Lydia #2
It all comes out messy and raw. “I’m struggling. Like…more than I’ve said out loud. And I keep thinking, this is what it will be. Up and down forever. Some days the ocean, some days the shore…and I don’t want to pull anyone under with me.” I take a breath. “I don’t want to pull you under.”
His jaw works. “What do you mean?”
I look at him because I need him to see that I mean this.
“You are…sweet and steady and kind…and you’ve been exactly what I needed.
I can’t explain how much that matters to me, how much you matter to me…
but I don’t want to be the thing that hurts you.
I think it’s better if—” My voice cracks.
“—if you step back from whatever this is before I do what I always do.”
He blinks slowly, like he’s bracing. “What is it that you always do?”
“Ruin it,” I say. “I’ll just end up ruining you if this goes any further. It’s not fair to ask you to stand here and get cut by my broken pieces.”
He shakes his head. “Lydia—”
I force a laugh that sounds way too thick with emotion. “Please don’t do that. It’s fine. You don’t have to give me the ‘we’ll figure it out’ speech. We don’t have to make this anything more than what it was.”
“I’m not giving a speech,” he says, softer. “I’m telling you that I want to be here…with you.”
“For now,” I say, keeping my eyes on the ground as I pick at the grass. “Until I have another bad week. Until I pull you into my own wreckage. Until all the countless triggers come up and you get tired of having to hold my hand through yet another panic attack. Until I…relapse again.”
“I can handle messy,” he tells me, and I want him to convince me, but my brain won’t let that happen.
“You think you can,” I say, this bitterness sneaking its way into my words. “Because from over there it looks all noble to do that. Up close, it’s—” I break the blade of grass again. “It’s not pretty, Bash.”
“I’m not asking for pretty,” he says. “I’m not asking you to be okay.”
“See, you keep saying that,” I say, “but you have no idea what it really looks like.”
He takes a deep breath, like he’s getting ready to argue with me on this. “Lyd, I know grief. I know what it’s like when grief still finds you when you thought you were safe.”
“Knowing about it isn’t the same as dealing with it all the time,” I say quietly, then sharper, “and the parts you don’t know? The parts you can’t know? They’re the parts that cut people. You just haven’t seen that part yet.”
He nods, taking that. “Okay. So let me learn the parts I can.”
It’s not fair how sweet he’s being when I’m trying to save him from me.
“You don’t know what you’re volunteering for. I relapse. I run. I shut down. I say things I don’t mean, and then I mean them later, and then I don’t again—” I shake my head, and my voice breaks. “Why would you sign up for that?”
“Because I want you,” he says, simply. “Not the highlight reel. Not the clean and fake version. You.”
I huff, even though his words make my heart flutter. “That sounds a lot like a rescue fantasy to me,” I say, trying to injure this thing before it can hurt me, “like you need a project to help you feel…whatever it is you need to feel good about yourself.”
He flinches; it’s small, but I see it. “This isn’t that,” he says. “If anything, it’s the opposite. I’m trying really hard not to fix you.”
“Then what is it?” I ask, too loud for how close we are. “Who are you if you’re not holding everybody else together?”
He looks at me for a long second, the muscle in his jaw working. “Someone who just wants to be with you,” he finally says. “However that looks. However you want it to look. For as long as you want it.”
“Don’t—” The word snaps out before I can stop it. I pull my hands into sleeves like I’m hiding some weapon I’m scared I might use. But my tongue has always been the greatest one I have.
I stand up, needing somewhere for the anxiety to physically go. He stands up too, and he looks like he wants to reach for me, but doesn’t.
“Don’t say that,” I tell him. “Don’t say things when you don’t understand what they mean, what they come with.
I’ve been hurt…a lot. I’ve never known what it’s like to feel safe.
My body doesn’t know anything else besides protecting itself…
and sometimes it hurts other people trying to get that done.
A face can trigger me, a touch can trigger me, a stupid word or tone of voice can trigger me…
I feel like I’m at ground zero with this whole healing process…
and that doesn’t feel like the time to invite someone else into the mess.
