#john o'callaghan ( the scripturient ) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

jolteonwrites · 6 months ago

Text

𝘞𝘏𝘈𝘛 𝘋𝘐𝘌𝘋 𝘋𝘐𝘋𝘕'𝘛 𝘚𝘛𝘈𝘠 𝘋𝘌𝘈𝘋

𝘠𝘖𝘜'𝘙𝘌 𝘈𝘓𝘐𝘝𝘌, 𝘠𝘖𝘜'𝘙𝘌 𝘈𝘓𝘐𝘝𝘌 𝘐𝘕 𝘔𝘠 𝘏𝘌𝘈𝘋

happy birthday vanessa. also sorry vanessa. if this had ao3 tags: hurt/no comfort, author is actually deeply sorry even if it makes her seem sadistic asf, you know how you get fix-it fics? this is a ruin-it fic, and so on and so forth. additional pain brought to you from marjorie by taylor swift and visions by the maine.

It all begins across a Warped Tour parking lot. Little orange spark among rows and rows of buses. They didn't speak then, but John remembers how it punched the air out of his chest to see her wave at him, the movement of her plush, pink lips that he could see even from that distance speak, "That's The Maine," to Taylor beside her.

She stays on his mind and in the days that follow, they still don't speak, but he listens to their sets from afar and he waves when he sees them. Pat comes bouncing into the bus on day five and says he just chatted to 'Hayley fucking Williams' and John feels a pang of what he later understands to be jealousy. Should've been me.

He could speak to her himself. He could approach her. He knows that much. But, historically, his ability to speak to pretty girls is... poor at best. His two semesters at college hadn't exactly brought him any success in losing his virginity.

So he doesn't go to her, but she stays lighting up his brain like a struck match until the day he bumps into her trying to get back to the bus. He took it too far, had too much whiskey with a band older and cooler than his own and he just wants to go to fucking bed.

But she's there. Hayley. No make-up, hair tied back. She still knocks the wind out of him.

"Hi!" she says, surprised by his presence, but bright. Excited? Fuck. "Johno, right? I've been watching your sets, I've been trying to catch you to say hi, you guys are great."

"That's— that— thank you," John manages, voice tight.

"The Akon cover you did was such a great idea, it really made me laugh."

Even at night, her grin is sparkling. John's mouth waters and he realises she has a dimple in her cheek and her lips look soft and it's been so long since anybody kissed him.

He throws up ten feet from Paramore's bus door because that's about as far away as he could get before there were really no other options. Hayley pats his back and he wishes he could throw up in peace but it's nice to know she's not totally disgusted.

She probably is, but she hides it well enough.

"Party too hard, buddy?" she asks, soothing hand up and down his spine.

Buddy. Jesus.

He knows it's rhetorical but feels the need to nod anyway as he takes gasping breaths, nostrils burning. It fucking stinks and he really hopes she can't smell it. Not that it matters. Not that she'd be interested anyway. She's just another cute girl on a long, long list of cute girls that John would never seriously consider. On account of how cute they are. Normal.

He's pretty sure she has a boyfriend anyway.

She walks him the short distance back to his own bus and he thanks her without looking at her because his eyes are still watering and he's pretty sure there's snot on his face (or spit or puke or some other bodily fluid he could do with less people seeing). She stays standing there until he's closed the door and he's pretty sure he just lost a point in the upward battle to manhood for not being sober enough to walk her safely back to her bus.

Nil point, John. Nothing new.

𐕣 𐕣 𐕣

It's embarrassing, but that's the ice-breaker.

Hayley still talks to him, still smiles at him all dazzling and dimpled, and John's able to laugh at himself—a skill much needed when one says as many moronic things as John manages to—and it makes it a little easier. He knows he's nothing more than a colleague and an acquaintance to her but if nothing else, it's good to make nice with other fellow baby bands on tours like this. Gets their name out there, makes connections, sets up working relationships that could lead to tours and collabs together. Opening for Paramore would be a dream. So that's what he tries to take from it, rather than, 'Hayley Williams saw me toss my cookies in a parking lot.'

𐕣 𐕣 𐕣

They're all kind of friends, after that. The Maine and Paramore, though who 'Paramore' as an entity are is kind of hard to tell. They go through some shit, switching up members. The Maine stay the same and John's grateful for that.

