Dear Sister, Here's Some Advice

I was sat on the floor in Jack’s dressing room. The couches were already preoccupied by others and I needed to be close to the coffee table. I was just doing some work on my laptop. If you could call it work. Really, I was just scrolling through my emails now that we had some really good internet connection at a venue. Most of them were spam emails, but there were a few that were legit. For example, my cousin sent out an email reminding people of her wedding that was coming up. The rest was generally just subscription emails that I couldn’t be bother to unsubscribe to, and there were a few articles about my photography exhibition.

But I couldn’t sit down and actually read any of them. Everything in my head was too busy. Whenever I would start reading a sentence, only to have to read it five more times to understand what it was about. I was way too restless. So you can imagine my annoyance when somebody kept interrupting me when I was on the last line of what seemed to be quite an important email.

“Isle,” Jack tried to grab my attention and poked me with his foot when I didn’t immediately respond. He was sitting behind me on, but on the couch, and had a very easy access.

I ignored him, just wanting to get through the email.

“Isle,” Jack repeated and nudged my back with his foot again.

I just moved my shoulder in annoyance, hoping he’d take the hint.

“Isle,” he started whining and now continued to jab my back, only this time he wouldn’t stop.

“Stop it,” I mumbled and tried pushing his foot away with my hand while I still focused on my email.

But he didn’t stop. He continued to nudge me. I don’t know if it was because he was honestly annoying me or if it was because I had been on edge the entire day already. Either way, I couldn’t stand what Jack was doing for another second after trying to stop him another time. The constant shake of my entire body when I was trying to read a sentence was becoming unbearable. I tried to ignore it, I really did. But I couldn’t. I felt my heart rate elevate and my mind going in overdrive.

“God, Jack,” I shouted out of nowhere, getting all eyes in the room on me, and shoved his leg back, “can’t you fuck off?!”

When the room stayed silent and everybody continued to stare, I slammed my laptop shut, got up, and rushed out of the room. I was anxious enough already, I didn’t need more pressure to top it off. Yes, I knew it would be awkward for everybody if Jack and I fought on tour, but they didn’t have to all stare at me like I had just killed my own brother.

I had no clue where I wanted to run to, but in the height of my emotions, I just decided to hide in the bathroom just down the hallway. It was a small room with a single shower, toilet and sink. But most importantly, it had a lock on the door.

After I had locked the door behind myself, I slid down the wall and hid my head in my hands and between my legs. I hated it. I literally hated every second of it. The constant anxiousness I had felt ever since we can to Europe had now turned to borderline anxiety attacks. I always tried everything to stop them before them happened, but it was becoming more and more difficult.

The worst part was that I was so conscious about it all happening. This was what had torn Jack and I apart before. I would lash out, be mean, and do stupid shit. I knew that now, but back then I didn’t know how bad it really was. Now, I knew how much of a bitch I was being right when it was happening, and I didn’t like it. But I also couldn’t stop it. I was literally watching myself crumble, and it was horrible.

My cheeks were wet and the anxiety was making my stomach flip. I was trying to concentrate on my breathing while simultaneously feeling pathetic and making it worse. It was an endless cycle and I just wanted it to stop. It was way too frustrating. All I could think to do was hit the back of my head against the wall. Not too hard to create a bruise, but hard enough to try to shake out of it.

It wasn’t working. I was about to just try and tear my hair out when there was a knock on the door.

“Isle?” Jack’s voice quietly came from the other side of the door. “You in there?”

I was in tears, but I knew that ignoring him would be the wrong thing to do. So, I stretched out to unlock the door and managed to barely open it with my finger tips. Jack carefully pushed the door open a little more and looked inside. When his eyes fell on me on the bathroom floor, he frowned.

“Hey,” he said in concern, pushing himself into the bathroom and closing the door. He had my laptop underneath his arm, but put it down on the floor before he joined me without question.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled as I leaned into him.

