Bash
I’m posted up, leaning against a wall, trying to read over an article for class that I can’t get myself to pay attention to, too wrapped up in my thoughts when I look up and see Lydia walking towards me.
I know her tells, as weird as that may seem. I’ve already learned what it looks like when she’s having a bad day before she even opens her mouth. Which she normally doesn’t because she always likes to pretend things are okay when they aren’t.
“Hey,” I say softly, wanting to reach out and pull her into me, but then I remember the last time I did that on a bad day, and it made her flinch away from me, and I felt guilty for that reaction, like I caused it.
She looks at me, and then past me, like she’s looking for an escape. “Hey.”
“Wanna sit?” I nod at the lawn. “Or we could walk.”
“Can we just go?” she asks. It might sound like a request, but it’s her telling me that’s what she needs.
“Yeah,” I say, falling into step beside her.
We take the long way to avoid most of the heavy traffic areas, and I just watch her.
I watch her breathing try to regulate; I watch her look off and search for things like she’s doing that trick in her brain to point out what she sees, and not stay stuck in her head.
All the things people don’t normally pick up on unless you’ve had to do them yourself.
“What do you need?” I try. “Quiet, coffee, car ride?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“How can I help?”
Her lips press together. “I’m fine.”
We make it half a block. I’m trying to decide if it’s better to try to help or just be there silently. The psychology part of my brain keeps pushing cue cards to the front. The friend part just wants to do anything that makes the tension behind her eyes let up.
“Okay,” I say finally, picking one thing and dropping the 50-questions. “I’m going to be your human compass. Tell me which way—dorm, library, or the long loop to nowhere?”
“Dorm.” She says it too fast, like the option is a relief to have.
“Dorm it is.” I turn us left.
We pass a couple of guys tossing a football. One of them shouts without warning, and I see Lydia flinch. Her hands go into her jacket pockets like she’s trying to play it off.
I can’t stand not knowing what she’s fighting right now. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”
She cuts me a look that’s almost an apology, but mostly a warning. “I don’t wanna…talk.”
I nod. “Copy.” We walk for another couple of minutes before the next sentence makes its way out anyway. “Is there a way I can help without…talking?”
She stops. I stop. I’m ready for her to crack a smile and actually tell me how I can help. But she doesn’t.
“Bash,” she says, my name clipped. “I don’t want to be handled. Can you not do the…thing?”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you’re scanning me.” She gestures at me. “Like you’re trying to find the right button. There isn’t one. I just need to get to my room.”
It stings. Not because she’s wrong—I probably am scanning, but because I hate that I’m making it worse by trying to help. “Okay,” I say. “I wasn’t trying to—”
“I know,” she says, sharper. “I know that. I just—can we not do this on the sidewalk?”
“Yeah.” We start walking again. The quiet turns thick.
We reach her building. She walks in, and I follow her. She presses the elevator button like she’s mad at it.
“Stairs?” I offer.
“Elevator.” The doors open. We step in and face forward like we’re two strangers in a tiny moving box.
When the doors close, she exhales. “I’m irritated,” she admits. “Not at you. I just…need to be alone. It’s embarrassing.”
I turn my head. “What is?”
“All of it.” Her eyes stay on the numbers above the door. “Therapy days. This…edge. I can’t even tell you why. I just—my brain feels loud. People see me like this and think something’s wrong with me…and obviously there is. It’s like I’m broken and it’s all leaking out.”
The elevator dings open, and we step into the quiet hallway.
I keep my voice low. “I don’t think you’re broken.”
She shrugs me off. “Can we not do a pep talk? Please?”
“I’m not pep-talking. I’m just telling you the truth.” We reach her door, and she fishes for the key, but drops it. “Here, let me—”
“I’ve got it.” She snatches it up, jabs it into the lock, and pushes inside. The room is empty, thank goodness. She just stands in the doorway like she’s not sure if she’s inviting me in or barricading the entrance.
“I can go,” I say. “Or I can stay and sit on the floor with you. Dealer’s choice.”
Her mouth twists, and then she finally steps back so I can come in. “Stay,” she says.
I sit on the small rug by the end of her bed, and she stands by the window, fingers pulling at her sleeve.
The silence is a little awkward, but I just let it sit.
I look around at the things in the room I’ve learned by being in here too much—three Polaroids on her bulletin board (Simone, Lani, and Huxley.) The gold jewelry on the nightstand.
The Post-it on her lamp: drink water, and keep going.
She finally speaks without turning to face me. “I hate that I’m like this.”
“I know.”
“Don’t say ‘it’s okay,’” she warns.
“It’s not okay,” I say. “It’s just real.”