She does have a boyfriend, because why wouldn't she have a boyfriend? But John's gotten pretty okay with not being in a relationship or even being someone's first choice fuck buddy.

They don't hang out, but when they cross paths on tours, it's easy. It's friendly. That goes for all of them, really, but John wonders if Hayley lingers in his bandmates' minds as much as she does in his.

She hangs around, bright little matchstick, not always red on the top any more but that doesn't even matter. Blonde, pink, blue, orange, yellow... whatever the colour, she's aglow on the back of John's brain.

He sees her sometimes with a guy from a band older and cooler than his own and they seem like a great fit.

𐕣 𐕣 𐕣

Crossing paths turns into hanging out turns into trading numbers turns into texting sometimes turns into attending each other's shows when they pass through the other's hometown... or whatever state the other happens to be in at the time on their own tour.

They've never toured together, except on festivals like Warped, and they're so far from ever being in the realm of collaborating with one another, but there's a strong connection there. Any of The Maine are welcome to Paramore shows any time, VIP no questions asked, and vice versa.

John can talk to her when he knows there's nothing more to it. He can joke and laugh and charm and he never chokes up because it's not real. She's goofy as hell and it warms him up from the inside out. Little matchstick. He hopes to see Paramore's name every time they're on the bill for a big tour.

𐕣 𐕣 𐕣

He spruces the wildflowers in the wire vase and lays out a single matchstick at the front of the headstone.

The sun's behind clouds, birds singing nearby. She's near trees, so she can hear them. John didn't like the idea of her not having a song to listen to somehow.

He touches the edge of the stone, soft like stroking her cheek. There's a notch in it like a dimple that makes him question if it would really be so strange to press his face to sandstone.

𐕣 𐕣 𐕣

Hayley's divorce is ugly and public. Not in a huge way, but people in their corner of the industry know. You hear things and every other day, John sees some tweet about how she cried onstage playing this song or that song.

John listens to their new album, the aches of depression and a break-up hidden beneath pretty pastels and tinkling tunes, and he feels gutted by it even though he's never known a real love.

They see each other on tour again, and it's just like before, except that it isn't.

Her hair is bright blonde and she seems smaller than last time and there's a sadness around her that never seemed like it was there before and John's gut churns with butterflies and she's still burning up in his brain, white-hot flame.

He tries not to treat her any differently and he thinks it works because she leans into him and gives him a one-armed hug after he makes her laugh and they've never done that. That kind of casual contact.

It makes his breath catch in his chest and when she asks him a question, he chokes on his words.

𐕣 𐕣 𐕣

He loves his beautiful Arizona, but he loves his half-empty girl more. Staying in Nashville fills her cup so that's where he moves to, and John's doing alright for himself, but she makes more money than he's ever seen. She buys them the kind of house that looks plucked from a fairytale, and neither of them are too bothered by things but they fill it with records and guitars and John's piano and their puppies and love and laughter and the smell of coffee in the morning and the sound of writing songs late into the night.

Sometimes John watches her take the dogs out beyond the trees, watches until her silver hair disappears. Straight out of a fairytale.

Sometimes John feels her watching him while he plays the piano, fingers dancing over keys in the morning over his coffee. Could be a song, could not be. She's dancing there in the back of his brain to every little tune, his favourite muse.

𐕣 𐕣 𐕣

"I don't think it gets much better than this. I spent years scaling a mountain and I spent a lot of those years thinking I'd never see the valley. Back when I was really in the shit—sorry, Mom, sorry, ha—in the, uh, the thick of it... I met you on a tour. I made an ass of myself. Is anyone shocked? No? Jared's laughing, Jared knows. I'll spare you all the details but I drank too much alcohol, I drank— yeah, I wasn't twenty-one yet! I wasn't twenty-one. It's fine, come on, it's fine, we're in our thirties now. Um, you get the idea. But H didn't care. She was really nice to me, and eventually, when I was upchucking outside Paramore's bus, I managed to talk to her properly. For a long time after that, we were just friends. Maybe not entirely on my end, though. I looked for her in every crowd. Anyone with bright orange hair made my heart skip a beat, just in case. It took a while for us to go from friends on tour only to this. Anyone who knows me knows I was never very confident with girls. But we got there. I got there. Little matchstick lighting up the way for me. I've never felt so strongly about not wasting a second of the life I've been gifted than I do now, because now I get to do it with my wife. Hayley... I love you. I'm the luckiest bastard alive. Can we all raise our glasses? I know this is meant to be a toast for the both of us but I'd just like to toast her. Fuckin' dream come true, man. Ten times as smart as me and at least twenty times prettier too. So overjoyed to be Mr. fuckin' Williams— sorry! I know, sorry, children in the room. Freakin' Williams. Who wants cake?!"

