“You mean me?” Frankie asked, sitting straighter. “You mean you want to live vicariously through me?”
“No.” I shook my head, trying to figure out how to explain myself better. “It’s more like I want to live your life with you and see what parts of your life make mine better. I don’t even know what makes me happy, Frankie. I don’t know what life is without the constant reminder that I could lose hold of my sanity at any point.”
Sadness lined her blue eyes, and in turn, my gut twisted with anxiety. I hated talking about this, I really didn’t want to fucking deal at the moment, but I was too determined to fix what was broken to walk away.
With eyebrows pulled together in confused frustration, Frankie protested a little. “We all could snap at any point, Phoenix. You can’t live your life worrying that you’ll end up like your father.”
Aaaaand, there it is. My least favorite statement.
It sent me to a hundred and five on the emotional scale, instantly.
“Tell me how not to then, Frankie. Tell me how to forget what he did, what I saw,” I sneered. “Do you have a magical erase button I can press? A vegan smoothie I can drink? Something new on the market that I don’t know about?”
My anger was right there, bubbling over because I fucking hated when people pulled this shit when talking to victims.
Everyone liked to tell the broken souls what they couldn’t do with their damage—or let their damage do to them, but no one told us what we could do instead. No one had a viable solution that actually worked, not some bullshit about “write your feelings in a journal” or “eat healthier, exercise more.” All seven of my journals would show that all they did was give people like me an excuse to bitch and moan about our lives. And running? I ran every day. It helped the anger for about two hours. And while I learned that those two hours are necessary for my sanity, it wasn’t a permanent solution to make me feel any better inside.
Writing in journals, going for a run in the morning, eating hard-boiled eggs for breakfast and a salad for lunch—none of it actually worked to help my anxiety or numb my pain.
Nothing could erase what happened, and that was the problem.
“No, of course not! But I don’t know, okay?” she shouted, frustrated. “All I know is that I got the best deal in the world. At thirteen years old, my best friend on the planet moved in, became my permanent sister, and we fell into this routine that probably wasn’t good for us, but it was still good enough, right? We had fun, yeah? But then you left, P! You fucking left me, and you’ve been shutting me out ever since.”
“I just…” I stood from the couch as my chest started feeling like it might crack in half. The living room was beginning to resemble the one in the house I grew up in—the white home on the corner of the street in the suburbs of Orange County. The one I tried to forget ever existed since the memory of it became splattered in blood. “I relive that day, every day. I see it every time I close my eyes. I haven’t figured out how to turn it off yet and spend hours a day wondering why everyone else gets to live their lives without questions while I struggle to find answers to even my simplest ones.”
No one could tell me shit, not a single person. Not a doctor, therapist, psychologist, neurologist. No one could tell me why my father did what he did, and when they suggested that I spend years sitting on uncomfortable couches talking to strangers about what I witnessed, I took that opportunity to dig further, ask more questions in different ways. But still, no one had answers for me, so I got stuck living in the dark.
I got used to it there.
I got comfortable in the stony silence of misery—it almost felt good to drown because treading water took up too much energy. I didn’t have any to spare.
“So, what do we do now?” Frankie whispered, looking away from me. “How do I get Nix back? How do I get my best friend back?”
Her words were shaped like a blade. I choked out, “Time.”
“How much time?” she pushed.
I paused, making sure she met my eyes. I needed her to understand that while she wanted this to be a quick fix, she had no idea the kind of dedication it took to do what I was trying to do. I needed more than just time, I needed someone to help me, someone who understood what it was like to be so lost inside fear that you couldn’t see the other side, but there was no one. Not anyone I could touch at least.
All I had was music.
The sounds, the lyrics, the stories that were told through words and instruments, soothed my soul and set it on fire all at once. Music was the only thing that made me feel things when I didn’t want to.
I had twenty-something playlists full of artists my age or born in my generation that were crying out for help and fighting through their damage just like I was. These artists were struggling to survive through the breakups, the pressure of the industry, the need to be perfect, feel perfect, fuck perfect, and still stay sane.
It wasn’t the radio hits that told the entire truth, it was track eight on a twenty-track album that did. Those overlooked and underappreciated songs were almost too honest. Drugs to numb, sex to feel, alcohol to blind, hate and evil to make themselves feel better. These artists didn’t hold back, and I respected the fuck out of that because I understood it. New York was so full of mistakes, I was almost too ashamed to admit it.
But what was I supposed to do? My parents loved each other, they were beacons of light in my life—as parents should be—until out of nowhere, they weren’t anymore. Until they couldn’t be anymore. Until they were no longer even breathing. Then I was thrown in with another family—one I knew well and was lucky to be a part of—and was told that everything would be okay.
Except it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be.
They still didn’t know that I lived every day for the last ten years scared of my own mind.
Looking to Frankie, I finally responded with, “I’ll let you know when I figure that out.”
June
“Honey, I’m home!” I called, walking through the front door carrying three bags full of groceries into the kitchen. As I placed them on the counter, I listened for her voice to echo back, but got nothing in return. “Frankie?”
Faintly, I heard her yell, “Hold on!” from somewhere in the back of the house, so I went about my business. Pulling my phone from my back pocket, I walked across the kitchen to one of the four Bluetooth speakers we had lying around and pressed play on the song I was listening to on the way home.
“Hurt People” by GOLDN wafted from the tiny speaker in a wave of tranquil sounds, settling a little piece of my soul.
It had been four months since I moved into Frankie’s beautifully remodeled Spanish styled bungalow, and I was doing better. After our conversation a couple months back, she seemed to give me the time I needed without pushing me too far, too fast.
That weekend, we unpacked my boxes together and made my room a sanctuary. We hung tapestries, printed out dope Pinterest photos that matched the vibe, and strung lights along the ceiling, sort of like the living room. Having done this before to her own room, Frankie ran to Target and came home with a bunch of fuzzy pink shit to put all over the place, saying that I needed a little extra help in the mood department and that pink was my color.