Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Opening my eyes felt like a chore. It felt impossible.
I was awake, listening to the idle sounds of Elio’s gentle breathing and the quiet whoosh of the air conditioning kicking on.
My fingers twitched against Elio’s skin, reaching out for something stable to hold on to.
My toes wiggled underneath the blankets, readying themselves for the day ahead.
The day ahead, which I wasn’t sure I could force myself to prepare for. My stomach growled, my heart ached, the sun was rising—everything was falling into place like a normal day, but I didn’t want to open my eyes.
Seeing nothing was easier than seeing everything.
A weight had settled into my bones overnight, making itself a home for the indefinite future.
I never knew when it would end. I never knew when it would begin.
I’d have hunches, and sometimes they’d be right.
Other times, it came out of nowhere or didn’t come at all when I thought it would.
The deep, confusing denial of existence. A dreading, draining feeling sitting on top of my chest, settling so heavily I was never sure if I could handle it.
Fucking depression. A leech of all joy. A sick, twisted tendril ready to dig beneath the surface of my skin and tear everything I knew and loved out.
My alarm went off again. I’d been lying in bed for fifteen minutes, awake but unseeing. It was loud in my ears, my earbuds forcing the sound deep into my eardrums. I reached around, finding my screen and tapping all over it until the noise stopped. Just as it did, a text chime went off in my ears.
Groaning, I forced my eyes into a squint just to peer at my phone screen.
Moon
Found a good therapist where you are. We’re all here for you, but if you don’t want us to be, at least look into her.
Christina Higginson
Sacred Heights Therapy and Counseling
The sun hadn’t even come up yet. I barely had the energy to get out of bed, much less deal with Moon’s antics. I was fine. I’d gone through this before; I could do it again. I didn’t need any intervention. I’d graduated from therapy for a reason.
At least, that’s what I kept telling myself as I peeled my body away from Elio’s, praying for the willpower to get up.
Sleep clung to my skin, its claws digging into me with a viselike grip as I meandered my way through getting ready and leaving.
There was a numbness deep in my skin, penetrating every molecule.
So numb, I could hardly feel my shirt as I put it on.
It was a mixed cotton blend, soft and breathable, yet I felt nothing.
Not scratchy, not itchy, not tugging anywhere, just… nothing.
How odd it was to feel an emotion so deeply that I could no longer feel anything else.
The drive to work hadn’t even bothered me. Despite the considerably louder yelling in my ear or the fact that I couldn’t hear any of my music anymore, it didn’t seem to faze me. I let the voices rant and rave, some of it nonsensical, some of it about their shitty opinions of me.
Or my own shitty opinions, maybe? I’d been in such a thick, hazy fog when my old therapist explained the hallucinations to me. Why I never asked for him to explain it again, I wasn’t sure. Maybe I didn’t want to know.
My episodes had become so few and far between, I started to think it didn’t matter whether I understood or not.
Of course, I had to have one while going through all this shit with Elio.
Being there for him, going through this with him, was so important to me, and yet here I was—going off the deep end, apparently.
It’s fine, I told myself, getting everything ready at the bakery. You’ve gone through this before. You can get through it again.
Positive self-talk and all that, right?
Thank god we were slower today. I was slow, too. Between not being sure if I was burning my hand on the sheet pan I’d just pulled out of the oven and feeling like there was a thousand-pound weight over my entire body, I couldn’t bring myself to go any faster.
We were rolling out a new item today. Cinnamon marble coffee cake slices.
They smelled heavenly, and I’d been so excited to start making them.
Now, the smell annoyed me. So did the entire process of making them, which sucked even more.
Baking had become my saving grace when I moved here.
There was something so soothing about it, and every step had exact measurements.
I never had to think too far outside the box if I didn’t want to. I just followed the recipe to the T, kneading or spreading icing repeatedly, getting right into the zone where nothing mattered except what I was making.
My earbuds were useless. Shadows mocked me from every corner of the kitchen. I couldn’t get into a zone of any sort, forced to take every word they threw at me. I was alone for the most part; everyone else was working the front while I kept things coming out from the back.