𐕣 𐕣 𐕣

John's sitting on the grass with his knees bent, arms around them as he talks. He doesn't think too hard about the fact he's sitting on her, above her. That she's somewhere down in the dirt. There had never been a formal decision on what to do with her body. She hadn't been old enough to consider picking yet. She had wanted to donate her organs so that's what they did, and what remained went into the ground. The gravesite was beautiful; John and her mother had spent a long time picking the perfect spot.

It still didn't make it any easier to think of her there in the cold. John tried to consider it like giving back to the Earth.

It's silly to even be upset about. She's not there. She doesn't feel cold, afraid or alone. John knows that, and yet, it kept him up for weeks. He spent sleepless nights in the parking lot near the cemetery just in case she was scared without him near.

Over a year on and it's not as hard as it was.

Over a year on and he knows it's ridiculous to lose sleep over keeping her company. She is not there.

Yet, he sits here at the stone and talks to her every week like she is. Talks to her like she's listening, pauses for laughter, gestures like he sees her eyes tracking his movements.

He combs his fingers through the grass like he's playing with her hair, and keeps talking.

𐕣 𐕣 𐕣

It hits John like lightning one day.

They've been married four years now, together for seven. They make music, together and separately. They tour, tag along to each others' when they can. They visit Phoenix and stay with John's parents every year. They take Alf and Murphy on camping trips in the trailer John built himself. They cook together and read together and swim together and sleep together and make love in every room of their house (and beyond) and John's never known a connection as pure and golden and bright and burning hot as this.

It's one of their more relaxed evenings. They're in Arizona, but John's parents are gone for a couple days—had tickets to a concert a few hours away and they'd splashed out on a nice hotel for the weekend. It doesn't matter too much because he and Hayley will be here for a month so his childhood home is quaint and quiet, just the two of them, dogs sleeping. It's almost ten at night but Hayley's bustling around the kitchen, constantly opening cupboards and drawers because she's always forgetting where Jenny keeps everything (mostly because Jenny has rearranged the whole kitchen at least twice a year for John's entire life so no amount of good memory is helping anyone). She's making cupcakes, the mood just striking her. John's catching up with a baseball game he missed on TV earlier, but he finds his gaze wandering to his wife more than the screen.

She has flour on her shirt and over her forearm. Probably on her face and hair too but she's moving around too much for him to see. She's muttering things under her breath as she goes, interspersed with a song she's had stuck in her head. John can't even make out what it is—she's not even really singing the words, just mumbles and humming the tune, but it's like stardust sprinkled directly into his ears.

It's never a thought that's crossed his mind before that very second. A little girl on Hayley's hip while she bakes, tiny blonde braids, sticky cheeks from tasting the icing, toothy grin at her mama's song. Hayley grinning right back and kissing her head. Matching dimples.

John's stomach flips.

He's been overflowing his half-empty girl with love for so long that it feels like they're both too full to contain it any longer just between the two of them.

Maybe they need another cup.

𐕣 𐕣 𐕣

"You remember that? The first time I said we should make a baby and you laughed?" he grins, like the stone might grin back. He plucks at the grass and then immediately regrets it, stroking it down gentle, an apology. "You thought I was being gross. I wish I'd filmed it, your face. When you realised."

There's so many moments he wishes he'd filmed, but he doesn't suppose it really matters. His mind is a rotating film reel of Hayley, every day, every hour, every second. He can't close his eyes without feeling the ghost of her hands on his waist and her lips on his shoulder. She died, but her memory never does.

John's grateful for it. And he hates it just as much.

"You were so happy. Jokin' about how when they were old enough, we'd put Paramore on one side of the room and The Maine on the other and see what band they wanted to join more."

He laughs and reaches out to trace the H of her name on the stone, then absently pats his chest over his heart; same letter tattooed there. The smile on his face wavers a little, but stays put even as his eyes grow glassy.

She's not here. She's not listening. He knows that. He knows.

