I've always been a Pushover

Ever since I was a little kid.

Just always had a problem with telling people "no". Being the friendless pre-teen that I was didn't help. I entered high-school with black nails and oversized hoodies and a reputation for being a loser.

So I was alone. I don't mean to feel sorry for myself or anything, but that's the truth of the matter. At home, my divorced parents kept as far away from each other as our house allowed. (Please don't ask me why they decided to continue living together) And my little sister was normally at a friend's house. To get away from our moroseness, I gather.

What time I didn't spend being angsty I used to read. Books were my method of escape – or, at the least, they were, until my friends ruined them for me.

Now, I've never had real friends. So I'm not exactly clear on what defines friendship, but I'm fairly certain that my peers were not friends... in the strictest sense of the word. True, they sat with me at lunch, and walked with me in the halls. They came to my house after school, and we talked about attractive people together.

But they were never true friends – namely because they never received the briefing on friendship either.

As far as school bullies went, they were on the border. They would steal food from me at lunch, press me for lunch money. Shove me into lockers and slap the back of my head when I wasn't paying attention or joining in their trash-talk. Most of which involved me, and my lack of a social or romantic life. A favorite of theirs was to dare me to ask out the school's Popular Kids and then embarrass me in front of said crush.

I learned early to keep to myself. My parents were too busy with their own careers to spend much time worrying about their antisocial recluse, and never noticed Cia's absence at all. (My sister).

It was easier with others. My "friends" ran out of fuel once I stopped supplying it. And – this may sound ridiculous – but if you keep up a certain amount of paranoia and never supply anyone any personal information, you actually become /more/ popular. I slowly gained a reputation for being mysterious.

Which was fine. My friends ate up all the attention, and used me to endorse their clique even more. But all of the commotion passed me by entirely.

I never really wanted to be friends with them – as I've said, I'm somewhat of a recluse – but I've always had that issue with refusing people.

It hasn't always been people, either. I haven't been able to have a pet due to my sister's allergies, but all the neighborhood strays soon learned that if they came to me for treats, I had to oblige.

/Had/ is a word I use lightly. When I say that I had to give in to their demands, I don't mean that I'm a sucker for puppy-dog eyes and incessant pleading. I mean that I will scurry head over heels and turn my own life upside down to fulfill the request.

I'm not entirely certain why I do it, either. None of these people have ever given me anything in return. In fact, most of them figured out my personality and found it easy to abuse. I ran everyone's errands. Did all the chores in the house. Gave everyone everything that they wanted.

And it felt good, to a certain extent. When you satisfy people, they leave you alone, and you can go back to your reading.

*                                                                                   *                                                                                         *

But after a while, my books stopped being appealing to me – as I mentioned, my friends ruined them. This was because they shared the same world.

I would grab a book and delve into the pages, and doing so helped lead me into another world – one where nobody else could enter or even be allowed access to. My imagination would run wild and I would be inside that world. By doing so, I would disappear, and I wouldn't have to think about myself at all. No memories, no thoughts, no failures. I became but a blank slate observing another world.

That was amazing.

Not existing – or disassociating – was how I spent my days. I projected into the universes that I consumed, day dreamed to fill the gaps, and even found my dreams continuing the exploration.

But, like all pleasures, I eventually hit a dead end.

One day a disconcerting thought came into my head, while I was reading "Mrs. Firsby and the Rats of NIMH" by Robert C. O'Brien. My parents had read this book – they first read it to me, in fact, as a bed-time story.

That made me start thinking. . . How many other people that I knew had read it? Consumed it, found themselves wandering the sterilized floors of NIMH alongside Jonathon? Had any of my friends? My sister?

After that horrid thought, no form of media was safe. I stopped being able to enter books. When I would be reading, instead of delving into the pages and losing my touch with my own self, I would wonder what my friends had thought of the scene. My dreams would be crushed by them laughing at the pages, poking one another and jeering.

/"You read books for children, Kit?"/

/"If they were smarter they would have killed the scientists and gotten revenge."/

/"Go read something better-"/

I couldn't stand it.

I tried avoiding them – they found me. Shouldered me in the halls and told me they were going to shoot pool at a friend's house. I said yes – of course I said yes – and the evening /wasn't/ a blur because I didn't disappear as I normally did.

