June 5th

Therapy isn't as bad as I thought it would be. For years, I shot it down. I wanted to medicated to avoid my problems. If I was chemically stable, why did I need to 'talk about my feelings?' If I wasn't hurting myself or others, there was no need for a professional to intervene, however, I can see it now. It's sort of nice to talk to a stranger. Although they are informed of the general reasons behind my behavior, they aren't forceful with getting information. I sat silent for the first three sessions, thinking how much of a waste of time it was, but the therapist didn't intrude. She asked one or two questions and stayed patient as all she received was a dead stare from me.

At first, I thought it was a game. I wanted to see who would crack first, who'd be the first to explain what they're doing. The game grew boring by session eleven and I gave in, asking, "So, what are you going to do for me?"

With a kind smile, she answered, "I'm going to spot you as you lift those weights off your chest."

The analogy was dumb, but the idea was what clicked. She wasn't going to force me to pick up those weights when I didn't want to. When I was ready, she would be my helping hand, after all, I'm pretty weak. She was going to support my grip as I worked through the lift. That's a therapist's job, to help you through the weight and grow stronger at your pace. And for all these years, I avoided them in fear that I would be considered crazy or that it would prove that I was as weak as I felt. I thought I could lift the weights by myself when all I was doing was circling around the bench, pretending I already knew how to lift one-fifty. What a fucking idiot I am.

It hasn't been too long, but I can see the changes happening in me. I'm still way off where I should be. I picked up a bad habit, smoking. Before I entered therapy, I was at a grocery store with Gregory and Matthew. I didn't even want to be out in public, let alone in a store, so I sat in the van waiting. There was a car parked nearby with a bunch of assholes from school. One of them was smoking. They didn't bother to finish the cigarette when it was thrown out the window and they tried to do a burn out in the parking lot. They failed and sheepishly drove away normally. I was curious, so I climbed out of the van and walked to parking space. I know it's really gross, but I picked up the cigarette and tried it. It was terrible at first, but as I kept trying, it was okay. Okay turned into good, good turned into great, and great turned into blackmailing Kankuro into getting me a pack after I saw him hanging out with the kids my mom made him promise to stop being with.

Since then, I've attempted to wean myself away from them. It's a nasty habit to have. I suck on mints and wash my clothes often to hide it on my person and in my room, I keep at least three candles lit and a Febreeze canister on my desk. I wouldn't have to spend the leftover money from my old job on these items if I could just quit. Oh yeah, I don't have a job anymore. I had too many call offs and missed days, so my job dissolved without as much as a phone call. I haven't been to the book store or any book store since. I stay home reading books online after I finish my school work. I also switched over to cyber school much to Naruto's disappointment. My attendance and grades were abysmal, so to finish up the year properly, I'm doing double the work over the summer so I can at least graduate with Naruto, Lee, and Choji next year. It's a slow process, but I'm becoming stable.

I'm sure you're glad that everything seems okay, but it's not. Sometimes have grown even worse, like the relationship with my mother.

We don't speak. We don't look each other in the eye at breakfast or acknowledge our arrivals or disappearances from home. Gregory has turned into the glue holding this family together. Temari moved out again after telling my mom she was pregnant, Kankuro is about to leave with those scummy friends to God knows where, and Matthew is acting so erratic, it's unpredictable what he's going to do next. He's the sponge absorbing the dysfunction around him. He's never going to live a normal life if he's forced to live in this house with the way it is now.

But the reason my mother and I aren't speaking is because I told her about the rape and she didn't say anything back to me. I mean, how do you look in your offspring's eyes as they cry to you about their sexual assault and not say a goddamn thing? It looked like she shut down. Her face was blank, her body was still, and all I saw was a distant stare as if I did not even exist to her. After I begged her twice to say something, she just stood up and walked to her room without any look back. I couldn't believe. My own fucking mother walked away, she walked away from her goddamn suffering son and didn't bat an eyelash!