I don’t understand why you would want to be in the middle of my mess anyway.
I don’t understand what you’re trying to do here. ”
“I’m just trying to stay,” he says, palms up. “That’s all… I’m okay with working through the hard parts, with finding the right ways to care about you in ways that will make you feel safe.”
“Stay until when?” I ask. “Until I break something you can’t glue back together? Until the version of me you like gets drowned out by the one you don’t?”
He opens his mouth, closes it, looks down like he’s choosing words that won’t hurt me. “That sounds like fear talking,” he says—and it lands like a gavel being thrown at me.
“Stop that,” I snap, and the word knocks something loose I’ve been holding shut.
The shame rides in on its heels. His hands flex like he doesn’t know whether to reach for me or give me more room.
“Don’t therapist me,” I throw out. “You don’t get it.
You think you do because you’ve heard the bullet points of my life.
But I will hurt you. Not on purpose. Just… because that’s what happens.”
He reaches for a calm approach, and I hear the therapist in him, which is the worst possible thing right now. “It doesn’t sound like hurting me is the real problem here.”
I feel myself getting overwhelmed, wanting to run away from this. I’m tired of all the bad parts being front and center for everyone to see and analyze.
“Then tell me, Bash! What’s my problem? Go on! Tell me! Diagnose me! Use me like I’m just another practice patient. Tell me all the things you think are wrong with me!”
I watch as Bash paces back and forth before finally stopping.
He looks angry…or defeated? I’m not really sure.
I’ve never seen him look like this before.
I see the wheels turning in his head as he stares at me.
He’s thinking about what he wants to say, how he wants to say it, if he’s going to give me what I’m really asking for, if he’s going to take the open invitation to dissect the darkest parts of me.
“You want to know what I think is wrong with you?” he asks, voice sharper now.
It scares me, scares my heart, that he’s about to flip like everyone else always does.
“Yes!” I yell.
The tears start to fall, and I watch Bash’s expression change instantly.
He doesn’t want to back down. He’s not going to.
I can see it in his eyes. But he’s also fighting the urge to comfort me, to wipe my tears away, to make me feel okay, like he always does.
But he can’t. He can’t, because if he gives in and walks over to me right now, all the walls will come down.
He won’t have the courage anymore to say what he needs to say.
So even though he takes a step towards me, he forces himself to stop.
“You want me to diagnose you like a patient? Give you this long list of clinical notes to explain why you are the way you are?”
“Yes,” I force out through a sob. “I want to know how damaged you think I am.”
His hands twitch by his sides, and I watch him tuck them into his pockets, restraining himself from reaching for me.
“Fine.” He steps closer now, fully closing the distance between us without even touching me.
“What’s wrong with you…isn’t all the scars this world has given you in the last nineteen years of your life.
It’s not anything you think you’ve done wrong along the way.
It’s not the way you chose to heal. It’s not the baggage you think you carry for everyone to see.
It’s not even that you think you’ll hurt me, because let’s face it, I can handle it…
I’m telling you I can handle it. It’s the fear.
It’s that you’re scared of anything good happening in your life.
You’re scared to be loved…because love has always come with a price tag, betrayal, and uncertainty.
You’ve been hurt so badly, so deep down to your bones, that your brain has created walls around your heart; not just to keep others from getting close to you, but to keep yourself from ever needing someone, from wanting someone in a way that gives them the power to hurt you again.
And now, when something good shows up, you call it a trick, you call yourself bad first, so no one else gets to. ”
Something breaks in my chest.
He searches my face like he wants to make sure I hear every word he’s saying.
“You see yourself as ‘too much,’ or ‘not enough,’ or as this mess of scars and pain that you believe somehow makes you unlovable…but all I see is someone who survived hell and still fights to find her light every day. That fear you have, that feeling you carry like a weight, like a weapon to protect yourself, that’s just proof of your strength.
That’s proof that you’re still trying, that you still care to be here, even when every demon you’ve ever fought is still screaming at you to give up. ”