39. Caleb #2
We come up with a mini-plan: Limit doomy Googling about trauma outcomes.
When the “this is who you are forever” thought pops up, literally write down an alternate statement like, “My nervous system expects catastrophe. That doesn’t mean catastrophe is guaranteed.
” Tell Miguel the lecture was hard, even if I don’t want to unpack every detail.
“That last one feels… gross,” I say. “Things have been good. I don’t want to be like, ‘Surprise, here’s my weekly trauma monologue.’”
“That’s a story,” she says gently. “That sharing your reality is a burden. Miguel has chosen to be in this with you. Let’s at least give him the opportunity to decide what’s ‘too much’ instead of deciding for him.”
I grimace. “It’s scary how annoyingly right you are sometimes.”
“It’s in my job description,” she smirks.
By the time I leave, I feel less peeled and more… raw but wrapped. Like gauze over the grape. My brain is back down to a five again.
Not great, but also not catastrophic.
I can live with five.
Sleep, though.
Sleep stops cooperating almost immediately.
It starts small. One night, I dream I’m back in the old apartment. The one that always smelled like cigarettes and spilled beer and something sour under the sink. Mom’s boyfriend is sitting at the table, chain-smoking, ashtray overflowing. I’m four, standing in the kitchen doorway.
He tells me dinner’s on the stove.
I look.
The pot is empty.
I wake up with my teeth sunk into the inside of my cheek.
The next night, I dream I’m in the gym, shooting free throws. Every time the ball leaves my hands, it turns into a pill bottle midair and shatters against the rim. Little white tablets scatter across the floor. Nobody notices but me.
I wake up with my hand clenched in Miguel’s T-shirt, nails digging into his chest. He murmurs something in his sleep and pulls me closer. I lie there, eyes open in the dark, counting his breaths until the sun starts bleeding through the blinds.
It’s fine.
A lot of people have weird dreams during finals.
Then comes the vivid one.
I’m back in that shitty apartment where they found her. I’ve seen the photos in case files I wasn’t supposed to see—Dad forgot to lock a drawer when I was thirteen, and curiosity is a bitch.
In the dream, it’s all there. The screaming orange bedspread. The faded floral curtains. The empty pill bottles on the nightstand. The gun.
Blood on the carpet and the wall.
Mom’s lying on the bed.
She’s not dead yet.
That’s the new part.
She looks at me.
“Anything to get away from you,” she says, voice thick and slurred. “Worthless.”
I’m twenty-two and eight at the same time, standing in the doorway in socks that don’t fit, stomach hollow.
“You could’ve just loved me,” I say. “You could’ve… not done this.”
She smiles, slow and crooked. “You know better,” she says. “You know what happens when you stay for too long in a life that hurts.”
She holds out a hand.
“Come lie down,” she says. “It’s easier if you just… stop fighting it.”
The nightmare-me takes a step forward.
Actual me tries to scream.
I can’t.
My throat is full of cotton and chalk and every time I’ve ever wanted to disappear.
I jerk awake with a gasp that feels like my lungs ripping open. I’m soaked in sweat and my heart is sprinting. The room is dark, but there’s a sliver of streetlight by the blinds, just enough to prove I’m in the condo, not that fucking bedroom.
Miguel is dead asleep, sprawled beside me, mouth open a little. The fan hums softly in the corner.
In for four.
Hold.
Out.
My hands tremble, and for a second, I consider waking him. Telling him everything. Letting him pull me in and say the same things he always says: “You’re here. You’re safe. You’re not her, you’re not him, you’re not eight anymore.”
Instead, I slide out of bed as quietly as I can.
I stand in the bathroom with the light off, gripping the sink, watching my reflection in the faint glow from the hallway. My face looks like I’ve been through hell, with my eyes too wide and cheeks hollow.
“You’re fine,” I whisper. “It was just a dream. You have exams. You have the plan. You have a boyfriend who would panic if he knew how loud it’s getting.”
There’s the real reason.
Things have been… good.
Soft landings. Dancing in the kitchen. Real dinners. Coach talking about camps and drafts and futures. Dad apologizing in weird, halting ways. I don’t want to drag everyone back into the swamp because my brain decided to rerun the trauma channel this week.
