Work Text:
*Wrrr, shhhhh. Bip*
So, yeah, radio check. Ahem, is it running? Okay, so… I’m sick and tired of video recordings, but leaving these things unsaid is not an option, so at least a dictaphone should suffice. As I said before, I should have started talking to myself long ago. There will be many vague sentences and thoughts because I didn’t prepare any text beforehand, so bear with me. I’ll start with recent mind-occupying things.
Thoughts. Oh lord, it’s such a luxury. In the last few years, they were something unreachable. But now… Now there is a lot of time and things to think everything through.
The life before merged into one big pile of incomprehensible and uncovered. It’s like you exist for one day, but then memories and feelings mix together again. Not the best feelings or memories for the record. *Chuckle*
The feeling of reality came back with the thud of the body falling out of the balcony. And blood on hands. Or this was after? It’s hard to remember clearly. It feels like a dream, one that is too real to be a part of imagination, but at the same time so unbelievable. There is no such thing as waking up one day a mile from home and not remembering why. At least there shouldn’t be such a thing if you’re leading a mediocre life. Plus you get to know that you also don’t have a job anymore. Or loved ones.
It’s a well-known story to everyone, or at least a lot of people: a mother sent her child to a psychiatric hospital, then a lot of tests, check-ups, escapes, and medications.
But I don’t really want to think of that. I want to recollect something else: the first things that managed to actually stay in memory, things that could finally be learned. The first passed test. The discharge from the hospital. Enrollment in a college. Meeting your person. You know, a story of a guy who wasn’t supposed to lead a normal life, but he tried. A memory that resembles an old tape recording. What an ironical comparison, right?
So yes, this is one of those tapes, where the sun is in contre-jour, and everything shines with colors that are brighter than they were in reality, the picture quality could be better but you still keep it because your first steps towards each other are there, first confessions, feelings. And when you look at it you can still feel the warmth of that day.
He had the experience to compare, I didn’t, but I still know how I looked in other’s eyes - and I wouldn’t risk talking to myself. But this guy still decided to stick around. I had the feeling in my guts from the start that it was a bad idea - to get closer. But I couldn’t help myself, how can you hold back when his eyes were brighter than the stars, with those wrinkles around them, a blasting laugh, and a presence that filled up all the space around him? And like that, we got closer. So close that at one point one heart could touch the other through bare skin. It was a harbor. A shelter for all the wounded and exhausted, welfare for those starved for human warmth. It was so stupid and desperate, but honest and adhesive. God, how could I forget something like that…
That harbor extended for some more people. That filming was like a new door opening, walking into a bigger world with his hand in mine. It became a real oasis then. Everything felt so normal, teenage-curved and sharp, even though we were almost adults then. You wished for the moment to last till the end of time.
But then you realize it was a mirage. A moment of stillness before the storm. Because everything you remember happened three years ago, you no longer study at the university, you’re fired from work and your harbor is gone.
Your shelter is not by your side for a long time now because he’s missing.
But then comes a new one. Well, comes back, to be exact, and he’s just as wounded as you now, infected, dragged into this swamp. And you start opening up again, to hope for something, find balance on a string of sanity above a pit of madness.
But everything gets ruined again, twisted, and distorted so that in the end it destroys itself. And some moments later you kill both of them with your own hand. Or not your own, or don’t kill, but free him, because all that’s left is an empty shell of what once was a person.
And no one will explain anything or say how to continue living with this hole in your chest, lost years on your shoulders, or how to find the strength to keep moving forward. The doctors say, said, and will continue saying in the future that it’s all just a diagnosis. Oh, I wish. I hope that pills will help to close this abyss inside me. But maybe it’s for the better that they don’t know what they’re actually trying to treat.
Did I mention already that I could come back to reality only when the last pieces of my harbor leaked as blood through my hands? So, yeah. Sanity returned only now, hours from the place where the tragedy unfolded, the existence of which will now forever remain questionable.
But the emptiness is still here, inside of the heart. So deep that it will be easier to swallow a pack of pills and end everything rather than try to reach the bottom of it. Though I don’t have a right to do so. I still see them, him, in my dreams. He smiles with that never-changing tenderness, runs up to me, and hugs me, asking: what took you so long? But there is always something that shifts in his gaze while looking at me as if he’s sad because my time hasn’t come yet. And then leaves.
So yeah, my time hasn’t come yet. Maybe I will never be able to get what I had earlier. But life goes on. I will remember each one of them. And him. And one day we all will meet again to make a better film.
That’s all. End of the recording.
*Shhhhh. Crack*