"I'm not a spiritual man. But maybe we can do that all again sometime?" John's throat feels tight now. She's not here but maybe she could be. She could drop by again in another life. "Maybe we finish the journey next time, huh?"

𐕣 𐕣 𐕣

John holds those euphoric few months they were trying close to his heart. They'd had a plan. John had pictured a baby girl, but neither of them would've cared about the gender, really. Paramore would take a little break so she could be home with the baby, and The Maine would work it out so they were off to write an album in Nashville so John could stay around as long as possible too.

All their favourite names started with I. Innes, Indiana, Ilo, Ivory, Iris. it felt like fate. H, I, J. It all just fit. They even got carried away thinking about another baby down the line, with a K name.

The house feels haunted with the pitter-patter of tiny feet they never got to make, and John sees blonde babies in his dreams most weeks. Hayley's voice isn't even an echo through the halls any more but he swears when he comes home sometimes, it's like she's about to pop out of the kitchen. Making cookies. Serenading him.

She's not here but she's always fucking here.

He'd move back to Arizona if it didn't feel like abandoning her. If it didn't feel like abandoning his wife, who is not here, but will always be here.

He's scared to go. He wants to be near his mom and dad again, wants to be free of all the things that won't fucking die with her. But he's too terrified to do it just in case she doesn't follow him.

John doesn't know what to call that. He can't bear to keep holding the match because it burns but no amount of knowing he has to drop it makes him loosen his grip.

His dad has had a pep-talk with him once already. That it's time he gets some help to sort through the house, maybe just take a few months away and think about selling it later. Just get out of there for a while. It's too isolated for him alone. His mother's worrying herself sick over the nights John calls at three in the morning, gasping, sweating, sobbing. He can move back in with them for a while. They'll help him.

John knows all of that.

He loathes the nights she walks through his dreams, gorgeous and untouchable. She can't die there, never will. Little matchstick burning bright, no way to put it out.

Going to bed is his favourite time of day.

Every time he wakes up feeling like his chest is caving in and he's calling his mom with shaking fingers, on the verge of begging them to fly out and help him box up his life and come home... he stops himself asking for it.

John wants and wants and wants to move on, savour his life the way he swore he would, but he's so scared. He's so scared of it all going dark. He's so scared she'll be angry that he gets to live and she never can. She's not here, she's not here any more, but what if she's so angry? So hurt? So lonely in the dirt?

He screams into his sheets about it and then remembers he lives in the middle of nowhere and he screams off the balcony into the dark and nobody screams in response but it feels like there's a hand on his lower back for all of a single moment.

𐕣 𐕣 𐕣

The birds fly overhead and sing in the trees nearby, carried on a gentle breeze. They're none the wiser to the meaning of heartache. The sun's still behind the clouds but the air stays warm, by all accounts a perfect spring day.

John thuds his fist into the grass, other hand gripping the edge of the headstone, an anguished sob leaving him.

"Why won't you stay buried?"

𐕣 𐕣 𐕣

They dance around the kitchen in a power cut, match-lit candles burning on the counter. She's wearing one of his t-shirts, the baby pink lace underwear he's always claimed is his favourite (it's all his favourite on her) and socks that are falling down her calves. John spins her and Hayley's hair flies out all around her face.

He says something about how they don't need the candles. She'd make the room glow all on her own.

Her eyes are glittering as she laughs, dancing like she's always done on the back of his brain.

— Sylvia Plath, from The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath; "Three Women"

#I AM ACTUALLY SORRY #john o'callaghan ( the scripturient )#o: hayley williams #p: jayley #c: ficlet #vanessa

0 notes

jolteonwrites · 8 months ago

Text

𝘑𝘖𝘜𝘙𝘕𝘈𝘓 𝘌𝘕𝘛𝘙𝘠 𝘖𝘍 𝘑𝘖𝘏𝘕 𝘖'𝘊𝘈𝘓𝘓𝘈𝘎𝘏𝘈𝘕, 𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘥 35, 𝘤𝘪𝘳𝘤𝘢 𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘳 2023. a livingroom in new york city.

Never really had a sweetheart to come home to and I don't know why that would change now at 35. I've had little crushes before but that's not anything real. This didn't feel the same. I only ever heard those three little words from my family, or in a song... or from a girl I regret hurting every day. When she said it, all I felt was dread, remorse, regret... longing. But not for her.