It made me realize how much worse life is once you actually have to live it. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that I felt every tick of the clock as an hour – every second as an eternity. My thoughts felt trapped inside my own head and I was trapped inside my own body, forced to look at myself as I was. A skinny, short, dark haired loser who wore giant black hoodies because they were always cold, and who covered their bruises with band-aids because it was easier than learning not to fall.

*                                                                                        *                                                                                 *

At some point, I found a way around my reality for a while. It actually came as a gift from one of my friends. Something simple – not exactly hard. Just the idea of taking a few too many of an over the counter drug. Not enough to overdose, just to get buzzed.

No, death never really occurred to me. I didn't want to die, I just wanted to ignore life enough to stop living it.

They supplied me with stronger the stuff as we got older, and it stopped being cool to take painkillers. That helped for a while. I didn't read any books; slumped around home and school as a gray-faced zombie that was just as assertive as I had been before. I stopped dreaming altogether.

The hallucinogenics were the best. I only ever tried them once, but they were amazing. Some street drug that a stupid looking kid had brought to one of our parties. It shot through my veins like liquid candy and the entire world went dark. Once it dimmed, I was just dancing through time and space, and it was better than good.

But when it ended, and I crashed, I crashed hard. Back into myself, with a serious jolt and a bitter taste in my mouth that never went away.

After that, I stopped taking drugs.

*                                                                                       *                                                                                    *

Nothing helped. My friends pressured me into following them into some high prestige rich-kid school that would put Presidents in their Purses and rhinestones in their futures. The next year was a blur of studying and drinking – a blur of trying to fix our messed up past.

I didn't want to go to school – I didn't really want anything. /Nothing/ was an emotion that consumed me entirely. If there was nothing else to consume, I consumed the lack of everything, and it swelled inside me to the brim.

It wasn't difficult to get in – we all had good grades, just stupidity in all other areas. They downed a bottle of champagne on the day of our interviews and told me this was the key to a better future. I drank half of mine and went to the interview buzzed. It felt like old times, but the dark lines under my eyes didn't go away.

My parents were happy that I could follow in their footsteps of going to a good school, bedding down with a family and a six figure income, and then divorcing and ignoring said family to spend time alone. I could do that now – I didn't need a future. But, as always, I didn't say no. I didn't say anything.

My friends said it was a good life, so it must have been. I didn't object, didn't complain. Just smile and nod until you go back to sleep.

*                                                                                      *                                                                             *

Life was duller than dull and I couldn't find anything else to fill the void. Love never meant anything to me – thanks to my friends, all of my crushes had been destroyed. They even came between me and my first significant other because said person was "destroying their image". I stopped trying to date.

After a disastrous sexual encounter with one of my friends, I stopped caring about physical connections. It felt bitter, like coming down from a drug-high. They just said it wasn't cool to be a virgin – that all the cool kids were doing it. I shrugged and didn't say no. I never liked pushy people; giving in always shut them up faster than objecting, and what was the point?

So there was that – at least I wasn't a virgin. Not that it felt any different. Nothing was different.

I did enough to get by, sleep-walk through school and life – working just enough to be able to go out with my friends every week. I ate once a day until I got sick and lived on water for the rest of the day.

None of it was healthy, but healthy meant nothing either.

At some point, my mind returned to my books.

My friends always found their way into everything that I enjoyed – everything that I liked. They tore the foundation out of every good thing that had ever come my way and stomped all over my mind until it was empty and dull.

Reading still felt stale and bitter – particularly since several of my friends decided to become intellectuals in college. They read ten books a week and didn't become any smarter. Thus began the newest game. After a few dinner conversations, I learned to stop mentioning anything related to books around them. I had no desire to feel like an idiot and be humiliated in front of strangers.

A stronger person would have cut ties with them – years ago, in fact. But according to them, I was an idiot. Just the zombie of the group who took all the punches and words and shrugged them off because I was just lucky to be there.

Honestly, I did it because what would be the point of refusing? I'd be alone, and just sit in my dorm room studying. At least this was something to do.

