Ill-fated Man

I was lying on the kitchen floor with several bottles of vodka. The kitchen was a mess otherwise, anyway. I hadn’t done the dishes, cleaned the counters, or swept and mopped the floor in a long time. Yet I was lying on my dirty floor, having just sobered up from drunkenness as the waves of intense sadness crept back on me.

I’ve been this way for a long time. I get sad, and it won’t go away, so I’d succumb to the horrible coping methods I do to relieve myself. It’s not like it helps; it makes it worse, actually, so it’s like, “why can’t you just stop?” And people ask me that, but I know I can’t “just stop.”

At least I don’t cut myself anymore.

Not that getting drunk is any better, but I didn’t particularly enjoy walking around covering my whole body, even in the summer.

This all started when I was about five. By then, I was old enough to understand that my parents were fighting each other. That has been the case for a while, but I realized they weren’t happy together at five years old. I suppose they were staying together for my sake, but that didn’t do them any good.

They were never married, so, at some point, I just stopped seeing my dad. When I asked my mom about it, she said that some people aren’t made to live together. I discovered that he had been cheating on her for three years, which is why they were fighting, but I didn’t figure this out until my adolescence. I also had to learn to accept that I didn’t have a father after that point because he never called and never visited, and I haven’t heard from him since. It could be partially on me now, as I haven’t tried reaching out.

As we didn’t have my dad to help support us, we fell into poverty. Because of this, my mom had to send me to my grandparents frequently so she could work longer hours. My aunt and uncle (my mother’s siblings) also lived there. I was rarely home in my room, and eventually, I stopped going back.

My mom died. Overwork. Anyone could’ve seen it coming, and everyone around me who knew her did and tried to get her to rest. Everyone except me, of course. I was seven. That’s how old I was when I started to cut myself; I don’t remember it being difficult to find something sharp to do it. Driving the shard of glass into my skin let me express all of the pain I felt from my mother dying, and as I did it a few more times, it came out of me like a tidal wave until I had no energy left.

I just wanted my pain to disappear, and I thought this would help. It didn’t, and I ended up doing it more.

I started having trouble with my identity when I was twelve. All my friends were boys, and all of them liked girls as far as I knew. They would talk about being attracted to girls, and I always felt left out because I never felt that way about girls. I’m a boy, so I felt like I had to. I told my family this, thinking something was wrong with me, and they said I’d grow out of it.

Eventually, I realized I was gay, and there wasn’t anything wrong with me; I just had a different attraction than my friends. They saw it that way, too, and pushed me to come out to my family. They thought they would be happy that I was gay and that I finally figured out why I wasn’t attracted to girls.

They were wrong. And I felt dumb as hell for believing them.

My aunt was the only one with an extreme reaction, but I knew the rest of my family also looked down on it.

My aunt, throughout the rest of middle school and until I moved out, was verbally abusive.

“You’re a young man, Sullivan; you should be able to care for and nurture a woman!” She would say. “You’re a sissy; you might as well be a girl! Are you a fucking little girl, Sullivan?”

She had toxic masculinity and homophobia deep within her soul. She would get pissed over minor things, like men wearing makeup, painting their nails, wearing skirts, being sensitive, liking other men, and even growing their hair. My curly brown hair is to my shoulders now; if she were alive to see it, she would probably cast me out completely. She was very vocal about her opinions on how Black people (like us) should be treated equally and made herself out to be for equality for all, even though she wasn’t.

She had a heart attack and died when I was nineteen. The pain she gave me was still fresh, so I didn’t go to her funeral.

My aunt made my cutting habit worse. I was always in pain, and no one did anything to help. I was even gaslighted. They would make me feel like there wasn’t anything wrong and that I was starting shit for no reason.

As I already mentioned, I did stop cutting myself. Someone helped me do that.

In ninth grade, I met a boy named Asher. To me, he was perfect in every way. Beautiful brown skin and shiny brown, kinky hair with green eyes that sparkled like stars. He was the sun, my sun. He would always be there to lift me when I was having a bad day, and he wouldn’t judge me, even when he learned the complete truth about just how fucked up I was.

So, naturally, I fell in love with him. Because, of course, I did.

When I started high school, it was hard for me to make friends. All of my old friends went to other schools. I felt like I’d be shunned immediately, so I was too scared to make friends. Asher was the one person who wouldn’t look at me weirdly for keeping to myself and instead started talking to me himself.

So, I latched on to him. He didn’t mind, but other people would snicker when they’d see us together. Some people would even call us rude things because they thought (or instead guessed correctly) that I was gay and in love with Asher.

When I did come out as gay to him, he was completely supportive and told me he was also gay. My old friends were the only other people who supported me in my life. I also told him about the things that were happening at my home.

“No offense, but your family is fucking disgusting.” He had said. “You should cut them off as soon as possible.”

The years passed, and I still was in love with Asher, and he stayed single. In twelfth grade, I became more extroverted and started making more friends.