When he said it, my heart leapt. And what does that mean? Wherever he goes, I follow. He's shown me every scar and let me kiss it, and to my surprise, I've done the same. He wasn't around for a month and it hurt so badly that I did not know how to contain it. It spilled out over me and I left a poisonous trail of it all over Arizona. Poisoned myself trying not to feel it.

Am I still acting as his friend? And how terrible would that be? This soft, delicate being who needs a friend more than anything and agreed to casual? I didn't realise I was the one with the warning signs. I don't know what this is but he needs a friend so I'll crush it down and just be what he needs.

#john o'callaghan ( the scripturient )#c: journal entry #p: callakeery #o: joe keery #cece

0 notes

jolteonwrites · 8 months ago

Text

I can be your punching bag.

Kick me, beat me, rip me all to pieces.

Take all that hurt and throw it in my face.

I'll be there. Bleeding, bruised, missing limbs.

I'll take all your hurt and I'll find someplace else to put it.

Let me be your punching bag.

I want to see you shine yellow again.

So wound me. Twist the knife. Slice the artery. I'll clean it up for you after. I'll find someplace else to put it.

When you're free, I'll be okay.

Don't mind the blood on my teeth when I smile. I'm finding someplace else to put it.

#ouch #anyway #john o'callaghan ( the scripturient )#c: journal entry #p: callakeery #o: joe keery #cece

0 notes

jolteonwrites · 8 months ago

Text

𝘐 𝘕𝘌𝘌𝘋 𝘛𝘖 𝘊𝘈𝘓𝘓 𝘐𝘛 𝘘𝘜𝘐𝘛𝘚 𝘉𝘌𝘍𝘖𝘙𝘌 𝘐 𝘓𝘖𝘚𝘌 𝘈 𝘍𝘙𝘐𝘌𝘕𝘋

John's been obsessed with a lot of things.

His music, his career, his regrets, his worries, his everlasting sadness, the substances that help him ignore it.

He's never been so obsessed with a person before. Something tangible and soft and warm to hold. Something that listens and talks back. Something good and gentle and kind. Something breakable. Something to help him ignore it all. That's what it was, really. Conversing with Joe kept him distracted. He was something to use up until he was empty, just like everything else John found to distract himself.

John didn't want to leave him empty, though. He wanted to give, give, give. He wanted Joe to have everything good, take all the goodness from himself, wherever it hid within, and give it to him instead. Until John was empty. He would rather that than hurt anybody else ever again.

And yet, he knows to carry on their conversations is to keep pushing the glass closer to the edge of the table. He knows this is dangerous, because no matter what he gives Joe, he is still using him somehow. He should be the one to stop it. He starts and he can't stop, but there's still time to pump the brakes on this before someone gets hurt.

It's a thought he sits in silence with every so often, fingers hovering over the name Joey Keery on his call list.

This has to stop.

He has to call it quits before he loses a friend. Another good, kind, gentle, breakable friend. The glass is hanging off the edge.

He hits call anyway.

#i want these all to go somewhere before i delete the discord but ugh #john o'callaghan ( the scripturient )#o: joe keery #p: callakeery #c: ficlet #cece

0 notes

jolteonwrites · 8 months ago

Text

𝘐𝘍 𝘛𝘏𝘌 𝘎𝘖𝘖𝘋 𝘋𝘐𝘌 𝘠𝘖𝘜𝘕𝘎, 𝘛𝘏𝘌𝘕 𝘐'𝘔 𝘎𝘖𝘕𝘕𝘈 𝘓𝘐𝘝𝘌 𝘍𝘖𝘙𝘌𝘝𝘌𝘙

It starts in high school.

It usually does. John drinks at parties, tries it all. Beer, cider. Gets bolder, goes for vodka, whiskey, tequila. Some red wine that's somehow worse that all of those combined. He tries his first blunt at fifteen and he's never found sitting in a circle on the floor so funny before.

And that's all it is. He does it with his friends. It's normal. He's experimenting.

Then he goes to college. It's just the thing he's been expected to do. His mom is proud and his dad is pleased. John's just trying to get through it, wade in as deep as he dares to go and hopes the anxiety and wears off eventually. Maybe if he sticks it out long enough, he won't feel lost any more. Lightbulb moment. It doesn't come.

