Page 4 of Starstruck
To make matters worse, we were then told that our father was on life support. Apparently, his brain had swelled so bad that the neurosurgeon had to remove a piece of his skull to try to reduce it, but they hadn’t seen any brain activity and weren’t sure if he was going to wake up. In other words, he was braindead. They told us that if there was no change within six hours, we would have to decide whether or not to take him off of life support.
Three days later, we did just that.
Our father didn’t have an advanced directive with his wishes, so his life was left in our hands. Making a decision like that is a responsibility I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
It took us a few days before we finally agreed to let him go. It was heartbreaking, but we knew it was for the best. Our father never would’ve wanted to live hooked up to machines, and we knew better than to hope he would wake up one day.
Hope is debilitating, and we couldn’t bear it.
Due to my fractured ribs and concussion, they kept me there for another six days after we unplugged our dad. I was having difficulty breathing and had some internal bleeding they wanted to keep an eye on. But I’m doing better now, they say. At least physically.
My mental well-being is a different story.
The past six weeks have pretty much been a blur of boys and bars, one night fading into the next until I can’t remember who or where I am.
It’s not the healthiest coping mechanism, but it’s the best I’ve got right now. Especially since I haven’t been writing.
From a distance, one might look at me and think my parents’ deaths set me free. And truth be told, they wouldn’t be entirely wrong.
If you put the Lennon from before the accident and the Lennon from after the accident in a room together, they wouldn’t recognize each other. My life before wasn’t bad by any means, but it also wasn’t anything special.
Nearly dying for eight years put a bit of a damper on things. After I went into remission until the day of the accident, I played by the rules. I did everything other people wanted me to do and nothing for myself, because I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. I had spent so many years feeling like a burden to the people around me that I promised myself I would never burden them with anything again.
I was always there when they needed me and I knew they’d come running if I needed them, but I triedso hardnot to need them. I had already stolen so many years from them, I didn’t want to steal anymore.
Except now I have.
Now I’ve takenevery last oneof my parents’ years.
That’s something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.
For so long, I’d kept my head down, loving them from a distance. I didn’t do anything that might make anyone think less of me. I stayed with a man I wasn’t in love with for much longer than I should have simply because he was safe, and I needed safe desperately. Whether it was my parents, my siblings, or my ex Nathan—I’d always felt like there was someone else’s voice in the back of my mind telling me what I should or shouldn’t do, even when that wasn’t the case.
But now there’s no one. My parents are dead. Nathan is gone. My siblings are here, but I’ve been avoiding them. I’m not the same person I was before this, but I still don’t want to burden them with how much I’ve been struggling.
So there’s just me.
And just me is fine, because so long as it’s just me, I can’t hurt anymore. I can’t lose anyone else if the only person I have is myself.
Coping like this has been the only way to keep my mind off of the fact that nothing makes sense anymore.
Because one day, you’re living by the rules of others, always playing it safe, and the next, you’re lying in a hospital bed being told that your parents are dead.
After that I started wondering, what’s the point?
What’s the point of me living my life by someone else’s rules, never doing anything I want, to stay safe and protected when a drunk driver can rip it all out from under me in the blink of an eye?
What’s the point of anything if the two people who mean the most to me in the world, the two people who I’ve always looked up to, the two people who’ve always seemed invincible in my eyes, could die so suddenly?
What’s the point of constantly trying to stay out of harm’s way when God or the universe or whoever the hell is up there keeps pushing me into it?
I’ve always been told I’m a miracle for surviving cancer. I was told I’m a miracle after surviving the car crash, too. But what kind of miracle am I really if after everything I’ve done to avoid them, bad things still happen?
And why, even after all that, am I the one who’s still alive?
So I said fuck playing it safe, which is how I ended up in another stranger’s bed. If I’m going to be tortured with the memory of my parents and the role I played in killing them, I’m going to have fun doing it.
And here we are.