I think that’s when he started to notice me.

I was finally more myself. And since I had friends, I was out of my house more. So I was expressing myself, and I was… actually kind of happy for the first time in years. When he asked me out, it only made things better.

I accepted, of course. And when I did that, he asked me to promise I wouldn’t cut myself anymore. He said he couldn’t bear to see me in more pain, so I promised him and tried to honor that promise. We were eighteen.

I’m twenty-five now and haven’t cut myself for four years. And Asher and I are still together… as far as I know.

After I said all that, you’d imagine I’d be happy, or at least getting to that point, but… Asher is missing.

He went to the store in his car at around nine in the evening almost a year ago because we realized at the last minute that we had run out of eggs. We were making a cake for his cousin’s fifteenth birthday in the kitchen I am in now (though significantly cleaner), so we couldn’t wait until tomorrow. I offered to go with him, but he said he would only be there for a minute, and he would come straight back.

Ten o’clock came, and Asher wasn’t back yet. I was getting extremely worried. The local grocery store isn’t very far from us, and he just needed eggs. So, I tried calling him.

No answer.

I called again.

Still no answer.

I called fifty more times, and he didn’t pick up any of them.

My mind was racing.

What if something’s wrong? What if he’s been attacked? What if he got in a car crash?

I tried to ease my mind by thinking maybe traffic was terrible, maybe there was a completely unrelated car crash blocking the road, perhaps he couldn’t find eggs at our local grocery store, and he had to go somewhere else, or maybe his phone was dead…

I went to bed thinking he would come back while I was sleeping, and we could finish the cake tomorrow. The party was at six o’clock that evening, so we had plenty of time even if we arrived late.

I woke up at eight-thirty the following day, and he wasn’t there. I panicked as I threw clothes on and ran out to the garage, and his car wasn’t back. So, I took my car and drove to the local grocery store.

I asked the staff there if they had seen Asher last night; I pulled up a picture and everything. One of them said they did. They told me he was looking for eggs, and they didn’t have any, so he went to the next closest grocery store. They gave me the address to that store, and I drove as fast as I could there.

His car was outside when I got there, so I ran to it and pressed my face against the glass. He wasn’t there.

I ran into the store, and at that point, I was so panicked that I grabbed one of the staff and screamed at the poor man if he saw Asher last night. The rest of the staff seemed afraid of me, but they told me that they saw him walk behind the store with some of the apparent junkies that hung around the store.

I ran out of the store and behind the store. I thought maybe he’d be there unconscious or something. Even his dead body would’ve given me a bit more comfort than not seeing him at all, but he wasn’t there.

Hyperventilating, I looked down and saw a grocery bag with a phone with a cracked screen next to it, and I approached it.

The grocery bag had a smashed carton of eggs, and the receipt had Asher’s credit card. And the phone was Asher’s; I saw my fifty missed calls.

I screamed. Someone ran behind the store to me, looking alarmed. They kept asking if I was okay, but I barely heard them. Shaking, I just slowly raised my phone and dialed nine-one-one.

The police came, and I had to explain the situation to everyone who asked me questions. In between those interrogations, I called his family (especially his cousin since it was her birthday) and explained the situation.

I felt guilty as I listened to their shocked and fearful reactions. I should’ve fiercely insisted on going with him or, at the very least, gone out to look for him that night, but I didn’t, and that’s why they haven’t been able to find him.

I stopped taking care of myself and the house. I stopped working. I just stopped caring about everything. Seven years of psychological progress were flushed down the drain.

I started drinking not long after that. I couldn’t handle the pain of losing my only happiness; I just wanted to be numb to it. Everything was better until I sobered up.

Today, I woke up from a dream where Asher came home. He called me by my nickname (Sully, like the Pixar movie character. He said he thinks of Sully like a big teddy bear, and that’s also what he thinks of me), and I ran down to him, and he embraced me as I breathed in his sweet scent. Seeing him, looking unhurt and alive, felt amazing. So, when I woke up and didn’t see him lying next to me, I cried my eyes out. I cried until there was nothing left. Then, I went back to bed without breakfast. I woke up again at around six thirty in the evening, got drunk, did who knows what for a few hours, and now I’m here.

It’s almost his cousin’s sixteenth birthday. I don’t know if I can take any more of this shit. I call every day to see if they have any information on Asher, and they always brush me off with an impatient “we’ll call you if we have any information on Asher Hope, Mr. Wilson.” They probably closed the case without telling me to spare my feelings; they probably believe he’s most likely dead like I do.

I feel like I’m cursed. I think I am destined to lead an ill-fated life. Every bit of my happiness was taken away from me, and I thought that maybe I could be happy when I started dating Asher and even a little bit before that, but now…

It’s been a year, Asher’s probably dead, and everyone else seems to have just tried to move on, but I can’t. I fucking can’t.

It’s fine. I only have to wait until after his cousin’s birthday, and then… I’ll end it all.

It’s probably for the best.