ALEXANDER 1.4
PART 4: I’ll Hold You to Sleep.
You cannot live a mundane life if you have won battles. For battles are full of death, and winning only means that you’ve killed to survive, and the face of a killer is never sane, but loathsome and void.

“Beautiful baby, sleepy baby, I’ll hold you to sleep.” Alexander sang again and again in Mila’s ears.
Mila was Alexander’s first experience with pride. The moment that pretty angel came to life, 4s lit up around his body. He felt full of everything that tickled his skin. Alexander was hardly joyed, but with her, the beautiful sensations came easy and housed his mind. He loved her more than he ever expressed, with all his heart, he saw his sister as the one and only reason to not fall apart.
So now, even though years have passed and they grew busy with life’s mess, she still, at times, knocked at his door and every time he would sing her to sleep as she laid her head on his knees. “Beautiful baby, sleepy baby, I’ll hold you to sleep.” He ran his fingers through her pretty hair and wondered how in the world can this revolution of a human exist so fiercely in a tamed world.
- How have you been Mila?
- I feel like I’m here, but not really here, you know? Like I’m floating through the void, trying so hard to exist normally, but not knowing what normal even is at this point. I have these feelings inside of me that make it so difficult to see what lies ahead, but I believe, I really do, that there must be something to be seen.
Mila took a deep breath, rubbed her eyes, and then squeezed her brother’s hand tighter, brought it to her lips for a kiss, then let it rest on her chest.
- The other night I was sitting by the lemon tree in our backyard, you know, the one dad planted when we were really young. I looked and looked for the longest time, that spot usually made me feel free and light, but that night, I didn’t feel any of that. All the things that used to fascinate me no longer faze me, I really don’t want to die, I want to live so badly, I just don’t know how to anymore. I want to do so many things before I die, there’s so much shit in my brain that I want to accomplish, I want to be memorable, I want greatness, I deserve greatness, and yet I feel like the more I live the worse it gets. My relationship with life has always been like nursing a toxic lover, I fight the need to be there with them for the sake of my survival. Except that survival, in my case, has the face of death, or something of the sort.
You know I always rethink of Van Gogh’s “sadness will never end” and wonder that maybe if he lived a little longer he would’ve been able to prove that it actually ends. Now, I feel like he was speaking the truth. I know I haven’t seen shit from life and I’m only barely an adult, but still, the amount of pressure I feel in my chest at this moment is so exhausting, you have no idea. I haven’t been crying even, I haven’t been listening to my music either, I just haven’t been feeling alive. I’m just genuinely, extremely, unhappy in ways that I can’t put into words. And I don’t know what’s making me feel this low, I don’t know what I want, or what I want to be, or where I want to be. I don’t know and I don’t want to know because it just makes me more anxious. I can’t even get myself to be satisfied with who I am anymore, I’m mostly speechless and suffocated. I swear I’m over all the talk, all the reassurance, all the hopeful comments from people like you, and I am sorry if that hurts you, but it is the honest truth. I’m over you trying to make me see the bright things in life, I’m over everything, literally. I know all of this. I know of all the greatness out there, I’m conscious of my surroundings, I know how amazing and beautiful life is and how exciting it can be at times. You know that I know. But this all stops to matter as soon as I’m alone and in my head. When I truly see and understand the beauty of my life and yet it all fails to make me want to persist, there stops being a point at all in living. I’d love to live, I really would, I genuinely would love to live, but the pain is just so fucking overwhelming, it’s intoxicating me, Alexander.
- Mila,
- Yes?
- I’d never ask of you to live for my sake, or to live, simply. If there’s anyone who knows what the brain can do to us, that would be me.
- I know Alexander, I just hate knowing so much and feeling so little.
She sat straight and stared into his beautiful eyes overwhelmed with powerlessness.
One afternoon in 4th grade, when Alexander walked into class to face the panicked eyes of Mila, teary and frozen in motion as Miss Downy knelt in front of her, was to him, the switch to madness. The red would always haunt him after that. Mila seemed to grow past that day, but he couldn’t, sometimes he felt like he did. Sometimes, at moments where the darkness of blue fades away from his bruises, he overpowers it too. Except those moments didn’t last for very long,
The worst part about loving someone more than loving yourself is that you end up with unsolicited, everlasting, heartbreak.
Alexander learned to love Mila a little less with time, to keep his crawling spiders out of her ways, and to give her unconditionally, so maybe his passion would end up healing the holes in her.
The next morning, he biked his way to the parlor that’s been painting his body for the past few years. He finally decided to combat the ink again, laid on his back as a red bow appeared slowly on his ribs. A tribute to Mila, to never forget that she may be holed, but she is still and will forever be, his Mila, his reason.
