Part 3

                You are twenty two years old and far away from home. You’ve spent your college years at the bottom of bottles, in various beds, lost in smoke from a plethora of pipes whose owners you no longer remember the names of. You’ve spent the last four years from the things and people that have hurt you your life, but all you found away from home were band aids; temporary fixes for very deep wounds that no man or woman you find can truly heal, and you the worst part of it all is that you no longer care. You’ve lost Hope.

                You haven’t seen her since you nineteen years old and found yourself in a strange man’s bed one morning after doing a slew of drugs you couldn’t remember. You closed your eyes as tightly as you could, hoping and praying that mysterious man beside would somehow transform into that beautiful girl that had rescued you so many times before, but she never came. Maybe she gave up on you then, too, when she saw what you really were. It was then that you accepted that she’d never been real in the first place. You’d been destined to crash and burn from the beginning, it was written in your DNA. There would never be any such thing as Hope for you at all…

                And so you resigned yourself to failure. You’d left home in search of a new place to be yourself, to find love, and all you’d gotten was a piece of paper called a degree and a brain full of puzzle piece memories of doing this or that with someone or no one or everyone.

                You find yourself back at home with your mother, with Pete, with Janie " your old room was changed into an office for Pete since they never expected or wanted you back, and you end up living in the basement with nothing but a mattress and all of your clothes. You’ve forgotten how to exist without college and parties and friends and drugs and alcohol, all of it with the ability to numb your mind from the reality that is your life and you make it your mission to pick up that lifestyle back here at home with a new group of people that you find in bars, nightclubs, and eventually from your new job. Janie begins to nice your preference for male suitors despite the fact that you’ve never said a word and were careful not to make any indication of it, even going as far as bringing home your female dates only as a symbol of your masculinity.

                “I always knew you were dirty f*g,” Pete says angrily, disgusted with you as he always has been. Janie calls you the sister she always wanted, and you know she means it in the most hurtful away possible, and your mother " your mother is too drunk to care.

                “You have $40.00? I need to go to the store.” She says in the midst of looming chaos around you. You give her $35 because its all you have, and she sighs.

                “Useless piece of s**t,” She mumbles as she walks away from you, but at least she didn’t call you a f*g or a girl.

                Your step brother makes an effort to come down to your basement cave in nothing but a towel, dripping after a shower, challenging you to try something " you never would because even if you weren’t somehow related, you’d find him as disgusting as he undoubtedly finds you.

                “Don’t f*****g stare at me, queer.” He says, though you hadn’t even glanced his way. A detestable smirk takes over his features. “I’m not one of your homo friends. So don’t even think about trying anything…I know you homos are perverted and you’ll do anything for a thrill, even your own brother…”

                “First of all Rick, you aren’t my brother, but rest assured, I find you vile nonetheless.” You say, your nose buried in a magazine. You turn to look at home. “And second of all, get whatever the hell you need and get out of my room.”
                “Oh Andy, check you out speaking up for once in your life.” Rick taunts. He grabs a baseball bat of his from the storage closet and you can’t help but wonder if he’s going to try to bash your head in with it, as your certain he’s always wanted to do, and you wonder if that would truly be so bad.

                He leaves you alone and slams the basement door behind him. You hear him tell his father, “Dad, Andy was staring at me when I went downstairs. I think he was…. Undressing me with his eyes…”

                You can hear the smirk in his voice. You roll your eyes and jump up from your bed. Your mother keeps her liquor our in the garage now, and you hear Pete stomping around upstairs, bellowing about how ‘no f****t is gonna live in his house and look at his son,’ so you quickly climb the washing machine and miraculously squeeze yourself out of the basement window before Pete can get down there and try to beat what little life you have out of you. You quickly enter the garage and open the refrigerator. You hastily decide on your mother’s bottle of whiskey for the ride to nowhere that you plan to take, and hope into your car. You’re sure Pete hears you speed away when you intentionally burn rubber off the driveway, and you don’t care. You twist the bottle open and you don’t care who sees.

                Through aimless driving you find yourself on the freeway by the time you’re a third of the way through the bottle. The road is a blur and the bright light from the cars around you don’t help much either.

                You jerk forward before you even hear the loud crash of your car hitting the guard rail, and before you know it, you’re upside down. You don’t feel a thing, no pan, just….warmth. You’re so tired all of a sudden and you don’t know why your forehead is dripping, because you aren’t that hot " you can’t move your right arm but you can lift your left, and your hand is decorated with blood. You feel your forehead with your index and middle fingers and those come back to you, sticky and scarlet. It all begins to be too much, the blood, the dizziness, the pain, and you distantly hear a siren but you don’t know if they’re coming for you and you don’t care if they make it to you if they are. You just let go of whatever is keeping you awake, and hope that you’re truly gone, gone, gone…

                Your eyes are closed and your head feels as if someone were drilling through every crevice of your brain. You shut your eyes even tighter. What happened to you? Why can’t you just be dead from whatever it was, if whatever it was feels like this?

                As if someone were holding a flashlight above your eyelids, you see a bright glow and you’re forced to open your eyes. And there she is, that awful girl you’d once looked for whenever you felt pain. She sits on what you realize is your hospital bed and caresses your cheek.

                “I’m still here, Andy.” She says. You don’t care. You just cry, whether from pain or anger or sadness you don’t know, but you don’t care. No one’s here to see you cry this time.

                “I don’t even want you anymore!” You say loud enough for a passing nurse to hear, and she runs off, yelling for a doctor to see you immediately because you’re finally awake. You wonder how much time you’ve lost, you wonder why no one’s here with you.

                Hope lies down beside you with her arm around your waist and her golden head on your chest. You feel your heart beating faster and faster and you’re angry because you don’t want her there, you don’t want her to be real anymore…. You want to give up, and she isn’t letting you.

                A doctor comes in and asks you to look at a light and follow his fingers and other menial tasks. He asks if you know your name and the date and how you got here. You pass the test with flying colors, except for that question on the date, and a nurse comes to take care of you and see if you’re hungry. You try to be pleasant but its so hard.

                You find out that you’ve been there for three days and you ask if you’ve had any visitors, or if anyone’s called for you " she says your family’s been notified but they haven’t come to see you yet. Her smile is sad, as if she feels your pain, and you just stay quiet.

                You just wanted to die, but now there is Hope and you didn’t even want her anymore.