A/N: hey hey hey everyone...i know its been a while; ive been busy with school and my boyfriend, but i finally wrote out ch. 4. it is short, the shortest yet, but its meant to be that way. it shows his emotions are so raw its hard to remember all that happened to him...enjoy!

Chapter IV

I found myself wet, coated in warm water, stranded as if I was a drunk in a barren, desolate wasteland, on my tiled bathroom floor. My face beat red, crimson flushing under my skin all over, water drenching me from head to feet.

My hands were balled tightly in fists; beating rapidly on the tiles, searing pain that I ignored came with each collision between fist and tile.

The shower continued to run. I could hear it’s almost melodic spurting sound behind me; I was frigid and naked, not to mention bawling in hysterics as I remained wet, laying on the tiles, scratching at my emotional surface, hoping to find some resemblance of who I was, trying to hunt down and slaughter the curse that bit and resided in me every day.

But my sword must’ve been dull, and my eyesight not as keen as I expected, for the curse remained inside of me even after I attempted to slit it out of me.

Red fluid collided with the water and collected in tiny pools on the rug beneath my shower door. I continued to scream in pure hell, taking the tiny, dismantled razor blade and making nicks in my upper arm. I finally understood the realness of me, I finally saw how pain and suffering got me to a point where I no longer could be dragged down any further; I had reached the bottom of the bubbling, boiling pit of oil-like water, and the only direction to go was up…or drown in the process of trying.

I had yet to figure out which way I would follow…

Someone lead me…please! God damnit, I can’t escape! I can’t!

I had fought with myself through endless nights of wandering and pacing aimlessly around my room at three AM, searching for the answer of why my

feelings towards other boys came and stuck to me. Stuck to me like cement.

As a child, I remembered clearly how my feelings for other boys affected me daily. It never occurred to me that the crushes I had were harmful, different, or a curse. I lived a happy childhood, breathing and playing and running and swimming, laughing and crying, wanting and dreaming, hoping and even praying, that it would forever remain that way. But when the word gay was flung at me, flung at me like searing acid, burning my flesh, coating my helpless, twelve year old body in confusion and hurt so enormous that the scars remained to this day, I saw what everyone else saw.

I saw that this…this thing I had become was something to laugh at, something to hate and dislike, something to poke fun at and scorn. But why was this happening to me? Of all people, me? I didn’t ask for it…God, how I had wished to be normal, to marry and have kids and have a productive, simple life.

At that moment, scratching at my tiled bathroom floor, watching tiny cuts in my upper arm bleed trails of rose red blood, I saw in a moment what was happening to me.

I lost my close friend, Mia, in an instant. I had lost, shockingly, Kirk, the one shoulder I could actually cry on, the one person I counted on more than anyone.

And I felt like I was losing myself.

Or maybe I already had.

I washed the tile floor clean, got down on my aching arms and knees, and scrubbed it with Lysol and soap. I took the red-stained rug and threw it in haste under my bed, and, slapping on a sweatshirt ( I was already heat-ridden, and this only made it worse) I laid back down in my bed, the front door closed behind a rush of people; my family. The beds cushions closed around my body, encasing me in a blanket of a moment of relief.

I curled tightly in a ball, hoping I’d appear asleep, hoping that not one of them would come bursting in through my door, screaming or laughing. I didn’t want to know any of the emotions they felt; I was completely drained.

But no one did come in my room; they collected in the dining room downstairs and I could hear, in painful bursts, coarse laughter and loud voices.

They are happy without me; they are completely oblivious to my existence.

I recollected my composure and breathed in. I had sat here in my room, wallowing in depression, scraping and straining to release myself from this prison I never expected to find myself in, for at least two days.

It was completely mind numbing to me; thinking that opening up to the two people I cared most about would help me, heal me.

Instead, it fed the anger and languor and left me there, crying and cutting and screaming and losing. Losing…losing…

I just kept losing….

Would I ever win?