He wrapped his arm around me, deciding it was safe to do so, and kissed the top of my head. “No, I’m sorry. I know that being touched often makes it worse for you.” He was right about that one, if anything it was a trigger. “I shouldn’t have pushed it.”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered again and tears started falling from my eyes again. They pattered against the fabric of Jack’s black jeans, slowly soaking into it. I tried my best to wipe them away and sniffed while looking up at him. “I don’t want to lose you.”

He shook his head and furrowed his eyebrows. “You’re not gonna lose me.”

“I fucked it all up last time. I don’t want that to happen again,” I confessed. I knew better than to keep everything in, especially when I was like this.

He started to soothingly run his fingers through my hair. “I did stupid things as well. We know better now.”

I couldn’t believe him, though. “But I can’t help it!”

I started sobbing. There was nothing I could do. I hid my face in Jack’s chest and clutched onto his shirt. I couldn’t do this anymore. It was all too much. I just wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out.

“I’m worried about you, Isle,” Jack whispered after letting my cry into his body for a minute or so. I didn’t want him to worry about me. He leaned forward, making me sit up, and grabbed my laptop. “I, umm… Please don’t be mad, but I sorta read your email. I just wanted to check if you broke your laptop and it was open.”

I wiped away the tears left on my cheeks and frowned. I had no idea what he was getting at. First of all, it was pretty weird that he just decided to read my email like that. Second of all, why did he feel the need to tell me?

He just opened my laptop and unlocked it with my password to show me the email I had been trying to read before. “You should take the job.”

“What?” I continued to sniff, but the shock made any tears still threatening to fall dry up immediately.

“Isle,” he gasped and pointed at the email, “it’s fucking National Geographic. Even I know that name!”

“I don’t know…” I shook my head and rubbed my nose. “I’m not really interested.”

“Bullshit. You were staring at it for ten minutes.”

I rolled my eyes slightly. “I was just trying to read it. I couldn’t focus and then you wouldn’t stop kicking me.”

He gave me a stern look. “Well, I saw you go through those emails. You deleted and skipped over so many without a second glance.”

“I mean, yeah, it was interesting–”

“Isle,” Jack sighed and closed the laptop. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t belong up on stage. It’s not your dream. Yeah, you put on a smile and try to enjoy yourself. But I’ve never seen you as happy as at your exhibition. You were beaming.”

I chuckled through my breathing that was still irregular from crying just moments before. “I can’t just leave the band to travel the world to take photos!”

“Yes, you can!”

“No, I can’t,” I urged. I hadn’t even formed an opinion about this before, but the arguments were just coming. “This isn’t just my band. It’s also Charlie, Carter, and John.”

“You can if it’s to do something you want to do,” he countered back. “Photography makes you happy and this is one amazing job to go to!”

“What would you do if Alex just came up to you right now and told you he wanted to quit music to become an artist or something?” I asked. Jack just looked back at me with pursed lips. “Exactly.”

“That’s different, though. Alex always wanted this,” he told me and took in a deep breath. “But if he really wanted to, I’d support him. I’d figure something out for myself.”

“I don’t know, Jack,” I sighed and ran my hand through my hair.

He took hold of the hand as soon as I let it drop back down. “You don’t need to know. But promise me you’ll think about it?”

Before I could answer, there was a knock on the door. We didn’t even get the chance to respond and the door opened. Alex peaked in and gave us a cheesy grin.

“Hey, don’t mean to interrupt,” he quickly said, doing exactly what he said he didn’t want to do, “but I really need to take a piss and the other bathroom is occupied.”

I started to get up after I gave him a nod. Jack grabbed my arm and raised an eyebrow to tell me I still needed to give him an answer.

“I’ll think about it,” I made clear and went to push past Alex.

“God, I don’t need to know about your sex life,” Alex scoffed, opening the door fully and stepping to the side to give us the space to leave.

“Does it look like I want to think about sex right now?” I was sure my eyes were red and my skin was puffy. It had that weird tingling sensation when I touched it to double check that no more tears were left.

“I dunno,” he shrugged, “make up sex?”

“We weren’t fighting.” Jack rolled his eyes and followed me with my laptop underneath his arm again.

