Post by aphrodite lynn emmahaust; on Nov 9, 2011 21:37:12 GMT -5
APHRODITE LYNN EMMAHAUST, EIGHTEEN, ALL THAT’S LOVE – LEAD GUITARIST, STRAIGHT, RESERVED “I was born to Geraldine and Henry Emmahaust on August sixteenth, and they tell me that the moment they saw me, they had this epiphany that Aphrodite would be the perfect name for me. I’ll never be able to understand how they foresaw love and beauty in my future, but I won’t question the blinding effects of parental love on one’s ability to perceive reality. I don’t like to think about how easily humans are deceived by their emotions. I don’t like to think about parenthood and children and being with someone forever to raise them because that’ll never be what happens to me. Contrary to popular expectation, I am not so dreadfully lacking in confidence that I don’t believe I’ll ever find love. I know that I lack faith in myself, but what matters more is the fact that the only boy I have ever loved and ever will love is gone.” “To make matters a little less confusing, let’s take things back a few steps. My childhood was normal. No confusion about that. Some people like books. Others like sports. I love music. I hummed and sang before I spoke; I could properly strum a guitar before I could walk; I knew the C-scale before I knew my alphabet. Music was practically my life. And to be honest, it was just about that only thing that I was particularly good at. Schoolwork was never really my forte. The stuff I studied just wouldn’t stick in my head, and I can’t apply knowledge that I don’t have for tests. Sports were never really my thing either. My stamina was lacking, my aim was off, and my strength was lacking. That only left the arts, and of the several factions that art can be subdivided into, music was my thing. I began learning a few instruments at once, and now, I’m pretty familiar with string instruments like those you’d find in an orchestra, guitar, piano, drums, flute, harp, and I have a very, very basic knowledge of most other instruments. I even took voice lessons for a little while, but once I felt my intonation was alright, I stopped because I wanted to focus on learning another instrument.” “There are those moments in your life when you have a most important person in your life, and for me, that person was my first and only boyfriend, Gavin Ashby. We met when we were thirteen, and it was one of those really cliché moments when all of the sudden, we just knew we were perfect for each other. There was electricity between our fingertips, and the sparks flew, and we were in love. I know people say thirteen is too young to know that you’re in love, but no other word could describe what we felt. We were just friends for a year, but he finally asked me out on Valentine’s Day when we were fourteen, and that began the first and last relationship I’ll ever have.” A short, red haired teen gazed curiously at her friend, wondering what had his face so red and his throat so choked up that he stuttered and stumbled over his words even though she knew him to be the confident, cocky type. He shifted uncomfortably and she began to wonder if he was trying to think of a way to tell her some terrible news. A deep, sinking feeling formed in the pit of her stomach, and she knit her eyebrows together, mind concocting various scenarios that were likely far worse than what the truth was. She was startled when he suddenly reached out and took her hands gently in his, his fingers exploring each of the lines on her hands. Part of her wanted to pull away, but the other part enjoyed the feeling of being close to him. This continued for what seemed like forever, though she didn’t quite mind. All of the sudden, he looked up at her, focusing his sharp gaze on her face. Before she could ask what was wrong, he suddenly blurted out, “Be my girlfriend.” She smiled, beamed really, before pressing her lips against his as a wordless confirmation. “My middle school years were pretty amazing, but high school sort of gave me a slap in the face. I’m not sure why, and I don’t think I’ll ever understand it, but I was targeted for bullying. People didn’t like the way I dressed or acted, and they didn’t like me in general. People were always telling me that I was some sort of freak who was wasting space, and even though I tried not to listen to them, it gets sort of hard to ignore them when you have the words choking and suffocating you for nearly ten months straight. I fell back on music and Gavin, and sometimes I really believed that as long as I still had them, I would be okay. I would make it through four harsh years. Everyone knows nothing is ever that simple though.” “At that time, Gavin was going through his own trouble. Depression was hereditary in his family, and after a fatal car accident that left his father dead and his mother in a coma, he fell into a depression. Unlike me, he was pretty well liked in school, so the news got him quite a bit of pity from our classmates. Oddly enough, he didn’t like all that pity. He’d tell me that it was a really annoying reminder that nothing was going right, and I would never know what to say, so he’d just hold me, and we’d feel comfortable in that silence when he wordlessly consoled me for my social issues while I consoled him for his tragedy. A lot of times, he’d stay over at my house because he said he didn’t like to be home, and he didn’t want to stay with a relative. He was around so often that my parents started calling him their son-in-law, and the guest room became his room. I remember always being so eager to get home so I could spend time with him and escape the fact that things sucked in school.” Sniffling quietly, the girl rubbed the tears out of her jade green eyes and stopped her whimpering and curled up closer next to a boy around her age on the cream coloured sofa carefully placed along one wall over her living room. He ran his fingers through her wavy red locks and pulled her to him, murmuring sweet nothings in her ear. All the earlier events of the day faded to a distant memory as she rested her head on his shoulder. He rested his head atop of hers and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and inhaling the scent of her strawberry shampoo. There was a stillness in the air that they had grown comfortable with ever since life started dealing them with hardships. Glancing around, the redhead began to feel a bit of guilt gnaw away at her conscience. Here she was, sobbing over the fact that she had been insulted and pushed around a little, but he must have felt so much worse with the worry of when his mother would awaken weighing down on his mind. She wriggled out of his grasp and took his hand, pulling him up. He sent her a questioning look through his honey coloured bangs, but she offered a tiny smile and tugged again. He stood up and followed her, sitting beside her on a mahogany wood bench that was parallel to a piano. She lifted the lid and started playing a sad melody and hummed along quietly, sending him small peeks and feeling a sense of accomplishment when a tiny smile finally broke through his