When I told my therapist about it a few days later, I got pissed at her when she sort of defended my mother. Within a couple of years, she lost her husband to a car accident, has a strained relationship with a daughter who gets knocked up and moves out, tries to save the middle child from throwing his life away just to be with his friends, and has the pressures of a potential marriage and another son who is getting caught up in the uncontrollable madness of family drama, and on top of that, she had her youngest children suffering with depression, getting into fights at school, coming out of the closet, and dating what seemed to be the perfect boy, but ends up being an abusive partner that attacked her son with physical and sexual tactics and instead of telling her right away, the son lets himself deteriorate in his bedroom, shut down to everyone who was trying to help him out, and when he finally comes out with it, it turns out to be the day his mother found out she had a miscarriage. (That last fact I learned from Gregory when he tried to help me calm down after my mom left the room.)

When you explain it like that, may be my mother has a right to be in shock. Maybe.

My therapist gave me a journal, a real lined paper journal to fill out everyday. There was no full page requirement, just jot the date, something about my day or how I feel and that's it. I told her I had a blog I wrote for the past few months, but explained how writing these entries seems to hurt me more than help me release my problems. Instead, she gave me the notebook. I'm not sure why, but writing it in has been much more cathartic than this or writing in a normal dollar store brand one. Maybe it's because I know that it's a part of the healing process, that I don't have to worry about others reading my personal thoughts or trying to challenge myself to describe every single thing happening with me. Once again, it's the pace. My therapist doesn't expect me to write every single line of self-hatred or outward hatred of the world I have. I share what I'm comfortable with and we work it out from there.

There's another thing I haven't talked about, but I'm sure you're all wondering. 'What happened to Neji?', right?

Listen, there's some things that we keep personal, and I mean, so personal that sometimes we're unaware that these things even exist within us. When Neji was in my life, he brought out this love and care for another man I had stored deep down inside me. I knew I was gay from a younger age, but meeting him really made me realize the truth. I could never see myself with a woman. I only saw a man in my future and for some reason, Neji fit all the things I wanted. Creative, sensitive, funny, passionate, open-minded, and obviously hot as shit. The first interactions felt treacherous and exciting at the same time, like I was walking along the edge of a cliff. The balance between staying grounded and falling hard. Problem was, I fell hard. I fell so hard that I didn't remember that there were jagged rocks at the bottom waiting to catch my fall. I was distracted by how light I felt and how blue the sky was.

Being with Neji was that fall from reality where happiness was not stemmed from material possessions or the money I got from work. It was just being in his presence that made my heart beat harder than it ever did. It was looking into his eyes that reminded me that I could be more beautiful than Niagara Falls or a newly blossomed flower. I was appreciated for more than being a hard worker or a good student or an obedient son, but my entire being was a blessing to the world. My birth was what brought Neji complete and utter content. I was a beacon of sun in an otherwise desolate storm in Neji's heart. I was everything. He was everything. And together, nothing meant anything unless it related to our special realm.

But I hit those jagged rocks. They eviscerated everything inside of me. My smiles stopped and my tears began. My blood flooded around me and all I could do was look up at the sky and try to remember why I thought the sky was blue when all it was was gray. But I'm not alone. Neji fell down sometime later. Right beside me, he tried to hold my hand, but he couldn't reach. I imagined that he smiled when he crashed. I bet the sky was still blue for him.

May 19th, 2014 at 1:34pm, Neji Hyuuga was discovered by his uncle, Hiashi Hyuuga, dead on his bedroom floor. It was a suicide. He swallowed most of a jug of turpentine oil before passing out on the floor and choking on his own vomit. The turpentine oil managed to burn through his stomach lining and most of his throat, but he didn't feel the pain. He had a blood alcohol level of 0.4%. He was too drunk to feel anything at all. Nearby, there was a painting he was working on. It was the same one I caught a glimpse of before Neji sexually assaulted me. It was of me, uncomfortably standing in the middle of a hiking trail, covered in flower petals Neji put on me with a weird expression. It was a dumb picture we took when we went on a nature walk, yet it was the one always pinned on his corkboard despite owning better photos of me.

He explained, "This is the most natural photo I have of you. You're gorgeous no matter what, but you either look like you're trying or hiding when I take pictures of you. This one... it just screams who you are."