He's a lot more free here than at home. Doesn't have to cover up being wasted when he gets home at 3AM, or lie about a hangover. He can just be. So he drinks more. Every weekend, even. It's part of the college experience. He blacks out more times than he can count across two semesters. It helps him make friends. He doesn't rot in his dorm room if he's got some liquid confidence (he also doesn't make it to most lectures either, but his dad doesn't need to know that). He usually wakes up from it sick to his stomach and filled with dread, eyes heavy as he stares at himself in the mirror. He doesn't feel any less lost. The 'college experience' feels a lot like how John figures it feels to be jilted. Aren't these supposed to be the best years of his life? Why is he in a cold sweat about the future and all the stupid shit he said last night? He grips the sink until it doesn't feel like retribution any more.

I swear I'm not an alcoholic, I'm only nineteen. I've seen alcoholics and they don't look like me.

Being in a band opens a lot of doors, John finds. Behind those doors, there's usually people using drugs of some description.

He's not stupid; he knows the risks. Got all the talks about it at school. It's a shame, really, he thinks. How can something so awful be so wonderful?

He floats above his worries on uppers until his wax wings melt and he goes lower than he's ever been. It's hard to swim back up when he's so deep he can't see the surface. So he tries more, tests more limits, gets a different kind of high. Coke helps the most onstage when he's really worn out (van sleeping with four other boys and however many crew they can fit in the back doesn't make for the healthiest lifestyle).

He ends up digging a grave for some other lost soul this way. He almost climbs into his own in a hotel room in the dead of night a few months later but something stops him. Something like a ghost. He doesn't take any drugs for a while after that.

I swear I'm not an addict, I'm only twenty-three. I've seen addicts and they don't look like me. He's a number of years away from being a college drop-out now (and a disappointment to his dad), touring with his friends. It's a big, fancy bus and not a van and that feels like they've really made it.

He still can't talk to girls that well and still feels like he's making life up as he goes along, but maybe that's okay. He can sit in the feeling of being lost and be at peace with it. He's hurt himself a few times, hurt a few others a lot more. Took another knock every time because he didn't mean to do it and he doesn't know why he can't wise up a little bit.

It's okay though, because he has the best job in the world with his very best friends and that usually makes things feel okay again. He's got a bottle in his hand most nights on stage. Sometimes he loses his balance, just sings on the floor. Nobody says anything about it. Why would they? It's the lifestyle. He's still there, he's not blackout in a green room unable to perform.

The beer helps him sleep, anyway. He has a lot of trouble sleeping on the road. Anywhere that's not home, really. Beer usually knocks him out, as long as he drinks two or more. It's not always the most restful experience but at least he's not lying awake until it's almost time to get up again. Saves time if he drinks onstage for the good part, still has enough buzz to take photos with the kids, and then he can go to bed later with no trouble.

He only stares at his bunk ceiling for a few minutes before he nods off most nights, as long as he's drunk.

I swear I'm not an alcoholic, I'm only twenty-six. I've seen alcoholics, and they don't look like me.

John can't stop hurting everyone he knows.

He can't stop striking the match and letting it fall onto the gasoline; it torches everyone while he watches. It burns him around the edges, but he has to walk away mostly in one piece. Knowing.

When his friends can't keep up, he makes new ones. When the party inevitably ends, he gets an invite to another. He can't and won't sit in the pain if he doesn't have to, and he's not suicidal so it's okay. It's just a good time.

Everyone thinks he's better now so he can make that true, as long as he doesn't think about anything he's ever done. Whenever he hits the bottom, he sees her face. A blur above the surface, someone that he would call. But he doesn't. There's nobody left to call. Who could want this?

He's sick in the mornings and he doesn't dwell on thoughts of her, or he'd start too early in the day. She burns up in his mind. He didn't mean to devastate her life more than a man before him already had. Nineteen's so far away, but he's still looking at a boy in the mirror who doesn't know where to go. His knuckles turn white on the rim of the sink, and he thinks he might smash the glass to pieces if he weren't so scared of blood.

I think I might be an addict and I'm almost thirty-three. I've met so many addicts and they all look like me.

#john o'callaghan ( the scripturient )#o: hayley williams #p: jayley #c: ficlet #vanessa

1 note · View note

jolteonwrites · 7 years ago

Text

JOHN CORNELIUS O’CALLAGHAN V

introducing a secret-specific biography in the life of john.