She sits on the edge of the bed, not touching me. “After therapy…it’s like my head is a crowded hallway and the fire alarm goes off. I want everyone out. And everyone is…everything. Noise. People. Questions. Any stupid thing that overstimulates me. Or just…me.”
I nod. “How can I help evacuate those annoying things with you?”
She huffs. “I don’t know.”
I pause. “Do you want quiet-sit or quiet-alone?”
“What’s quiet-sit?”
“I stay. We don’t talk. You do whatever you need to do. I’m just…here.”
She chews her lip. “And quiet-alone?”
“I leave. You tell me when I can check in by text. You don’t have to answer. I just need to know the message delivered.”
Her eyes flick to mine at that. She looks tired, not hostile anymore.
“I usually…disappear,” she admits. “Hide somewhere. It feels safer to detonate alone. Sometimes the questions and conversations make my brain try to dissociate, and I hate that feeling, like I can’t pay attention, like I’m being pulled from my body, like every time something is off, this fear rushes through my body that feels awful. ”
Something in my chest hurts, wanting to help her. “I don’t need to watch the explosion. I just want you to know there’s a fire extinguisher nearby.”
She stares at her hands. “It usually makes people mad when I go quiet. Like, I’m being dramatic, or they get annoyed that I’m not communicating. But when I try, my brain keeps pulling the thoughts away, and I start to freak out more. It just makes the anxiety worse.”
“I’m not mad,” I say. “I’m…stubborn.” I let a smile slip. “So pick one, or I’ll invent a third option called ‘stubborn-sit,’ and no one will like that.”
She snorts a little. Then she sighs. “Quiet-alone,” she says.
“Please. It’s not that I don’t want you around; I just…
need the door shut. I want to get myself together before group tonight.
I don’t think I can do that if I feel like I have to perform being okay, even if that’s not what you’re asking me to do… sometimes I can’t help it.”
“Okay.” I stand. “I’ll head out. I’ll text you in an hour, unless you want to text before then. If you want to be left alone past that, thumbs-up emoji. If you need me to bring you a coffee from the lounge and leave it like a feral raccoon bringing you gifts after you fed it, raccoon emoji.”
She smiles with just the corner of her mouth. “You are so ridiculous.”
“Yeah, I know.” I move toward the doorway, then stop.
“The part you said before where people see your anxiety and decide you’re broken?
” I pause until she has looked up at me.
“That’s not what I see. I see a nervous system working like it’s supposed to after a hard workout.
It’s loud because it wants to protect you. ”
“It’s annoyingly overprotective,” she says, all soft and broken.
“Maybe,” I say. “But I would rather have a smoke alarm that occasionally freaks out over toast than no alarm at all.”
She makes a face like she’s trying not to cry. “I hate toast.”
“Liar,” I say, scrunching my nose playfully. “You love toast. Especially with fancy avocado on top.”
She rolls her eyes and waves me off. “Go. Before I change my mind and you get stuck in here.”
I nod, then go to turn around and feel her tug at the back of my shirt. I turn back around, and she wraps her arms around me. I pull her in more and put my chin on the top of her head. “I’m not taking any of this personally,” I tell her. “Just seriously.”
She nods slowly against my chest. “Thank you.”
I step into the hall and stand there one second longer than I need to. Then right when I go to walk away, my phone vibrates.
Lydia: Not broken. Just loud
My throat gets tight. I type back.
Bash: Loud is okay. Raccoon or thumbs-up?
There’s a pause. Then a single emoji appears.
Lydia: *Raccoon emoji*
I grin, walk down to the lounge area, and make her coffee the way she likes before heading back to her dorm and setting everything outside her door with a sticky note I stole from the desk in the lounge that says, “Just here.”
When I turn to go, I hear the soft pad of her feet on the other side, then the faintest tap against the door—once, quick, like our little wall code.
I tap the frame back as quietly as I can, then leave her to the quiet she asked for, reminding every muscle in my body that caring is sometimes leaving space, and that’s healthy.
I send a check-in text when I’m downstairs.
Bash: Delivered. No response needed
A couple of minutes pass before she replies.
Lydia: Thank you for not making me perform being okay
Bash: Thank you for letting me know what you need
A beat.
Lydia: Poem-verse?
I lean against the hallway window and type the one that carried me after some rough nights where I needed to be okay with the roughness.
Bash: Isaiah 61:1–3
“…to bind up the brokenhearted…to give them a garland instead of ashes…a garment of praise instead of a faint spirit.”
No dots appear. That’s fine. On days like this, silence is not a bad thing. I pocket my phone and head down the stairs, feeling less useless, not because I fixed anything, but because I finally remembered what my job is—not to solve her, just to be there.