“We heard the crying…” Alex squinted his eyes, not really thinking about how his words could affect me.

“Still not fighting!” I scoffed.

“Right, well, if you don’t mind.” He gestured towards the toilet.

Jack and I let him go in. He practically slammed the door shut, which was just a little dramatic. Afterall, he was the one that started talking to us, it wasn’t like we were making him wait. There was no point to make.

“God, he can be a dick,” I mumbled to Jack, obviously still a little sensitive. “You’d think he’d understand.”

“I’m sure he’ll regret his words. He just seems like he really needed a piss.” Jack made an excuse. He was probably right.

“You’ve gotta stop acting like I’m not a bitch when I say stuff like that,” I told him.

“Never,” he promised and stopped us in our tracks to kiss me.

Honestly, it seemed like everything had gone well. Jack wasn’t mad at me. Nobody looked at me weirdly when I returned with a tear-stained face. And I had just barely avoided a full blown anxiety attack. Barely, but it was still something.

But things didn’t stay that way.

I was sleeping over on Jack’s bus again. He had slept in my bunk for a few nights. And then the last two nights, we had slept in our own respective bunks. It had gone okay, but I wasn’t sleeping great. I got more hours than I did before we met up with All Time Low to kick off the tour, though. We just decided it was a good idea to share a bunk as a precaution because of what happened earlier. And it turned out that it was good that we did.

I fell asleep just fine in Jack’s arms. If anything, I fell asleep relatively quickly. And, at first, I was sleeping soundly. I really was. But then the all too familiar twisted scene started playing in my head. I hadn’t had to face it in months.

I saw the car wreck. I recalled the officer trying to stop me from coming close. However, it wasn’t Cam who they were pulling out. Or it was, but it wasn’t. It was supposed to be him, but all I saw was some lifeless corpse. The face was just a distortion of features that I couldn’t recognise. I didn’t understand. Slowly but surely, the features melted away and I was left with nothing but an impersonal skull. It’s eyes stared back at me and blood started pouring out.

I screamed as loud as I could to try and get away.

Before I knew it, I woke up still screaming. I shot up out of Jack’s embrace and scrambled out of the bunk. Although I could hear bunk curtains open rapidly, I ignored them completely and rushed to the front of the bus. It wasn’t a conscious decision to run there. But I was probably just trying to go to the nearest exit. I couldn’t have left, the bus was moving, but my body was in flight mode. Luckily, I collapsed to the floor in front of the couch before I got too close.

Even though I had already cried earlier that day, I was now having a full blown breakdown. My body was shaking. The tears wouldn’t stop falling. And I couldn’t even breathe.

There were presences on either side of me. I could feel the heat coming from their bodies. However, I just hid myself into a ball. At least I was still sitting, or else I would have looked pathetic just laying on the floor in a fetal position. But who was I kidding? I was pathetic either way. Here I was, crying about my brother’s death once again close to a year after it happened.

A hand touched my left shoulder. It was meant to be comforting, but it really wasn’t. The unidentifiable face flashed in front of me again. I flinched away, hitting the body next to me in the process. I didn’t know what was going on anymore. But I wanted it all to stop.

When I finally managed to take a breath in again, I recognised the familiar scent of Jack’s leftover deodorant and cologne from the day. Instead of jerking away from him as well, I cowered into him. Slowly but surely, he trailed one single finger through my hair. After a few seconds, another was added. All until he knew he could touch me safely without an unexpected harsh reaction.

I knew I was calming down slowly when I started hearing voices through the sound of my own sobs.

“It’s really nothing against you,” Jack was mumbling to somebody else in the room, probably the person next to me. “PTSD just works a bit differently. I, umm, I touched her shoulders when she was watching the car crash. Now, it can trigger everything. It’s kind of my fault really.”

I wanted to stop him before that last sentence came out of his mouth. But I physically couldn’t. My entire body was still cramped up and refusing to get out of its hiding position. None of this was ever Jack’s fault. If he hadn’t been there, something else would have brought back the memories over and over again. Maybe it would have been the sound of all the sirens, and that wasn’t a great trigger to have, especially if I was in large cities.