John had a difficult relationship with his dad growing up. His father was never happy that he dropped out of college with no real plan, to become a musician of all things (despite the fact that that actually turned out rather well). Throughout his school years, John was frequently berated by his dad for not being more like his younger brothers. For not being more focused, more advanced, more studious, or just... better. It built unfair resentment towards his brothers, and put up a stiff wall between him and his father, and it was still there even now.

John has struggled with a drug addiction on and off most of his life. He started smoking weed in high school, and the experimentation continued from there. At first it wasn’t a problem. Recreational, he would say. But as a man who suffered greatly at the hands of OCD, depression, anxiety, and insomnia related to both things (often on tour), the drugs would later become a vice. Depression fueled the drug-taking and drug-taking fueled the depression. It was a vicious cycle that he didn’t care to break himself out of, and he came close to suicide once or twice. Those things, however, aren’t really so secret. His friends know, his fans know. He’s over that now – so he says. What people don’t know is he’s falling back into old habits. That’s not to say he’s not better than he was. He definitely is. But the fear that he might not stay better scared him, and he quietly began taking drugs again. He still smoked pot occasionally, but he’s secretly dabbled in taking cocaine again. It’s not often; he tells himself it’s not something he needs, it’s just a little pick-me-up. Just a cup of coffee in powder form. That’s fine. Nobody needs to know about it. They’d just worry.

John has plenty of regrets in his life… he’s sure he’s hurt more people than he cares to remember, a lot of the time without meaning to. He’s slept around a little... or a lot. He had an almost-relationship with a girl that he would’ve loved to be in love with, but he wasn’t and he couldn’t and she left. But he’s fairly open about that too, at least the bare minimum details of it, and while he doesn’t like to think about it, he also doesn’t mind that people know. It’s somewhat cleansing to share it. He would hate for people to assume the worst of him because of those things, though.

There are other regrets, however… regrets he doesn’t talk about and doesn’t want people to know. In the worst phases of his depression, he would drive drunk. Not all the time, but late at night, sometimes… he crashed his car once. It wasn’t really a crash, just a little bump, and it was easily fixed. But it could’ve been worse. He doesn’t like to think about that.

He doesn’t like to think about playing shows on bad comedowns – doesn’t like to think that he might’ve let people down by not giving them the best show possible, so he’d just do more coke to hype up and make it better. He’d have a beer, and a whiskey. Wake himself up and put on an exciting show. He’d cry and puke in the bathroom later if he felt really terrible, just as long as the show was good. He doesn’t like remembering those days either.

He also doesn’t like remembering this girl… Christina. She was a friend from high school, and then college, for the short time that he actually attended. The first few times John ever tried cocaine, it was with her. They lost touch for a while, for a few years… it was 2012 before he saw her again. She was just as attractive as he remembered, and twice as cold. She wasn’t John’s type, and he’d never liked her attitude, but they slept together. They did coke together. Just like old times. There was some kind of nostalgic pull and John couldn’t shake it for a while. She’d always been somewhat cruel to him when they were teenagers; she had scoffed at the idea of him making it in a band. She didn’t have so much as an apology when they met again and he had made it. He was there. He’d done it. Musician was his official job title and maybe they didn’t make a whole lot of money but he was damn proud of himself. The new status seemed to attract her to him a lot more but John didn’t care for it. He didn’t want to date her, and she didn’t want to date him… she just wanted to be around him. Be seen around him. Meet people through him. John almost didn’t feel guilty any more for being the one who got her hooked on cocaine in the first place – almost. When he slept with her, he felt no remorse in cutting her off afterwards. She had her good qualities but she was toxic and cruel and it felt like justice when all she wanted was to say sorry to him, and he wouldn’t take it. He was proud at the time… felt like he was doing himself, and her, a favour. But it wasn’t something he wanted out in the world. He knew it looked bad. The guy sleeping with the girl and then ignoring her after telling her what an unappealing person she was. It wouldn’t do John any favours for people to know that story. He still thought about Christina sometimes and wondered where she was at. Her parents lived in his hometown and he saw them occasionally when at home.

John had all these regrets, parts of himself he kept locked up and quiet. People knew things about him but they didn’t really know. They didn’t have the full story. And honestly? He’d rather they didn’t.

#john o'callaghan ( the scripturient )#c: bio #c: app

2 notes · View notes