'Only the good die young'

The way i see it is, if i keep going on like this, i could run away and no one would notice. I would hide in plain sight, anywhere, no one would look, let alone find me. Everything is over thought, especially by me. I hear one bad thing about anyone i know and I’ll panic, think over and over again what happened. It’s not my place to judge most of the time either, I’m just purely that rude. I will die soon, i don’t have a disease, i just can imagine it happening. I didn’t think I’d live past high school for some reason, but here i am. You know what they say, only the good die young. How stuck up of me to say so. When Billy Joel wrote that song, he was talking about a boy who wants a catholic girl to lose her virginity to him, so he tries convincing her to do so. It is in no way like my life, but the title, well, the title has it’s importance when you use it to mean something different. I guess most sayings do though.

The start of my book.

The phone begins to ring, bleating like a sheep aware of imminent danger. Bleat. Bleat. There seems to be no stopping it without having to pick up to the ruthless caller on the other end. I wouldn’t want to do that though, seeing as I know fully well who the caller is. Bleat. Bleat. My parents are in, but ignorant of everything, after they’ve drank enough (which seems to be every night).Bleat. Bleat. This constant ringing is giving me a headache; I must clear my head of what’s been going on. I leave the house to escape it all, just in time to miss my mother barking ‘You ruined my life!’ at my dad at around the same time as every other day. The only place I know to go is to the church. As a well-established atheist, it wouldn’t be the first choice, but I’m sure Father Geoffrey won’t mind me venting to him, knowing how lonely he gets in his old age.

As I reach the church down the road, I see a new banner saying ‘God will forgive your sins’ and in the small print underneath, it adds ‘if you go to church for every service’. I wasn’t aware Christianity had gotten so desperate. I reach the confessional. With a quick sigh and a cough beforehand, I enter.

Words don’t come out, and this is clearly a place where I am required to talk. I run out. Walking home, I start to think of what I would’ve said:

‘There’s something in her breath that I’m addicted to. How is it that when I hear her name, I go back to her every time? When she speaks to me, always randomly, my heart drags its way back into her hands. This has never been my choice. Maybe at first I could blame myself, but now… well, now i can’t help it and it leaves me in this pit of despair and memories. She did something to me, and I don’t know what, but all I want is for it to stop so I can live my life again. It’s becoming way too hard to do so.’

I know life is tough, and as a younger person I have witnessed so many people changing around me. For example, the person on the other side of the phone was Caoimhe. Ever since her father was diagnosed with cancer, she hasn’t been the same – distant, depressive, and then sometimes clingy and loving, which doesn’t fit us, as that’s not how we act as a couple. I know it’s bad to avoid calls and avoid meetings with her, especially when she wants me to meet her dad (by his request), I don’t know, I just don’t think I can rope myself in with it all. By now she must know I can’t be with her, I have tried too hard to avoid her, but she seems like a magnet, one that I am strongly attracted to.

I have been patient with her, but no longer. I can’t do it – I know how much pain she’ll be in and when I move up the stages, she won’t be able to cope with the pain of looking after myself and her father. I have Parkinson’s disease. I haven’t told many people, but I’m in stage one at the moment and it isn’t too obvious, just now and again I receive a strange look from someone because my hand is shaking, or a pull a strange facial expression, and because of this, I’m what people call ‘weird’.

I am 23. You may have been thinking that I am a younger, possibly teenage person from the information I have given you so far about myself , for example the fact I still live at home, or that I called myself  a ‘younger person’ – but to be honest, 23 is not particularly old. I had an average childhood with average friends and average grades, although nothing about me really screams average anymore.