So I splash cold water on my face. I count my breaths and crawl back into bed and press myself against Miguel’s side, tucking my nose under his jaw. He murmurs something that sounds like “hey, baby,” in his sleep and wraps an arm around me.
I lie awake, eyes open, until birds start screeching outside.
“I’m just tired,” I tell him at breakfast. It’s not completely a lie, just omitting some truth in order to protect him.
He eyes the uneaten half of my toast. “You look like you lost a fight with a raccoon,” he says. “Nightmares?”
I reach for my coffee. “Just exams,” I say lightly. “Psych class was heavy and my brain’s processing the last lecture in weird ways. You know how it is.”
Miguel watches me for a beat too long, like he’s reading the fine print on my soul.
“Volume?” he asks.
“Five,” I say. “Maybe five-point-five.”
He nudges a banana toward me. “Food,” he says. “Non-negotiable. And you’re telling Dr. K about the dreams.”
“I already have a packed schedule,” going tense. “I can’t squeeze in another session until the end of next week.”
“Then email her,” he says. “Or we can tag it at the end. But you’re not white-knuckling that alone, Caleb.”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, honey,” I mutter.
That makes him smirk. “Don’t get all sassy. Gonna make me bend you over this island and show you how ‘Yes, honey’ you can get when I make you come so hard you see God.”
I choke on my coffee. “Shut up.”
He kisses my forehead before we head out, thumb brushing under my eye where the circles are darkest. “I mean it,” he murmurs. “You don’t have to protect me from your brain.”
The thing is… I don’t totally believe that.
So I nod and let him think that I do.
My coping toolbox this week is overstudying, overtraining, and sex to deal with all the feelings I don’t want to address.
If there is a paragraph in my notes that hasn’t been highlighted, underlined, and annotated, I feel personally attacked.
I spend extra time in the weight room, even when Coach says, “Go home, Burton, you’re done.
” Shooting drills until my shoulders burn, like maybe I can sweat the dreams out.
Every night is a blur of messy sheets, sweat and Miguel cuddling me to death after making me come more times than I can count.
Typical college masochism.
The safety plan that’s hanging on the fridge states otherwise.
When you start ramping up in these ways, check the following:
Are you sleeping?
Are you eating?
Are you isolating?
Let’s do a little mental welfare check, shall we? Sleep, barely. Eating enough to pass a casual inspection, but not enough to convince Miguel. Isolating? Not exactly. I’m around people all the time. I’m just… not letting them see past the surface.
Martin
Stats study group? I promise not to cry this time.
Caleb
No promises on my end, but yeah. Library at 3?
Martin
Bring snacks or I’ll tell your boyfriend that you’re surviving on water and the will to live.
I throw a granola bar into my bag. It counts.
In the quiet moments—walking between classes, standing in line at the café, brushing my teeth—I catch little intrusive flashes. Not full scenes. Just… snapshots.
My mother’s boyfriend’s hand on the cupboard, blocking it.
An empty fridge.
Mom on the bed saying, “You know what happens when you stay too long in a life that hurts.”
I shake them off like spiderwebs. Keep moving. If I keep moving, they can’t stick.
That’s always been the rule.
Dr. K does not buy it. “You look exhausted,” she says.
“Wow,” I say, faking a laugh. “Way to make a guy feel good about himself.”
She tilts her head. “You’re joking,” she says. “But I want to name it. I’m hearing ‘I’m fine’ from your words and ‘I’m barely holding it together’ from your body.”
I scrub my hands over my face. “Nightmares,” I admit. “You were right. Psych lecture left a residue. My brain decided to turn it into late-night programming.”
“Tell me one,” she says. “Just one. We don’t have to go through all of them.”
So I tell her about the motel one. The pill bottles and the gun. My mom talking like she’s giving me a life hack.
She listens, eyes soft but steady. No horror, no pity, just… presence.
“How did you feel when you woke up?” she asks.
“Like someone had scraped me out,” I say. “Like… empty and buzzing at the same time. I wanted to wake Miguel up and also disappear into the wall.”