Eventually, I managed to slowly unravel myself. My muscles were aching from being cramped up for too long, but at least I could move. Jack must have noticed me raise my head a little, because he kissed the top of my head again, much like he had done back in the bathroom. Only, this time I was a complete wreck. I couldn’t even get a proper word out.

“It’s okay, you’re all good,” he whispered to me.

But that wasn’t true. This wasn’t okay. I tried to hiccup in between short desperate inhales. “I– I–”

“I know…”

I shook my head. He didn’t know. I must have sounded insane when I finally managed to confess what was on my mind in some weird blubbering language. “I… I can’t remember what he looked like!” I tried to take a deep breath in to calm myself down, but it didn’t help one bit. “I can’t!”

Jack was completely silent after that, so I must have not made any sense at all. There was no other way I could express it, though. He just let me cry into him.

“Can I get something to help?” Alex spoke softly from my otherside. He had been the one that touched me and the one Jack was talking to before.

“Actually,” Jack started after another second of silence, “could you get my phone? Or Isle’s phone? No, wait, no. My phone.”

Alex got up and left us. I was still freaked out about my nightmare and the revelation I had, but I was running out of tears. They slowed down significantly and my body started to regulate my breathing again. It was far from done. I was still shaken up. But I was too exhausted to cry. All that was left was some shaking.

Jack carefully wrapped an arm around me as Alex came back with the phone. He handed it to Jack and then sat down on the couch. Instead of sitting right next to me, he decided to give us a little space while also still showing that he was there to help out. This was the first time he actually witnessed me break down before. He had been around, but he hadn’t been there to see it happen.

Jack unlocked his phone and immediately went to the photo’s app. He scrolled up quickly to go backwards on his timeline. When he reached the beginning of last year, he slowed down and flicked back and forth a few times. I tried my best just to watch what he was doing despite my eyes burning. Eventually he stopped and tapped on a photo to enlarge it.

“Here,” he murmured and tilted the screen so I could see better.

It was a selfie he had taken with Cam and me back when Jack and I had just gotten together. Cam was smiling so brightly, it physically hurt my chest. Somehow, a single tear had managed to build up and fall from my eye. As much as it pained me to see Cam, I carefully analysed every single detail in his face from his smile so the way his eyebrows were just slightly uneven. I didn’t want to forget him again.

After a while, Jack went back to his timeline and went even further back. He opened another photo. This time it was one he had taken of me and Cam in our old apartment. If I hadn’t cried every single tear, I would have been bawling my eyes out. We seemed so happy and carefree back then. But he didn’t even have another year to live. If I had known what was going to happen, I would have pushed him to get off that couch and do something with his life when he was unemployed. He missed out on so much.

Jack went to choose another photo, but I reached out and locked it before he could do so. I was doing just fine now. I wasn’t okay, but I was fine. I could remember his face again, but one more photo would make me upset. There was a balance I needed. It was a comfort knowing that Jack still had all those photos. I wouldn’t dare check if I had any myself anymore. That would only make me spiral further.

“You feeling a bit better now?” Jack asked, lowering his phone and looking down at me.

I nodded but didn’t have any words to say.

“Do you want to try going back to sleep?”

I shook my head this time. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep now. “You should, though. You’re still not fully better from that stomach bug.” He wasn’t throwing up anymore, but he still needed the sleep to get his energy back.

“I’ll stay up with you,” he told me.

“She’s right, Jack,” Alex butted in quietly. “I’ll stay up with her. We’ll check out space facts or something.”

Jack looked at me and I nodded. If he was going to stay up with me, I was only going to feel worse. I knew Alex, however, wouldn’t fight his way to stay awake just to keep me company. After double checking, Jack got up and went back to his bunk.

I crawled up onto the couch and sat next to Alex while he pulled out his iPad and started googling something he had been looking at a few nights before. He was obviously more interested than me, but it was nice to think about something different. The universe was so large.

Alex and I fell asleep together on that couch looking at some nebula.

Notes