Can you fix what's made to be broken?
I can't fix what's made to be.
My heart is tattooed on my sleeve.
I had told him he broke so many parts of me that now it only hurts,
I shout out but he can’t hear me, no one can for they don’t care. Not the guy I see right now as I slip down the alleyway. He pulls out his camera and winds out the long lense to snap a photo of me, the woman Jayden James broke, to plaster all over the paper.
Pulling my phone out I flick him a text. I see that I have like ten since I left the building.
Me - Mistakes have cost me years of my life while I hid inside the arms of addiction. Do they cost you? Or did they cost you?
Are you like me Jayden? Are we the same under it all.
Tell me, please. I'm now in hiding.
It hurts so much to breathe with a broken heart and a fractured mind. My soul is tired as my body grows weak.
Looking up as three more men appear with cameras, one on a bike. My hands shove inside my pocket and I go to the one place I can think of that will hold me at my weakest.
I head to the church and the preacher. For God shall not judge, though that’s not to say the preacher won’t.
The smell of old school wood and lost voices from prayer swirl around me as I walk from the heavy wooden doors and down the aisle. I fall to my knees in front of the one-man whom is preached upon for hours a day months on end year after year. His hands outstretched welcoming me like a lamb to slaughter. I fall and I pray to the one thing I know would never save a soul as lost as mine. But here inside the walls of God’s home is where I feel safe. Where childhood memories float through me, taking me back to the special place where I would sit and listen to my grandfather preach and the choir sing. A pastor, he was a man of the cloth. Until he found his very own Marilyn Monroe. Colt went off and the sins flowed from his soul into hers along with sex in the confessional and disgrace to his church. But hey, we all fuck up, don’t we?
Running my fingers over the cold stone at the altar, all I can hear is the little voice inside my head screaming for him to not leave me while he dies inside his body wrapped around her dead one. Pain screaming from his eyes as tears rolled from mine.
‘I will never leave you child. I burn inside here.’ his fingers grazed over my heart before he pulled me down into his arms and I lay there with him, my heart shattering, as he took his last breaths while his lips rested on my forehead.
I curl my fingers into fists my nails biting into the skin as a blood chilling scream left my body. Pain, this is what it’s always been like, love and pain. The tears fall as does my body into a ball on the cold floor. Fingers laced around a bottle of addies, all I could get my hands on this time, popping the cap and tipping half a dozen or so into my mouth I swallow them down. I feel the jagged edges slide down my throat. Closing my eyes, I wait for the feeling of floating away and the darkness to come, praying to the God of my fathers before me to come and take me away.
I'm not too sure what I'm supposed to do with all this pain and all these feelings. Drugs have always been a constant for the pain then sober found me because the haunting of my grandfather’s memory became too much for me, held captive inside my own mind I clung to the wish that he could have stayed. He told me that he loved me, yet he left me. Jayden did the same. He promised me as my head laid on his chest, while inside I was hurting and screaming knowing that his words were drowning me. That yes, he says he loves me but leaving me was just what he was doing. I still loved him like I had never felt the pain before. Now look, as I lay here looking up at the stained-glass mother Mary with my eyes full of tears, my heart bleeds with a pain that no God could ever heal.
These hands are shaking as I pull my rosary beads from my pocket while the devil messes with my mind. This body is broken living inside the walls of such instability from a cage I created, to a hell that heaven made. I can’t let go of the hatred because at the end of the day hate, love, drugs and these memories are all I have to torment my soul with. That makes me feel alive in a sick way I love the way it tastes. I would take them all back in a heartbeat, Father, if it meant the pain would stop and I would stop seeking the hell when I should be basking in the heaven. Living without looking over my shoulder.
But then my mind falls and begins to unfold all the pieces that I folded up and placed away. I wouldn't take back a moment, not one miserable moment of pain, love and lust because it has made me this city of walls and a jungle of broken words and lost promises. I’d walk into the fire to kiss the lips of desire and lose my self-control because when he held me and told me he loved me he became an obsession that I knew not even the fire could burn.