“And what did you do?”
“Hid in the bathroom,” I sigh. “Good ol’ cold water and breathing. Then back to bed. I didn’t tell him.”
“Why not?”
She’ll get it out of me one way or another. “Because things have been good,” I say. “Because he works his ass off, and I didn’t want to be like, ‘Hi, I know you just spent all day climbing around inside walls, but here’s my recurring starring role in Lifetime’s Trauma, The Series.’”
Her mouth quirks. “You’re good at minimizing your needs,” she says. “That’s one of the coping mechanisms that kept you alive as a kid. It’s not serving you as well now.”
“I know,” I deadpan. “Intellectually. But… if I tell him everything every time my brain decides to show a rerun, he’s going to burn out. Or resent me. Or start bracing every time I walk into a room. I don’t want our life to be… this all the time.”
She nods. “Of course you don’t,” tapping her pen to the notepad in her lap.
“No one wants their trauma to be their only topic of conversation or the core of their relationship. The goal here is not ‘tell him everything, always.’ The goal is ‘don’t lie about the severity when you’re nearing the cliff. ’”
I swallow. “Do you think I’m nearing the cliff?”
Pausing for a moment, letting the room grow quiet.
“I think you’re edging closer to the guardrail,” she says.
“Nightmares are a sign your system is under strain. The exam stress, the lecture, the conversations with your father, the scout, the camp possibility… that’s a lot of input.
Your safety plan is not an accusation. It’s a resource. Let’s look at it.”
We do.
“Okay,” I say. “So we’re at like… three out of five.”
“How does that feel to acknowledge?” she asks.
“Like I want to set the paper on fire,” I say. “And also… like maybe I’m not imagining this. That something is ramping up, and I’m not just being dramatic.”
“You’re not being dramatic,” she says firmly. “Your system is telling us it’s under strain. The good news is you are catching it earlier than before. You’re here. You’re talking about it. That’s a huge difference from previous spirals you’ve described.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Back then, I’d just… not show up. Anywhere. Until someone dragged me out.”
“Exactly,” she says. “So, let’s talk about what we are adjusting. This week let’s focus on small, concrete things.”
We negotiate on the most important things.
Things that will keep me sane. Limiting late-night studying, no laptop in bed after midnight.
Texting Miguel something about the nightmares, maybe not the full script, but enough that he knows the volume.
And adding one extra check-in with her next week, even if it’s a short email.
“Feels like a lot,” I grumble, taking in all the notes I’ve written.
“It is,” she says. “Because you’re important. You require maintenance.”
“You make me sound like a ‘98 Honda,” I say. “Those bitches live forever.”
“Even Hondas deserve oil changes,” she says.
I don’t tell Miguel everything that night.
But I tell him more than nothing.
We’re in bed, lights off, his hand drawing lazy circles on my back. My body is bone-tired, but my brain is still pacing.
“I’ve been having nightmares,” I say into his chest.
His hand stills. “Yeah?” he asks softly. “About… your mom”
“Yeah,” I say. “Psych class had a really rough case study, and it kinda opened the floodgates. My subconscious is doing avant-garde theater about it.”
Miguel’s fingers start moving again, slow and comforting. “Thank you for telling me,” he murmurs into my hair as he presses kisses all over my head. “You want to share details or just… headline level for now?”
“Headline,” I say. “Details later. Maybe. With Dr. K’s emotional first aid kit on standby.”
“Okay,” he says. “Do you want anything from me right now? Different sleeping position, extra blanket, dumb story, distraction?”
I consider it.
“Just… stay,” I say. “If I flail, don’t take it personally.”
“I never do,” he says. “I’ve seen you in a defensive stance in your underwear. It’s never not hot, even when it’s about nightmares.”
I snort, unwillingly amused. “You’re so stupid,” I say.
“You’re welcome,” he says.
He falls asleep before I do, his breath evening out, his hand still resting warmly on my spine. I lie awake, staring at the ceiling, the cracks in the paint starting to look like maps. The hairlines are there.
Not broken. Not yet. But I can feel the pressure building behind the glass.
If I don’t find a way to let some of it out…
Something is going to give.