CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD
· · ·
The year goes by like that.
Time passing.
Me drifting farther and farther from the edges of myself.
Senior year is coming.
I have to think about college.
I have to get myself together enough to make a decision, fill out forms, perform the version of Rowan Hayes who has a future and knows what to do with it.
I can do that.
I’m good at performing.
I learned from the best.
· · ·
I want to go far.
That’s the only requirement I have.
Far enough that the distance does something the medication can’t.
Far enough that the fact of him — just next door, just out of reach, close enough that I could just touch him —
stops being a thing I have to manage every single day.
I could go anywhere, realistically.
The grades are there.
The SAT tutor my parents hired was embarrassingly good.
I have options.
The whole point is to have options.
I tell myself that’s what I want.
· · ·
Because this house is suffocating me.
Every corner of it.
Every room.
I can’t look anywhere without a memory attached to it like a bruise I keep pressing.
The pool. The kitchen floor. The couch. My window.
Nine years of him, built into the walls of a place I used to love.
And I hate that he’s ruined it for me.
My one safe place.
· · ·
And I still have the window open.
I know.
I’m aware of how that sounds.
Some part of me — the stupid part — still believes he loves me.
Even now.
Even after the curtain and the blocked number and the year of silence.
I hate that part of me.
I’ve tried reasoning with it. Arguing with it.
Medicating it into quiet.
It doesn’t care.
It just sits there in the back of my chest, keeping the window open, waiting.
I wish I could be someone different.
Someone who can just breathe without all this pain.
· · ·
The memories are the worst of it.
Not the bad ones — those I can almost manage.
It’s the good ones that wreck me.
The roof. The stars. His hand finding mine in the dark like it had always lived there.
The way he laughed when I said something stupid.
Those fucking blue eyes.
· · ·
I want to reach inside myself and pull every piece of him out.
Every memory, every feeling, every place he carved his name into me.
But if I did that, I don’t know what would be left.
That’s the thing I can’t figure out.
I don’t know who I am without him.
I let him hold so much of me for so long that I don’t know what’s mine anymore.
I don’t think there’s anything left over.
Maybe that’s the real problem.
Maybe college fixes that too.
· · ·
I don’t stop the pills.
I should say that plainly.
I don’t stop.
I start buying extra from someone at school so the prescription doesn’t run out before it’s supposed to, so my parents don’t notice the math not adding up.
I tell myself it’s fine.
I tell myself I’m just taking the edge off.
I tell myself I’ll stop when things get better.
Things will get better.
I’ll be back to normal.
I’ll smile again hopefully sometime soon before I forget how to.
· · ·
I’m here trying because I love my parents so much it makes me ache.
The way they keep showing up. Keep leaving extra food on the counter, keep suggesting movies, keep not pushing — giving me space and presence at the same time like they’ve always known exactly how much of each I need.
I wish I could give them their son back.
The one who was full of things. Who didn’t have to work this hard just to be in a room.
I’m trying.
I want them to know I’m trying.
· · ·
I thought this was the worst of it.
I remember thinking that clearly — somewhere in the grey middle of that year, lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling.
It can’t get worse than this.
I’ve hit the bottom.
The only way is through.
· · ·
I was wrong.
The worst was still coming.
And I was already so cracked by the time it arrived —
I didn’t see how it would take the little I had left.