*                                                                                          *                                                                            *

After living without change for a long time, I got pretty sick, and couldn't get out of bed. As the temperature of my body climbed toward 104 degrees, my mind ebbed away. It didn't feel bad, exactly. When you have a high fever, it feels as though your mind is always wandering – running in all directions. Zigzagging up and down and inside and out with every thought that you never could control and you never see any of them because your mind is /hot/.

I slept a lot, and had fever dreams.

That was when I found it: Ether. Something to do.

Ether was the in between. When people say that the information on the internet is sent through the Ether, this is what they meant. It was in between two areas of consciousness, like a purgatory of sorts. I entered it accidentally through my dreams.

The usual monster was chasing me through a door-less hallway, chanting my name in a monstrous growl. But this time, the dead end didn't feel so empty to me. I ran toward the bathroom and leaped into the mirror.

Out the other side, and that was Ether.

It wasn't a dream. I've had dreams before – this was lucid. Tangent. I could smell and taste and feel like I'd never felt before.

There were other creatures in Ether, but none of us looked as we did in life. I had a form, but I couldn't describe it. I was all light and darkness with no face at all. Sometimes I was legs – sometimes I was many. But my mind was always clear.

I found someone who looked like a giant eye. They refused to maintain eye contact because it was rude.

The eye's name was Ty, and they gave up their body to live in Ether forever. It was nicer, Ty said. You didn't have to worry about the world or the people that you left behind. There were no fashion trends to keep up with, or tests to study for.

Everything had gone by too quickly, Ty had told me. The world had raced by and there was never any time to do anything worthwhile.

But Ether was calm, Ether was peaceful.

I nodded with them.

For me, Ether was solitude without isolation. I was able to speak to the other creatures by myself. It felt odd at first. They all looked so strange and were so jagged, but none of them were cruel, and they listened. A red snake with multiple cuts told me that she didn't miss the sun because she never had to wake up. Everybody felt at home in Ether.

I made some friends – real friends. Ones who didn't judge me for what I was, because none of us were anything anymore. We couldn't take anything at face value because there was no face value in Ether.

The world was blue to me. Strangely lit, like an 80s movie. With winding walls and an odd assortment of beings.

What I found the most wonderful was that the longer I stayed in Ether, the farther away the real world became. Soon my memories started to dull, and I found it hard to remember the person that I used to be.

*                                                                                             *                                                                        *

The first time that I came back, I was groggy.

It felt like a year had passed. I saw the waking world for a minute and blinked painfully at the lights, before slipping back into a dream.

This one took place in a small field, covered in daisies. A small cottage was visible in the distance.

I sat in the daisies, wearing a flower-crown and a bracelet of thorns. But I wasn't alone – in the distance, I could hear the low rumbling of the beast coming after me again. The monster. The demon to end all demons, participant in all nightmares since the age of seven.

A strange breeze drifted by, smelling like freshly cut grass and leaking sap. It directed my attention toward the building and I ran. The monster followed, breath on my heels and claws on my back.

Once reaching the cottage, I slammed the door behind me and tried to blockade the door. It began to disassemble the wood. My mind was swimming with panic, and the same disembodied thoughts that my sickness infested brain dreamed in reality. Everything was blurring, as the monster came closer.

I was pulled from my despair by the faint blue light emanating from one of the walls. Ether.

Quickly, I drew a circle into the wall and opened the door to Ether. It closed just in time for me to be face-to-face with the monster, emerging with a barrage of wood splinters. I looked down its horrendous maw and saw my own world in its teeth.

Just as the entrance to Ether closed, I felt something snap inside my mind.

*                                                                                    *                                                                                         *

"Welcome back," Ty said to me, with a fond blink. They always missed me.

"Do you ever miss reality?" I asked them.

"No, never."

I wondered if anyone did – if reality really was so dreadful for all of us here that nobody wanted to return.

A giant, lopsided head offered me his opinion. He thought that reality was overrated, that everyone talked about it only because none of us could truly remember it. We remembered the bad or the good because we clung to it. None of our memories were true to the whole picture.

In the end, Reality didn't matter because all of it would soon fade away.

I thought it would be miserable to only remember the negatives of life. But then, in my own, I had only the Nothing. Hours of lost time, now spent wandering Ether with the products of broken dreams.