morose expression. “The more we were together, the more I began to notice his change in behavior. He didn’t smile much anymore, and he’d be especially clingy sometimes, but I think that made me feel important. Wanted. It wasn’t until I was about fifteen that I realized that he was depressed. When I look back on it, I feel like it should have been really obvious, and I think I did know, but I was just determined not to connect the dots to realize that our relationship wasn’t even close to perfect. I really believed that things would just be better one day, but then I saw his wrists, and I couldn’t stop denying. There were so many cuts, some of which were fresh, some of which were old and in the form of scars. I freaked out really badly. I cried, I screamed, and I threw things. It took a while, but he finally calmed me down, and we made a promise to each other. We said we would be together forever, and we said we’d seal that pact in blood. We did. He carved his initials into my right wrist and carved mine into the palm of his left hand. He promised me forever, and I smiled even though the burning pain because I believed him.” “My parents were really concerned and told me that they didn’t like that I was starting to withdraw away from all of my friends just because of Gavin, but I never really listened because I always believed that nothing else mattered as long as he was by my side. They were obviously dissatisfied when they realized that I was ignoring them because they would force me out of the house so that I would be around a couple of people that I knew as kids. Their parents were friends with mine, so we would hang out a little as kids, but as I grew up, I drifted away from them. It felt so nostalgic and foreign to be around them again, and I really hated it, so I would lash out a little and act really bitter. None of us really got along that well, but I was sort of surprised when I found out that we all had a thing for music. We formed an amateur band and didn’t really get serious until we were juniors. Last year, technically.” “At the same time, I would become busy with gigs and practice, and at first, Gavin would hang around to watch, but after a while, he came less and less to watch me before stopping altogether. We became sort of a hit, and at that time, I grew sort of conflicted because the band kept me busy, so I couldn’t spend as much time as I used to with him, but I was close to them. They were real friends. I couldn’t just ditch them. It turns out the decision was never mine.” “I came home from a gig one night, hoping to relax and just be with him, but he wasn’t there. I was immediately worried and told my parents, but they said that maybe he was busy. I waited up all night, but he never showed up, and I couldn’t just accept that after staying at my house for so many months, he would just up and leave without a word. They contacted the police to file a missing persons report, but he was found easily. He was on the floor of his bathroom, dead after overdosing on sleeping pills. It was then that I was told that a week ago, he had gone to visit his mother in the hospitable and was told that she died while in her coma. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for getting so wrapped up in music that I ignored him even though I knew he needed me. When I found out the news, I was in shock for maybe an hour or two before it all clicked, and I cried. I’ll never be able to remember how many tears I shed or how much time I spent beating myself up over the fact that I just stood by and let him feel like no one was there for him.” A room full of people dressed in all black with a nearly tangible sense of gloom and dread hanging overhead. Any sensible person knew it was a funeral procession. Some of the guests looked pale and drained; as if the deaths that had taken place sucked the lives out of them. Others looked uncomfortable and out of place, knowing that they were there as a formality even though they didn’t really ever know who Gavin Chase Ashby was at all. The redhead who had been close to him since they were only thirteen looked pale and ghostlike, the black dress emphasizing the unusual lack of hue in her skin. Her eyelids were puffy as if she had cried for days and days without stopping, which was really the case. Her green eyes were dull, as if something inside her had been frozen over and shattered. Every so often, her gaze would flicker down to her right arm, but no one could get a clear view of what was on her sleeve that was so fascinating. At the end of the funeral, she was crying yet again, and her sleeve was rolled up to show three letters crudely imprinted as pale lines on her arm. GCA. “I couldn’t focus on anything for a while on anything but him. I was so sure I would just shrivel up and die. I barely got passing grades in school and managed to pass with low C’s instead of my usual B-range grades. I would always mess up when trying to play a song and it would get me so frustrated. I didn’t know how to deal with the grief, and I didn’t want anyone else trying to get involved. I kept it bottled up inside and felt like I would just explode, so I did what he did. I walked in his footsteps and sought to feel what he felt when he was depressed. I cut. Saying it now sounds really messed up, but back then, it was like a split second source of comfort. Flinching in pain and wiping up blood was a good distraction from feeling like my heart was being ripped out, though now that I think back, I guess it wasn’t really a solution when I only felt a tiny bit better for a short amount of time and through equally harmful means. And of course, I stuck with my left wrist because I couldn’t imagine messing up the last momento I had left of Gavin.” “I was sixteen at that time, and my parents found out about my cutting when I turned seventeen. They sent me to therapy, where I was diagnosed as being clinically depressed. It was recommended that I take Prozac and meet up with a therapist daily, but the idea terrified me and made me think I’d be an even bigger outcast in school than before. I argued with my parents over it, and we eventually came up with the compromise that as long as I took my Prozac, then they wouldn’t force me to attend any therapy sessions. Nowadays, I take my Prozac maybe once a week, but I usually just toss the pills out somewhere. I don’t want them. I don’t want to feel unusual among the people that surround me.” “After that fiasco, I needed to be around the other band members of All That’s Love more than before to feel even a tiny bit of happiness. When news came that we would take part in a tour, I felt ecstatic enough to stop cutting, though the other things was that it was too obvious a sign that I was still depressed. I’m eighteen now, and I’m a guitarist for a pretty amazing band, but I still struggle with my depression. I don’t think it’s gone, but I’ve been feeling a little more happiness than back then. School work still doesn’t mean anything more to me in the face of music. That’s got to mean something, right?” PIXIE, SIXTEEN BILLION, PM/AIM |
