Scars on my heart part 4

[krystalkatzfics]

 Nino hadn’t always been a neurotic mess, or at least there had been once a time when he had been able to hide it better. When he was in college there had been about 4 years where he had been something of a social butterfly. He would go clubbing every week from Thursday afternoon until Monday morning when he would stagger into class with half a hangover and a deep thirst. He had been popular amongst his peers and more often than not would be sat in the middle of the largest groups on the grass under a sakura tree. It wasn’t until much later that he realised that his drunken behaviour was just another form of self-harm. Masaki had been the best friend a borderline drunk could have making sure to supply him whatever he needed be it pain relief or water.

As he lost control of his depression and anxiety the swollen group of friends filtered out to the most loyal, the people that had genuinely cared about him. Two years into the pits of despair that number had become one with others only vaguely staying in touch by email or phone calls. It hurt Nino a lot to think how vastly different his life was now to the way it had been before. He often looked at photos of himself from that period and thought that they looked like somebody else, somebody that looked sort of like him but not quite the same.

On his good day’s he would smile fondly remembering the warmth of the summer sun and the feeling of having an impromptu picnic because his class had been the only one that had had to stay behind during the summer. Their teachers had only been half-heartedly interested in teaching them and his computer science teacher had decided that they would all pile into one of the college mini-buses and head to the river. On his bad days, he would remember that he had acted like an idiot. Little things like calling somebody by the wrong name or the one girl that had bullied him for the sakes of it.

It was strange how the same memory could cause two different reactions based on his mood. If anyone asked him for a specific reason why he was the way he was he would have been stumped for an answer. He could say that it was because his mother had suffered postnatal depression since his older sister had been born and it had carried over to him. He had never felt more than an inconvenience. He could also day that it was because he was bullied at school. People often said that sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt me but the truth was that names could sometimes hurt more than the physical abuse.

Being too afraid to sit in the lunch room that he would skip food altogether and sit on the roof and smoke behind bike sheds. His first attempt at killing himself had come at 14. At regular periods throughout the day he had taken pills until he could feel the light feeling in his head. Next to his school had been a small patch of wilderness and he had hidden some drinks in a hollowed-out tree stump. He drank the lot and feel to sleep. It was just his dumb luck that a council man had been in the woods that day to cut some down. He had found him and called for an ambulance.

By the time had woken up he had been on a hospital bed with a sore stomach and sorer throat from the stomach pump. His mother had been beside him her eyes red with tears. She’d shouted and raved at him though Nino had shrugged it off. His mother had been even more distant after that escapade and as always his dad had been at work or too tired to deal with him so the only bright spark in his life had been his grandparents from his mother’s side. They had given him the love of a parent and as they had lived so close he had often spent most of his day within the confines of their small house and begged for weekends that he might sleep over. He told people that it was because he enjoyed helping his grandfather tend the flowers and pull the weeds but; it was because of the little things like his grandmother waking him up with cold floured hands bearing a cup of tea and a biscuit on a saucer and his grandfather playing his old records and insisting that he would remember the old crooners that had already been in their forties when his grandfather was young.

At his grandparents, he felt welcome and loved at home he was treated little more than something for his mother to take out her frustrations on. His mum would often tell him stories of his grandmother when she was young and how harshly she had treated her and Nino knew that it was true, his grandmother had confessed as much when they had been hanging washing in the garden one day. He had never seen her in that way, she had been stubborn and proud but overall a kind and warm person and he would mumble to his mother that his grandmother must have had some good qualities because his grandfather stayed with her.

His grandfather had been the first to realise that he wasn’t like other boys. He was never going to bring home a girlfriend and give them great-grandchildren. He hadn’t cared. He had never made a thing of it other than to ask him one day when they were pulling dandelions from the lawn. “Are you…You know gay” Nino had stalled for a minute and hung his head in shame whispering “Yeah” His grandfather had reached over, his hands soft and warm dirty from the mud and yet oh so gentle as they stroked his thumb. “Nowt wrong with it, never let them tell you different, takes all sorts to make a garden.” The conversation had ended there and Nino had felt a weight lift from his shoulders as he slowly blinked away a tear before they worked until his grandmother called them in to wash for dinner.

His grandfather’s death had changed him. He hadn’t known it at first. The shelter of safety at his grandparents had been lost. He had found it difficult to visit, each time ended with him crying and his mother screaming letting everyone know that she had lost her father and her grief was the only thing that mattered. Nino had tried to keep the memory of the man that had made him feel so loved but it only took a year for the memory of his scent to fade. He could remember it if he closed his eyes really tight and forced himself but even the jumpers he wore lost the scent of hair cream, the earth, and the strange scent of dust.

Two years after his grandfather’s death he decided rather unexpectedly that he wanted to go visit his grandma. She didn’t judge him for not coming but was happy he was there. She had lost some of the joy in her face after the death and Nino knew that he should have made himself visit her but that day felt like the start of something new. They made plans to go on holiday and it felt as though they had all turned the corner. His grandmother cooked all their favourites and Nino enjoyed seconds of her pear and apple crumble with custard and he hugged her tightly.

A day later while taking down a suitcase for their holiday she slipped over and shattered her hip. Never for as long as he lived had he run as fast as he did that day. He entered the house as the ambulance crew got there. The sight of his grandmother, always a woman that stood tall, looking so vulnerable and small in a white cotton nightie with her hair in curlers and her teeth in a jar still by the bed hit him like a punch to the stomach. He wanted to believe that she would recover and that he would have a dozen more chances to make up for the two years he had neglected her but it was not to be.

While they were x-raying her for the hip they discovered that she’d had a blood clot in her lower intestine and it had killed more than half. She never really woke from the drugs. Nino and his sister had been holding her hand as she died. 

He had tried to put a brave face on things but it had been far too much and he had gone into the shared bathroom at the college dorm and took a razor blade form its casing and run it over his wrist as deeply as he could. Masaki had found him and the rest was history.

TBC

A/N: Hmm…Nino’s back story >.< I hope that this was okay 

Comments

[mae74]

Poor Nino! His life was filled with highs and lows 😩

[krystalkatzfics]

Yup :( but at least now he has Ohno to take care of him :)

[gambitsfox]

So fucking tragic! I feel so bad for him! Please tell me this didn't all happen to you! I hope Ohno can save him from being alone.😞

[krystalkatzfics]

The only real differences are my mum didn't get post natal depression until my younger brother Robert was born I was five at the time. When my brother Matt was born a year later I pretty much raised him, I was six.
And the conversation with my grandpa was slightly different as he was asking about Matt being gay.

[reveetoile]

Oh so sad. It's a really sad backstory. It's good that he was found though. And I hope Sho will learn how to get along with him

[krystalkatzfics]

:( It was a bad time but he has Ohno now :) and I promise Sho will learn :)

[jkc80]

It’s sad to know a lot of people live this way