Joey Alexander knows he is good (fornothing) wrote in rooms,
Re: log: joey & ella, gatsby
Strange and displaced, Joey hadn't yet got the hang of making his own decisions, and honestly didn't know if he ever would. He knew that the whole point while one was inside was just getting out, but he didn't think that any of the escape artists or parole board pacifiers had ever talked about what happened then. What happened after week two, when you'd eaten all of the junk food you could eat, and had been with all of the women who would let you? Joey figured that the easy answer was something along the lines of make something of yourself, but he wasn't entirely sure how one went about that. He hated those kinds of instructions anyway, always so fucking simple and deceptive.
He knew why cons always came back for such simple violations. Fucking up and doing another two years inside some hell that you knew was sometimes more comforting than spending another day in a heaven you didn't recognize. Joey figured at least he had his siblings, they gave him something to look after more than just himself. Joey figured out pretty early that he didn't know the first thing about taking care of himself, but he knew a lot about how to take care of others. And maybe he wasn't the best at that either, but his siblings were forgiving enough to let him keep trying.
"Iris is..." He tucked part of his cheek into his teeth and shrugged, wondering why he felt suddenly warm and throat-tight. "She's not okay." Even when she'd been in the sam city, it'd seemed that she operated in some distant world. He didn't really know how to proceed with Iris, and that bothered him. If he wasn't good at looking out for his sisters, then what was he good at? The vastness of his failures was thick and horrifying.
"I guess I'm doing it," he said. What more could he do?