pursuit of happiness {tobias wu reaction post}

Death. It’s not something I’ve been willing to face these last three years. Her eyes were like embers, boring into my skull and they screamed that Mordecai was dead and that every day I walked those twisted streets was a day wasted. But I found him. It was a miracle. Perhaps I have more of that idealistic child, clinging to happy endings and white picket fences, left in me than I’d like to admit. I thought that my near death experience would have shattered whatever was left of the innocence I took for granted but here it is. I can see the shards scattered at my feet- just thick enough to slit my throat.

Mordecai is dead. I watched him die upon a flat screen and my mother cried in the static background that her lovely son was dead. And I was sat upon the couch but it was like I had never existed. As if Mordecai was the only man who mattered and I think I might resent him a bit for that. For his perfection. I remember yearning to be everything that he was, to earn the affection in my mother’s gaze that was her spring-shower smile whenever Cai had done well in training. But he always did well. (It’s not a damn surprise) I’d want to yell- looking at the bones in my frail fingers and wishing that I could grow as big and strong as him.

Maybe then they would notice me. My parents, the kids at school. The boy with the pretty blue eyes with lips as red as fresh drawn blood or the girl with crimson ringlets that reached her mid-back. I’ve always felt so small, so beneath people, under the soles of their shoes- stuck with hatred or apathy or pity.

All my life, I wanted to be just like Mordecai. Now Mordecai is dead and I do not know where my feet are taking me. To a cliff? A bar? Perhaps to a friend’s house or into the ocean’s welcoming embrace? He would have wanted to die in the ocean- to let the waves fill his lungs to burst with suffocating warmth until his agonizing end and somehow I’m sure it’d hurt a little less to watch his life slip from between my fingers that way.

I think I’d rather he have just put the barrel to his temple- made me watch him load the gun and pull the trigger. It would have been less excruciating had he the courage to end it himself.

It’s selfish. I’m selfish. Mordecai’s life did not belong to me and yet here I am acting as though it was mine to waste. It’s selfish. I’m selfish. To hold onto the shell of a man that was my brother but I don’t think I had much of anyone else to wrap my arms around- to keep my head from sinking below a frothy horizon and now I am alone. Drowning. And there’s sand beneath my feet. I don’t remember walking here but my feet have traversed the streets of four so often that I needn’t think of where to go.

I simply want, and then I arrive. Like now, I sit upon the shore and I tear up handfuls of frozen sand. My palms kiss the ocean’s foam and her tongue is cold and frothy tonight. Her tears are the same as mine and I know the ocean mourns his loss too. To me, even the sun shone brighter when my brother was around. He didn’t need to be perfect, to fix everything. He needn’t even be human to make me feel safe and warm and loved. Something I’ve rarely found within the arms of another.

And there is Ira, of course there is Ira. My love for him is different- a hot kind of burning in the pit of my stomach that burns rings of dark pink shame to the apples of my cheeks. The closer we become the faster my heart beats and the louder my head screams that it’s time to run away. I cannot afford another friendship, nothing that rewashes past skin deep connection. I have never been in love and yet even my own family managed to shatter my broken heart beyond repair, breaking away at the scar tissue and stitches that I had managed to create in their absence.

I will never let myself love Ira. And its not like men as great as he would bother with something like me. Insignificant. Without a will of his own and whom clung to his brother because his personality was not enough to keep him sane- to keep him alive. There is not enough of Tobias to be his own man and that is why he depended upon his brother. To live for another was better than living life as some grotesque sort of empty shell. And even if Ira does take pity, decides to give something like me a chance I will not be so selfish as to let him.

There are men that are meant to be great, there are men who are meant to wither away. I think it is obvious what kind we both will become. ”Is this what you wanted?!” I scream at the horizon because maybe Cai will be in charge of turning on the stars tonight. ”Tell me Mordecai, are you happier now that you’re finally rid of me?” But it’s pathetic to think that he even did this for me, that he cared enough about me to try to hurt me.

If only I was so lucky.

And when I turn my back on the ocean, I swear that I will never set foot there again.

I don’t think I’ve ever been drunk before. There wasn’t much life to live when every waking moment was spent prying the guilt from the pit of my stomach and attempting to find a man who might have never wanted to be found in the first place. I have heard of parties, of drugs and sex and alcohol and I have always thought such things were living.To steal happiness from bottles and pills was what society wanted, wasn’t it? Sadness can be so easily destroyed with desperate gulps of a bitter liquid that sets my lungs on fire and leaves my stomach churning.

I’m probably going to throw up but I cannot feel enough to care. Instead I sit in an alley, back to the wall and hands wrapped around the bottle I had managed to swipe from my parents’ barren cabinet. I must look a mess, tears crawling down sunken cheek and knees pulled ot my chest- desperately searching for some semblance of promised euphoria in this empty liquor bottle.

I must have missed something within its complex depths- the life that I search for so desperately. Perhaps if I break it open…

The shattering of glass does not scare me. It’s an oddly comforting sensation, to wrap my fingers around a shard and feel the edges pierce my skin. It used to be that I could not bleed without thinking of the men who tried to kill me- fearing their inevitable return but tonight I need not worry about the murderers lurking around every corner, no. Perhaps I am more dangerous than they ever were. The glass is sharp, beginning to splinter in my shaking hold and I can feel small pieces wedging beneath my split skin.

The happiness was not in the broken bottle. I have searched through all the bits and pieces and yet I still feel this hollow aching. My head is throbbing, even the blood through my veins is painful and perhaps that is where I will find it. The answer, the happy ending. The white picket fence that has eluded me since the first time Mordecai died. I press the glass to my wrist, feeling not much of anything as it simply sits there, waiting for me to make a move.

But I don’t want to die. I have feared Death since I was born and I will fear her to my dying breath. There is nothing better than the sweet scent of flowers in the morning- the way that bees chase each other around flowers as though it is some simple game. Death will not bring me happiness either and the realization is as frustrating as the wounds upon my hand are painful.

There’s a bar not too far from here. if I focus, my feet will move how I want- one in front of the other in front of the other, in front of…

The men inside are scary. Much larger than a sixteen year old like me would ever hope to be and a smile stretches across my lips because finally I have found it. I don’t want to avoid this pain, I don’t want to escape it. I just need something so much more potent that I do not notice how weak I have become. I’ve never been one to look for trouble, always too cowardly to fight another man since they had tried to kill me but tonight is not for fears.

It is not for tears or blood or death.

Tonight is filled with pain, I simply must find the wound that screams the loudest.

”Hey!” I slur, grabbing a bottle off of the bar and smashing it over a man’s head. I am tired of the perpetual victimhood, my small stature and the men I depend upon to protect me. Today I will fight for myself and today I might just die for the same, stupid reason. I hope not.

Because when I black out- it still hurts, just a bit