For Entertainment Purposes Only

i just finished reading The Anatomy of a Fall for the first time and it's changed something in my brain. TAoaF was written in 2011; nearly the same time I was a senior in high school, like our AU friends. picturing the group going to English class and to lunch, getting called "faggot" by the cool kids with big trucks, sitting outside the school on a warm autumn day-- all of that can be called to mind in the hallways of my small-town school. I thought it was going to be tough to read through this literature while calling those hallways and classrooms back to the forefront of my mind, but it wasn't. I know I've put in a lot of work since then, I know I've healed from a lot of the things I went through at that time, but I still have triggers I expected to come up. somewhere amidst Gerard walking the campus grounds and retreating to the tree cover to have a smoke and hide out from his tormentors, I felt him walk with me in solidarity to the smoking pole in the rain. as I peered over my shoulder to see if Corey Buckholtz was behind me, Gerard was with me looking for Ted and his goons, too. Gerard helped Ryan Ross clean up his papers, and in the same hallway I saw all my own band friends lurk from their safe space in the band room after lunch. the halls in which my heart was first broken, where I stumbled to classes high off pills, where I got in my first "cat fight" with a girl over rumours, Gerard walked too. the science class I sat in the back and cried in, Gerard sat with the same distain for his peers and his town.

then Gerard was literally taken captive; I was maybe taken captive metaphorically, but I was trapped against my better judgement for most of my adolescence by someone who was expected to not only keep me safe, but to enrich my life. instead, he stole the experiences I should have had as a high schooler. I made it through, and I made it out. I'll never get to "fix" those experiences, but recalling them all in the frame of The Anatomy of a Fall has healed something in me when revisiting those times in my mind's eye.