I never understood what he meant by it. Seeing it in person that night, I saw it. A little awkward, but willing to make the ones I love happy. I accepted those flower petals with hesitation and stood still when I was asked. Before Neji snapped the shot, he told me a dumb pun about, 'I'm no hunter, but I'd be happy to shoot you.' I rolled my eyes, but smirked, thinking how lame he was. Right as I looked back to make fun of him, he snapped the picture. I was unexpectedly moved seeing that Polaroid blown up so large, seeing that I was still amazing in his eyes. No matter how much I was pushing him away, he wanted to follow me to the ends of the Earth and I did the dumbest thing I think I could ever do in my entire life. I slept with him.

Sometimes I forget that I'm just a teenager. I forget that I'm supposed to be learning and growing and discovering who I am and that 'now' doesn't mean 'forever,' that 'now' means 'now', like 'right now.' Just because I loved Neji 'now' didn't mean I would love him 'forever.' So when in that moment, I found myself back in love, caught up in that current of absolute adoration, that soon after that act, I definitely did not love him forever. I didn't love him now. I hated him. I hated myself. I hated the feeling of giving false hope and meaningless sex as a prize for continual pining. He deserved a lot of terrible things, but he didn't deserve to be led on like that either. I left immediately, ignoring the wrecking ball destroying my insides. I'm just a terrible person.

Have you ever been interrogated by the police? I have. That's how I discovered Neji was dead anyway. His uncle verified that I was Neji's ex-boyfriend and that I was the boy in the painting, but it sucks when the grieving uncle has to verify that he knew his nephew was having sex, thus explaining the used condom on the bed. I had to explain everything about us, from beginning to the end of the relationship, then the beginning of my torture to the very last night we were together. I saw photos of his dead bloody body and puked in a nearby basket. Is that even legal to do to a minor? Gregory was my present adult, so he shoved all those photos away and demanded to speak to a higher up for showing that to his son. Regardless, I had to confirm that we had sex the night of his death, that he was stalking me and assaulting me, and that he abused me while we dated. The police dropped another bomb on me. Neji was bipolar and had been only taking half of the medication he was supposed to take.

Those orange bottles he hid from me were his meds. I finally had an answer to Neji's strange behavior, why he swung so high to so low in an instant or how weirdly energized he got before plummeting down into sleepiness. With half of those meds, he was just a little unpredictable, but mostly solid, but without them... he did things like this. Neji had uncontrollable emotion that depended on the littlest things to keep him right. He drank to cover the sadness and ended up hurt the worst when I left. He took it to the extreme, he ended it all. But he hid it from me. I don't understand why Neji would hide it. I mean, I guess he assumed I would leave him because he was crazy or something, but really, if he told me then, I would have stuck around. I had loved him so much, I would have helped him through his own problems. I'd remind him to take his medications and have him talk out any frustrations he had. I dedicated my life to him when we were together, but he hid such a huge thing from me that if he was alive, I don't know if I could trust him.

It doesn't matter now though. They did all those tox screen thingys you see on TV and I was an innocent. I ignored Gregory's request to stay home and went to Neji's funeral anyway. All it was were close family. No friends or acquaintances and there was barely any crying. No words were spoken as his body was lowered and no words were spoken as the people left.

I promptly lit a cigarette once they were gone and stared at the dirt clod in front of me. There laid Neji Hyuuga, my first everything in love, a brilliant artist, a psychotic boyfriend, a victim of mental illness and alcoholism. And here I am, Gaara Sabaku, sufferer of depression, a doormat for domestic abuse, and otherwise failure of anything but discovering the talent of blowing smoke circles in the air.

Here's to you, Neji. May your afterlife be more fulfilling than your real life.

Here's to me, may therapy work out the rest of my kinks.

Here's to you, Universe. Will you quit fucking up my life and let me have some time to relax?

And here's to you, readers. Thanks for putting up with this shit. I know half of you were bitching about me being unable to see clearly and quit going back to the chaos. Well, I can see clearly now, and clearly, this blog no longer has a place in my life right now.

So, later.

- Gaara Sabaku