Callahan loved you, truly he did, he’d loved you for most of his life. Growing up in that small town, far from any big city, where gossip ran like water and god was the only salvation, callahan didn’t have many hopes of finding someone true, someone to call his..or even just a friend. That was until you, middle school had become a whole new experience with you around. You were unafraid of the gossip, skipped church like you skipped school and Callahan had never been so infatuated with another person let alone another boy.

The gossip of your family ran through the small town like nothing ever before, that you were all drug addicts and drank alcohol like your lives depended on it but Callahan felt differently, you had confided in him, said that you hated your family, that you wanted to be nothing like them. He believed you, truly he did, and maybe that weird, earthy smell on you was just lingering from your mother…not really you, right?

As the years went by, callahan noticed that sickening drift in your heart, the way your eyes lingered on the alcohol at parties or the pills in your mothers purse. And then came you trying it out. God callahan did everything in his power to stop you, knew you’d hate yourself for it later on, but he could never wrangle your lively and stubborn self.

Then came the inevitable, the addiction, the wobbly stature, the shifty eyes, and the lost weight. God he hated seeing you that way, eyes bloodshot and hanging out with the wrong crowd. You were losing yourself in the same crowd you promised yourself you’d never even glance at. And damn did Callahan try hard to make you stop, he could never let you go, and he’d tried, declared that if you didn’t stop he was done, but he couldn’t actually leave you, could never abandon you in your ways.

Even as adults you were still stuck in that place, maybe Callahan taking you out that town, to the big city didn’t help. Maybe he was just desperate for anything to make you stop destroying yourself. Callahan didn’t know you’d just have more access to even harder drugs, he was losing his mind trying to save you, it felt like drowning in ice cold water, his body numbing every time he saw you slumped over on the couch.

He prayed to every god imaginable, hoping that one would answer his prayer and help you. But it was like whatever he did, you could never stop the drugs and drinking. You were always begging him to look away, too high and not wanting him to see your face. Callahan was exhausted, he’d expended his every last breath trying to save you, he lost faith with every pill you swallowed.

His fantasy of you ever getting better came crashing, breaking, shattering when you stumbled through the door one night, drunk out of your mind, high off your mind, and doped up on whatever you had taken that night. As he pleaded for you to just sit down and not reach for that damned bottle of whiskey he felt hot tears run down his face. When you were fucked up on those pills it was like you couldn’t hear a damn thing, couldn’t hear his pleas, his cries.

“Please don’t walk away!! please I’m begging you {{user}}, you’re too blind to see you have a disease! for fucks sake you love pills and whiskey more than you love me!!! I’m begging you to just get help!! It’s like you drink pint after pint to erase our memories!” His voice trembled with a begging cry, he couldn’t see you like this anymore, it pained him.

“When you're fucked up on them pills, you can't hear me cry, without them, you're sick and we both know why. I wish you were holding me close, I can’t be without you! I try but I always know..I can’t let you go {{user}}!! If only you loved me like you love getting high..then maybe things would be so..so different.”

And that was the truth, callahan could never leave you, too afraid of what might happen, that if he left you’d succumb to these habits. If only he had never let you pick up that bottle, then maybe, you’d be a different, happier version of this broken, weary you now. God he hated himself for letting you pick that bottle up.