Everything went dark, I thought i had died again, maybe I had even consumed myself by accident, what a pathetic death that would have been.
Just then, flashes of light could be seen and then i saw it a world similar to earth, but quite not.
My gaze was fixed to one person, I had never met him or seen him before, but the moment I gazed upon him a name popped into my mind JASON MILLER.
He was but a little child recently brought into this world and simply seeing his parents, I could tell, this was going to be a difficult watch.
Jason was born into a dysfunctional family, his mother Linda was a volatile cocktail of untreated mental illness and addiction.
His father already off to the shops to get some milk, perhaps still searching. He lived in a cramped, dimly lit apartment with his mother, the house always smelling like alcohol, cigarettes and desperation.
Jason never knew love, his mother's love was conditional and rare, her anger, instant and often cataclysmic to say the least.
Jason was always quiet, silence and invisibility his survival tactics, he had learned that the hard way.
Beatings over spilled milk, insults and words of ridicule over childish acts and noise, and even worse, the terrifying unpredictability of Linda's drunken rages.
Cursing him wishing he had died, blaming him for his father, for the life she was living. All these were simply a normal day for Jason in his home.
And school, even worse for the kid who had no self-esteem, who was small, skittish and often in ill-fitting, jagged and unclean clothes.
Jason was always bullied, after all he was an easy target, terrifyingly quiet, always scared and flinching.
Lunch money whenever his mother remembered she had a child, stolen, books defaced, shoved into lockers.
If home was hell for Jason, then school was simply the gate to hell.
Another arena to be humiliated, berated and reminded of his unwantedness and worthlessness.
At 13, Jason's mum Linda finally lost custody after a neighbour had witnessed a violent episode in the miller household. He bounced through series of foster homes, never finding one that might stick.
Each move meant a new school, new bullies, new foster parents that saw him as damaged goods or welfare check.
He repressed himself, a boy living in constant anxiety and shame, academics impossible to focus on, no talent, no spark, curiosity non-existent, he simply lived in survival mode.
At 15, Jason had discovered alcohol. He had stolen alcohol from his foster's parent cabinet, it was a mind numbing revelation- a warm, numbing blanket that smothered the fear, the anxiety, the loneliness, the ache of being "Jason". It had become his comfort, his escape, his secret weapon against the world.
Alatar watched, he'd been watching never taking his eyes off(if he had one) the memories / events playing in his head. He could see Jason's life like it was played on a cinema screen for him. Simply a bystander unable to interact.
Alatar remained quiet, never said a word, his expression if he had one, would be bland almost apathetic.
Despite this, he watched like it was his almost duty, like it was the minimum he should do, a form of respect, recognition, almost like he was making sure Jason knew someone was paying attention, that he was seen.
And so he continued watching, observing, recognising.
Jason's story cont'd
At 17, Jason had dropped out of high school, he'd started living on the fringes. Minimum-wage jobs – dishwasher, night-cleaner, warehouse grunt, yet they never lasted. Each role lost to the same demons: chronic lateness, the ever-present smell of alcohol, his unpredictable mood swings (brooding silence, his self-pitying melodramatic tears) got him fired at every turn.
The constant struggle to pay rent meant he often lived out of his rusted sedan, a home on wheels that mirrored his own broken state.
He craved connection and longed for love, but every attempt at a relationship ended in disaster.
His desperate need for affection, coupled with heavy drinking and tearful, guilt-ridden apologies, created a pattern he couldn't escape. He clung too tightly, overwhelmed partners with his neediness, and sabotaged what little intimacy he managed to find.
The weight of his desperate need for affection, heavy drinking, and sobbing apologies, inevitably drove people away and reinforced his deep-seated belief that he
was unlovable and broken beyond repair.
The alcohol consumption escalated. Cheap vodka became his primary food. Hangovers weren't just headaches; they were the first signs of withdrawal, the constant tremors a cruel reminder that his body now needed alcohol to function.
Food became secondary, then irrelevant. Liquor stores knew him by name; bartenders knew when to cut him off and when not to bother. His body, once lean from physical labor, became sunken and slack, skin pallid with the wear of constant dehydration.
His presence in dive bars and on certain park benches beacme a tragic reoccurrence.
People began to recognize him, not as Jason, but as that guy—slumped on the same barstool, sprawled on the same park bench, always muttering to himself or dozing with a paper bag in his lap.