BBY Ch.36

Chapter 36: Too Many Thoughts

            I lied there most of the night. When I finally got up I only moved as far as my room, where I ended up lying on my bed for the remainder of the night staring at me ceiling with my door locked. In my room I couldn't hear Flint and whatever his boyfriends name was.

            Had I really always been so cruel to him? Had I really treated my best friend so terribly for all these years? I knew he was right, that yes, I had really treated him so badly all these years, but part of me said there was a reason for it, and that it was probably karma acting because he was a were supporter. I really didn't care if he was gay. It might bother me a little, but I'd started thinking about my own life and sexuality. I'd always had plenty of luck with the ladies, and yeah, some guys stared now and then, but that was normal. It was them, not me. Part of me couldn't help but wonder about my own sexuality. My best friend was gay. Was I? Was I bi? Was I something else? Was there even something else?

            And what about my brother? If he showed up would I really kill him? Part of me said yes, because I had to, but part of me said no, that I wouldn't be able to bring myself to kill my own family. We shared so much DNA. We shared an entire past. We shared family. We just happened to be different people and take different paths, but what if everyone was right and Duval had just been trying to protect me all these years and just let me live my life? What if, what if, what if!

            I grabbed my head and curled up in as tight of a ball as I could manage, slipping my hands over my ears in an attempt to try and block out the voices that were floating around in my head. The voices were mostly my own voice, but also random voices given to my thoughts.

            I remembered my dad saying long ago that he hadn't found peace until he found my mom. That he was conflicted in so many things. And that sometimes a slight belief in religion did help. He didn't believe in most religions, but he believed that everyone had the right to choose what religion he or she wanted for himself. He found mom and mom had Buddhism. My brother would always ask her questions, but once I came into my shifter power and found out more about what I am, I didn't want anything to do with her. There were times that part of me felt absolutely terrible because of it, but then I thought back to how she was a werewolf and I felt like everything was better.  I wore silver to keep her away from me. My piercings were a way of rubbing in her face that I was something she wasn't and that I'd always be different. It was also my way of expressing myself because neither of my parents had piercings or tattoos. We couldn't get tattoos because they'd heal, but if we handled piercings the right way we could have them for as long as we lived. If it wasn't for however my parents died my mom would still be alive for sure, but my dad might or might not have been.

            Werecreatures could live ages and ages on, which made it dangerous for them to stay in the same place for too many years. They didn't age the right way, they lived for long periods of time, and they weren't easily injured. Movie stereotypes, right?

            Shifters, sadly, had a shorter life expectancy than a werecreature, but they lived a little longer than humans. Whereas human average age was around 90, the average age for a werewolf, for example, was somewhere around 200 or 300 years, more if they took good care of themselves. Shifters were lucky to make it to 150 years old. When my dad had died we had to lie about the birth year of course. My dad would have been turning 150 later in the year if he hadn't died already. It was hard to think back to that day. I had blocked everything out. So much hatred. So many blank spots from where I'd ended up blocking everything out because I didn't like the thought of Duval controlling everything in our lives. His life. My life. We hadn't had an "our life" in years. Not since I became a shifter. And not since he started hanging around mom more and more. It was like he couldn't get enough of her. She was just a stupid woman and he was nothing more than a momma's boy. It did make me look better with the ladies. I was a man's man, I was the tougher one, and I acted like it. Sometimes I missed the stupid family game nights and the making pizza together. I never could cook, but Duval would always help me. I might have been the older brother of the two of us, but Duval was the one who was obviously going to make it somewhere in life. And somehow he ended up staying in the same house we grew up in and working a solid job that didn't have anything he could really branch out into. I had cared enough at one point to make sure of where he was going to be at just in case something ever did happen and he was my only option.

            There were too many thoughts in my head for me to handle. I had to find a way out of my head and only one option was staring me in the face. The only way I had to go through with that option required help from someone else, because I wasn't going to go like a coward. I was too good for that and there was no way I was going to pull a trigger on my own head and that was the only real way I would have been able to kill myself. Pills would have been thrown up or digested too quickly and if I tried cutting myself I'd just heal. Even with silver. Hanging might work, but that took time and I wanted to be out of my head quickly.