I had spent much too much time in Ether already, because I couldn't remember a single time back in Reality that I had been happy.

*                                                                                                   *                                                                           *

There's nothing wrong in Ether.

When I needed to be alone, it gave me the down-time to think. And my mind was clear as a corpse's.

I decided to search for something warm, because I was growing bored. I was growing /sad/. I'd spent years drowning the /sad/ with every concoction I knew, and here it was catching up with me in my last haven.

Eventually, I was able to tease something out of the fog. My sister – her fourteenth birthday party. She had invited three of her friends and two of mine, and we were all sneaking tastes of the cake.

The fog filtered – the /sad/ again. One of my friends pushed one of her friends into the cake. They laughed at the clenched fists and angry tears welling in the eyes of my sister.

And that was the last time that my sister brought friends to our house, I remembered. While her sibling sat there with a ducked head, licking frosting off their fork.

No – there was something good there. She had been happy, initially. She had been smiling.

We were happy. Playing together, hanging out. Doing everything together until it became uncool to have your baby sis tag along everywhere that you went.

No, no – none of that.

We were /happy/.

That felt better. Ether wasn't so cold now. There was more inside my form than just the /sad/. And the less that I clung to it, the better that I felt.

I had lost so much, and thrown away so much more, that it was difficult to feel anything more than the /sad/, or the void, or the Nothing. But once, I had been a pre-teen. Sitting in my closet at night crying, digging nails into the palm of my hand and drawing desperate circles on my wrist with a red sharpie.

I had been angry once. Furious at the world for being so cold. I had shouted at my parents and broken their bubble of personal feud. I had thrown things at passing cars and screamed at the top of my lungs during thunderstorms.

That was so long ago, but it had still been living.

*                                                                                          *                                                                               *

I told Ty about my feelings. They didn't understand at first, so I made them find something of their own.

Ty didn't have a baby sister, but they had a baby girl once. She brought tears to the eye, as it shuddered and shook with emotion.

They were happier now. Ether was serene. Everyone just had to stop /lingering/. We all felt better when we realized that there were other things. If we were going to forget, then we shouldn't remember the bad when there had been good, even if only a little.

I woke up again. This time it only lasted a few seconds. I coughed, turned over and vomited. The effort made my entire body shake and my vision blacken. I heard voices that sounded too faraway to reach me. And instead of my entire body burning with fire, I felt only ice.

Everything soon slipped back into shadow.

*                                                                                           *                                                                              *

This dream was empty. It was as though my mind were falling apart. Pieces of me were already gone – I could feel it.

It made me think of Ether. Ty would spread /remembering/ to the other creatures, and they would pick up pieces of themselves that were good. Or they would finally let go of their past and move on. The true beauty of Ether was forgetting and finally being at ease.

I wanted to go back to Ether now that I would be able to actually enjoy it. I wanted to talk to the other creatures and make more friends. I wanted to have parties and dinners where I wasn't used as a prop. I wanted to be a part of a group where I felt /valuable/. I wanted to feel /loved/.

I had felt some of those things in my short visit. It had been wonderful to feel alive. But deep down, I still felt sad. Maybe the ice ran to my core and I could never be fixed.

The beast's growling behind me made my mind stop.

There were no walls in this dark recess – only the ledge before me and the growling of the monster at my back. It raked my skin with its claws and swiped my head with a fiery tongue.

I tried to draw a circle on the ground, but it crumbled beneath my feet. Everything was going – Ether was going.

*                                                                                            *                                                                               *

Pleasure never lasts forever.

The beast opened its maw once again, and this time I saw not just the teeth, but the monster for what it was. A shapeless creation of darkness and crackling light, that had no form, no face, and was nothing more than a force howling for something different. Between its teeth were my memories. Inside its maw was nothing.

I didn't close my eyes when the beast swallowed me. I kept them open as I disappeared down its maw and into the belly of the monster.

It was the Nothing I'd sought my entire life, but now that I had finally found it, I realized that it had been chasing me. And I had allowed it to catch me.

The dream disappeared. Reality disappeared. Ether disappeared.

But I couldn't feel as sad as I thought that I would.

When I reached the bottom, I saw light.