I'll give it all, till there's nothing left, just to get closer to him again. Even though I know I say I don’t, that I hate him for this way he made me, I can’t help my heart. My heart wants the pain that comes with loving a Rockstar. I need him so much more than I have ever wanted any bottle of pills.
“He will never change, nor will he love you the way you love him.” Pulling me from my thoughts I didn’t even really know I was speaking out loud until Blair fell to his knees beside me. My eyes turn to meet his. “I will love him till the end of time though and hope that he can find me inside the screams of the groupies.” “Really, Tru? While you bleed out here on the floor of a church, you still hope and wait that he will come and save you? From what, you?” “Well isn’t it obvious, the end is getting closer and this lie I am living will come to the end.” “You’re not making any sense.” His warm fingers brush the hair from the side of my face, and I turn away from his touch. “Just let go,” he whispers. Shaking my head, I say, “You’re not God, preacher. You can’t save a soul that’s lost.” I look up at the statue of Jesus himself, his arms outstretched his eyes hooded with pain as he offers me his home.
“I walk through the fire of hell while you live in the clouds of heaven’s gates.” Pulling myself up, I pull my knees deep into my chest wrapping my arms around myself, leaning my back on the pew behind me.
“I've come to terms with the fact I'll never change.
And that's just fine. I find solace in the pain, preacher, he pushed me to the edge, and I reached for the pills instead of walking into the kitchen and grabbing a knife. I allowed old habits to take me when I could have cut all the strings to the happy that was lost inside the screaming from fans around the world. Funny thing is, I thought I was happy before him, but I came to realize inside this drug induced haze that he is what happy was.” His hand reaches for my fingers trying to pull me into him as he sits in front of me. “I chose you, Tru. I chose to stay and love you.” My eyes seek his at this out of left field admission from a preacher, a man of the cloth, the son of God. Laughing lightly as a shiver runs though me, I will not be history repeating itself on the damn floor of the same church 20 odd years later.
“I don't mind the darkness, it's easy on the eyes. I'm praying for something to make me feel alive. He did that and you, sweet preacher man, make me feel lost inside the walls of bad memories. A man of God can’t love a woman without the crushing weight of God’s guilt as you live your life for a much higher purpose than I could ever see, feel or touch.” He shakes his head as I look over his shoulder to the bed of candles burning. The light flickering in the dark as people’s prayers leave the hot ember and float into the open hands of a God, they all believe to be a greater thing.
“You can’t tell me how to feel, Tru, or think. That me wanting you isn’t a real emotion.” A smile leaves my mouth as I look at him.
“Once you have spoken the words, preacher, you know you can’t take them back. It’s all bittersweet memories I will allow you to take because I have to go, and I can’t take you with me because we both know I’m not what you need.” Pushing my body forward onto my knees my lips brush his lightly, so lightly but something for him to dream of and I whisper to him, “I wish you love, joy and happiness, Blair, but I’m not that for you.” Standing, my hand rests on his shoulder as his fingers dig into the flesh of my skin.
“I love you.” His tone breaks over the words as a lone tear slips from his eye. “You don’t love me; you love the feeling of loving someone as fucked as he is.” Pulling my hand free. “Tru.” His word cut through me as I walk away from him and the house of God that my granddaddy once worshiped as much as he does. “I won’t be the one to break God’s heart again, Blair. You need to save all the souls that are broken. I am too far gone for a man like you to save.” With that I walked from the church that always saved me, into the dark. Closing a chapter in my life I know I will never open again. It’sa jagged pill to swallow, but it’s realityand I need to find a way to be more than just a part time lover to my life.
Falling inside my apartment I have endless missed calls from Blair and Jayden. Texts galore. For fuck sake, man.
Texting them both back with the same damn text, I have no energy to do a separate text or to hold a convocation with either of them.
