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It’s 1982, and you wouldn’t mind being dead.
An object in motion tends to stay in motion, and you suppose the opposite is true. These suspicions are confirmed with a string of fortnights holed up in the back bedroom of the house, your only escape being for nourishment; it’s most often found in the form of food, but the occasional trip to the bookshop is a necessity.
Your mum says there’s places to be and folks to meet, and you figure that’s lovely, really, but it does nothing to make life worth living. There are only two things that do: words and music. Combined, it seems they create something like songs. And you have the singing bit down just fine. It’s everything else you need: the instruments, the connections, the people. You can’t do it alone.
***
It’s 1983, and you’re alive.
A boy four years your junior—armed with four hundred times the energy you possess—knocks on your door. A mutual friend accompanies him, nothing more than a fruitless companion who doesn't manage to get a single word in. And really, he stands no chance against the crackling ball of energy that all but shows himself to your bedroom.
In a matter of minutes he’s talking your ear off, nestling a home in your brain, and this, well. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for, you think, and you mean it in more ways than one.
He’s talented and gorgeous, unnaturally so, and he’s choosing you. He’s got a lust for life that you could never, ever, even hope to match, and you’re the one he‘s asking to form a band with him. He’s exquisite. And here he is, with someone whose natural being discourages openness.
Maybe you’ll learn. Maybe your walls will come up short, just this once.
***
It’s 1984, and you feel dead.
The earth has been slowly collapsing on you ever since you met her at the train station, but it took you this long to feel it—or at least, acknowledge it.
The sensation hibernated until that day when he came to your house, neck adorned with an extended family of bruises, and you winced at the sight, barely concealing the real reason it offended you so.
He tells you to lighten up, to get some one day. Don’t knock it ‘till you try it.
You tell him you very much have tried it, and it was quite unpleasant, thank you very much.
“Ever done it with someone ya love?”
Grin and bear it. “No.”
“You don’t know what you’re missin’, he says, and you think you definitely know what you’re missing, but instead of giving you a glimpse of that he only speaks of her. Her, and her long hair, and the curve of her body.
You say, “Perhaps one day,” not believing it for a second, suddenly aware of the pattern of your breathing, and deep inside all you can do is curse your anatomy, rue the day your voice suddenly became so low, so grave.
***
It’s 1985, and you wouldn’t mind being dead.
Not because you particularly want to die, of course; but because you would be okay with it happening if your life was frozen in this moment, this unparalleled vignette. Happy with that turn of events, even.
He’s at the wheel of a car he can’t even legally drive, a fact that is never lost on you. He really can’t legally drive any car, hasn’t a license, refuses to get one no matter how many times you tell him to. He just points out the fact that you don’t have one yourself, which would be fair if it weren’t for the fact that you weren’t driving, especially not after a drink, but you digress.
The air is cool, seeping in through a cracked window, and stars are visible that you swear never have been bright enough to be seen. It’s just the two of you, and you know it’s silly, the way you feel in control; but for a moment, nobody can take this away.
And of course, you want to tell him that you love him. You want to tell him that for every question why he’s your because, to reiterate the words you sing for him every night, but they refuse to translate into the spoken word and fizzle out on your tongue.
Even if you do get it out, it won’t come out right. The words won’t do the feeling justice, because of course they never quite do, and when he automatically says love ya too, Mozzer , you smile but the scorn is obvious. It’s so easy for him to say that, because he means just those three words and nothing more. It starts and stops there, and you briefly wonder what that’s like.
You’ve won the battle and don’t want to give a moment’s thought to the war.
***
It’s 1986, and you think you’re dead.
Now, when you say I love you, he laughs and says no, you don’t, like you’re some sort of child who can’t seem to make up his mind.
Now, when you call him in the dead of night he doesn’t answer, undoubtedly because he has better things to do.
His days are filled with people that are no longer you, places that are no longer your childhood bedroom; but you don’t want to move house. Not yet.
***
It’s 1987, and you should be dead.
The yellow and blue capsules failed you like so many people, places, and things in the years prior. You told him you loved him, and he sent other people to deal with it. But you should know better than to call people whilst on their honeymoons.
He’s long gone by now, having escaped off the top of your shoulders, leaving you deeper than the depths you thought were even possibly reachable.
So you try to write your way out. The notebooks strewn about your floor and the slips of paper in your pocket beckon you towards them, but for once in your life it doesn’t work, because all you can do is wonder: what deity up there, what god despises you this much, to dangle everything you’ve ever wanted mere centimetres in front of you—but no closer?
But that life is over, and now you’re stuck in this one.