A Character Study of My Hayden
whats up hookers it seems a vast many of you have expressed interest in MyHayden and if you'd like him to become OurHayden i would be absolutely, utterly, overjoyed. reminder, this is not canon! this is a version of hayden I Made The Fuck Up. My Source, Senator? My Beautiful Mind. If you haven't read my brief previous rambling on MyHayden, you can read that here! Im starting off with just his rookie year but if yall want me to continue let me know lmaooo
Right. Lets get down to business.
MyHayden's first complex emotion was fear. Before he could remember being anything, he remembers being afraid. He remembers being four years old and being terrified every year on his birthday because that made him one year closer to sin. When he turned eight, there were two weeks between his birthday and his baptism and one of his most formative childhood memories was being terrified during those two weeks. He has never been more scared in his life. He remembers Marnie, his older sister by almost eight years, desperately trying to calm him every night when he would wake up terrified. By the time he got baptized his relief was so palpable, he was certain it must be the holy spirit (and not the sheer force emotional manipulation can have on an 8 year old).
Every single one of his siblings went on a mission - even his sisters. His father was a bishop and each of them was more devoted than the last. His mother and father weren't unkind, but they were strict about their rules. They were staunch mormons who followed the good book to the letter. Every step out of line felt like leaping from a cliff to hayden. His most prominent childhood emotion was fear. Fear of not being good enough, holy enough, obedient enough. When he was younger, it was fear of the divine, but as he got older, it became more of a fear of others. Of his father and mother and older siblings. Of his community. Of what they would do when they found out he wasn't quite right. When they found out his thoughts strayed from how he was taught to think. How he was never going to be good enough, holy enough, obedient enough, to be with the rest of his family. His older siblings set perfect examples. They were all good, so what was wrong with him? why couldn't he believe? why couldn't he be enough? why wouldn't his God love him?
He was probably fifteen when he realized that the church wasn't just hurting him, it was killing him. He was going to end up dead, either drowned under the weight of his inherent failure or by his own hand. He couldn't breathe. He had played hockey for fun mostly, but that was the age he started to push himself. Here was something he could be good enough at. He was seventeen when he realized he might just be good enough at it to get out. He was eighteen when he ran from home in the middle of the night, after saving from after school jobs for two years. He ran two days before the draft, knowing his mission call was sitting in the mailbox. His relief at being drafted, especially to somewhere as far away as Montreal was from Utah, was the first time he felt an emotion stronger than fear.
He moves to montreal and he meets shane and suddenly there's another person who doesn't feel quite "right" in his environment. Shane never expresses it outloud, and he's certainly "right" when it comes to the hockey itself, but hayden can tell he feels like he stands on the edges of the locker room. He's quiet and inherently kind and decidedly not white and so hayden makes a promise to himself that they'll be friends. And for years, Shane always thinks that Hayden befriended him because he was a good guy, and he saw that shane needed a friend. The reality of it was that hayden befriended shane because he needed a friend. He desperately needed someone to tether him to this new life, to be some kind of tangible reminder that he got out. Someone who didn't know anything about him and wouldn't push. Shane was always grateful for haydens friendship, and hayden always expressed that he was grateful for shanes. hayden may have saved shane from a lonely locker room, but shane saved hayden from himself.
Hayden is also 18 when he gets a back tattoo. EVERYONE makes fun of him for it, they think it's either impulsive (shane) or ridiculous (everyone else). Hayden probably doesn't help his case by telling people he got it because he "thought it looked cool." But he was worried that people would ask about the now permenant lines across his back. not super noticable upon first glace, but years of leather hitting the same spot over and over, for every failure of his, for every falter, for every step out of line, had unfortunately left marks that no longer faded with time. The lines were white and thin and even though no one had noticed yet, hayden wasn't taking chances. So he got a mountian range tattooed and told everyone it was just some cool mountians, not the Uinta's, the only part of home he could think about without all of it coming crashing down on top of him.
but he's 18. and he made it out. and maybe he goes to bed every day thinking about his siblings. His mom and dad. maybe he covers the mirror in his bathroom unless he has guests over. Maybe he hates his stupid fucking stainless steel fridge because sometimes, if he's tired enough, he thinks it's Orson standing in the kitchen. Or Gideon, or John, or Hyram, or Brigham. Sometimes he even thinks it might be his dad. It never is. its always just him, alone in his house. But it's his house. There are no shelves lines with mission letters, no four books of joseph smith, no heavenly mandate on the walls. There is no sound of belts or prayer or shouting. It's quiet here. He made it out.