyoung, who had stopped singing and was just swaying, bringing Jackson along in his tide.
"You’re not gonna finish it ?" he pouted
Jinyoung laughed.
"You know the words too."
That, Jackson did. Even after so many years, he didn’t have to summon the memory. They just rolled down his tongue like a lesson learned in the most intimate, personal way.
"I don’t need a life that’s normal." Jackson picked up right where he left off himself. "That’s way too far away. But something next to normal would be okay."
In that moment, all those years ago, anything remotely close to peace of mind had seemed just too far out of reach. All the cautionary tales had warned him against the greatest enemy : the pain that tears every fibre of your soul to shreds, the sadness that turns your body so heavy that you can’t even get up in the morning, the dark tunnel of loneliness that grips your throat until you’re fighting every day to catch your breath.
Rock bottom.
When Jackson and Jinyoung had finally found themselves unable to stop the tears from pouring, they had felt the taste of rock bottom all over their mouth. And that was when the voice in Jackson’s head, his blanket of doubt and dark thoughts, had snapped.
He had always felt like he was surrounded by a thick, grey fog. He had begged for light, for clarity, for an open road.
And he had found it then and there.
As he realised he was at rock bottom, his eyes had never felt sharper. His thoughts had never been so clear, so calm. He had tears welling up in his eyes every minute, and yet his vision could cross through time and space without any bit of blurriness.
The cautionary tales had misled them. Rock bottom wasn’t the enemy.
Rock bottom was an old, wise adviser smacking you over the head with a stick to teach you that pain is an instant in time. Rock bottom was a lifeline, thrown at sea, waiting for someone to decide that they didn’t want to keep drowning.
Rock bottom wasn’t cold and hard, as Jackson would have expected. It was a friend with a kind face and eyes full of sorrow. Jackson thought that it would be the throne of bones of all the worst voices storming through his brain, and yet he couldn’t hear them as he stopped falling. Instead, he heard a plea. A plea that sounded like his own voice, begging for him to listen.
So Jackson did listen. He had closed his eyes and taken a deep breath, and let the wave crash over him. Nothing in his twenty years of existence up to that point had been as painful as just listening and observing, repeating all the cruel words he had hurled at himself that he would never direct to anyone else ever, all the things he had told himself he wasn’t worthy of, all the joys he forbade himself from feeling, all the times he had tripped himself on his way to happiness, all the years the cruel words had robbed him of… The friends he had hurt by keeping his safe distance. All the people he had misunderstood, because all his brain could read in their blank gazes was mockery and judgement.
Rock bottom had been his saving grace. A moment of clarity so violent that he could call it a turning point of his entire life. The moment he had needed to choose : push the pain away just a few years longer, to breathe a little, or listen. Listen to the cry of despair of the small, crying child who couldn’t understand why all those cruels words were thrown at him. Jackson still cried for that child today. Still promised him every day that he would make it up to him. That he’d be kind.
Jackson had realised in that moment, on his knees, at rock bottom, that he had to save himself. He couldn’t go on like this, constantly drowning in his own mind, he had to find the lifeline and grab onto it.
Now, as both him and Jinyoung agreed, that was no easy task. It was a journey of many, many years, of many more lessons, many moments of anger at the slow progress and hope as the pieces of the puzzle begin to make sense at last.
Even on the other side of it, Jackson's heart still ached for the boy he only saw in pictures nowadays, and not on the other side of a mirror anymore.
He didn’t feel free of pain and sorrow, but he felt awake. Almost as if many years of his life had been spent in the haze of one of those dreams you have in the limbo between light and deep sleep.
So Jackson had found his joy. His happiness. His better days. His "yes"s and "no"s instead of "maybe"s. At the end of the line, he had found the rays of sunshine flooding the rooms of his life.
He smiled against Jinyoung’s shoulder.
"Yeah, something next to normal." he sang breathily. "That’s the thing I’d like to try. Close enough to normal. To get by."
Jinyoung put their foreheads together, and Jackson thought he could see all the kindness of the world in those eyes looking in his.
"We’ll get by." Jinyoung concluded
Jackson held him tighter.
Perhaps there would be no greater lesson in life for him to learn than maybes can be the language of an anxious mind just as much as the affirmation of a confident and tranquil heart, welcoming every day like a story written moment by moment. Maybes can trap someone in the twists and turns of all the wrong outcomes, or free their spirit with the wings of adventures to take on.
Jackson didn’t resent the maybes. On the contrary he was grateful, because they heard him out. He didn’t need to be a different person, to trade his body or mind with a less troubled human being to get his shot at better days. He just had to find within himself the truth to all the lies his mind had made up. He just needed a slow, steady shift in perspective.
So maybe there was a storm ahead, or maybe there was a beautiful, serene lake. Either way, a world full of maybes didn’t scare him anymore. He had his eyes on the prize, he had a few clear certainties that were enough to brave all the unexpected twists of life.
And if being alive meant feeling everything on a spectrum from the screaming joy that possesses every single one of your muscles, to the seething anger burning so violently you can’t stand on your feet by yourself, to the overflowing love that splashes all over all the colours of the earth, to the suffocating pain that brings you to your knees, then he would feel every one of them to fullest of his body’s capacity. He would have an epic life, a romantic life, on par with the greatest novels ever written.
And maybe, just maybe, his most beautiful happy ending had name he already loved all the letters of. All the smiles, all the kind eyes, and the singing mornings.
Better days weren’t a promised land haunting their mournful what-ifs anymore, they were the greatest promise they had ever kept, to themselves and to each other.