Despite the slower pace than usual, I left the bakery feeling far more exhausted than usual. Something I hadn’t prepared for, even though I knew, from a lot of experience, that it was more than likely going to happen.
The apartment was mostly silent when I finally walked in.
I looked around as I pulled my apron off, looking for where Elio could’ve been.
A lone glass sat on top of the coffee table, half-empty, with a used bandage lying beside it.
Thinking of the last time I came home to silence like this, I started to worry.
I strained through the slight whispers here and there that were trying to distract me, listening for any sniffling or sounds of scrubbing—anything that could tell me where he was.
He wasn’t in the kitchen or the bathroom.
My heart started to beat faster, hammering against my rib cage like it was trying to burst out of its confines.
I walked down the hallway, coming up on my bedroom door, which was shut all the way.
Flutters began in my throat, little tiny wings of moths inhabiting my insides started pounding against my esophagus, begging for a way out.
Slowly, I wrapped my hand around the knob. Maybe he was just taking a nap. Though Sarah would’ve only been gone for a little while, and he knew I’d be home around now, so that didn’t really make sense.
When I pushed the door open, the first thing I noticed was how dark it was.
The second thing I noticed was the soft cries that quieted a bit when I entered.
I heard the pause in them, along with the gasping, hiccup-like breath that followed.
“Elio?” I kept my voice low and quiet, careful of my tone.
He cleared his throat from somewhere in the dark. “Y-yeah?”
Oh, Sunshine. He sounded so sad—so defeated. My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark yet, trusting my feet to guide me in the right direction. Damn the dark curtains I decided to put over my windows. “Where are you?”
“The bed.”
“I’m making my way to you, okay?” He didn’t respond, but I kept moving. I was able to see the basic shape of things now, which helped.
Once I reached the bed, I came around to his side and squinted, searching for his outline. He sniffled, his breath coming out in short gasps and pants that broke my heart. “What happened, hm?” I sat beside him, taking care not to touch him directly.
He was mumbling, making it hard to hear him over the quiet whispers that’d started up again. “I don’t know, really.”
“Can I hold you?” No matter how hard I tried to push it away, the exhaustion was starting to weigh down on me again. I didn’t know what to say or do.
“Please?”
I took a deep breath, centering myself in the same reality he was in.
Or trying to, at least. I didn’t want to climb over him, instead deciding to walk to the other side.
I scooted into the bed, moving in right behind him.
His skin was so warm; the entire mattress radiated with it, a guide for mine to fit right next to him.
Like puzzle pieces, lost and broken apart, finding their long-lost match.
I wrapped my arms around him, pulling his back against me.
I dug my nose into the back of his neck, surrounding myself with him.
His scent, his warmth, his essence, him.
The muscles in his back shifted against me, his shoulders rising and falling ever so slightly.
I couldn’t hear him breathing over the music in my ears anymore.
If I couldn’t hear him, did that mean he was calming down?
Four seconds passed in between each fall and subsequent rise of his shoulders. I followed the rhythm he set, forcing myself to breathe in when he did, wait four seconds, then breathe out with him.
Until there was silence. It was deafening—suffocating, almost. A pure shock to my system after nonstop noise. The music had stopped abruptly, and the voices had calmed down for the time being, which should’ve given me some reprieve.
It had the opposite effect. Suddenly, Elio’s breathing was so loud that I seriously wondered how to turn it down for a second. When I inhaled with him, it seemed to echo in my head.
“I got angry.” His voice scared me, sounding much louder than I’d gotten used to.
It took me a few seconds to get my mouth to work. The slow, sludge-like, heavy feeling in my body and mind was making the effort ten times worse than it usually would be. “Yeah?”
My nose scraped against his skin when he nodded. “Yeah, and then I got scared. Scared because I was angry at him, I guess. And then I got sad. Really fucking sad, because why am I scared of being angry? None of it makes sense, Cres. I don’t understand.”
“I know. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to be sad. But you know, you don’t need to be scared of being angry, and you don’t need to be sad over being scared. After what you went through, it’s understandable.”
“I know it’s understandable. Like, logically, I get that, but on the inside? Fuck, I’m a mess.”