Letters From an Obsessed Stalker

1. Julia

Julia

The worst part about losing your mind slowly is how nobody notices until you stop pretending to smile.

And I have always been so fucking good at pretending to smile when all I really wanted to do was scream.

Good enough that Tessa keeps scrolling through the pictures she took of us this weekend, laughing at the ones where we had facial masks on, looking like melted versions of Jason Voorhees.

She nudges my shoulder for the umpteenth time, the irritation in me boiling over but I keep smiling.

She’s pushing her phone in my face, a picture of me on her screen where my hair looks like I lost a fight with a chicken. Only I was the one left plucked.

The woman across the aisle glances at me once, then at Tessa, frowning at her for loud laughs and squeals. I give her a small apologetic smile, and she goes back to picking at the corner of a paperback with a half-naked cowboy on the cover.

I move a little to the right, trying to save my shoulder from bruising at Tessa’s insistent nudging, but she follows me like a magnet.

My irritation spikes when the sound of a person chewing gum loudly behind me starts grating on my ears.

All of a sudden, my senses become overwhelmed.

The scent of wet coats and stale coffee that spread through the bus, the rain dragging itself down the windows in crooked lines, the occasional smear of headlights moving from the opposite direction.

My knees are angled toward Tessa’s, hand wrapped around a paper cup that turned into ice coffee somewhere between the last gas station and a souvenir shop everyone nagged the bus driver to stop at.

She’s still flipping through the pics, tucking one leg under herself, even though the seat is too narrow.

I just know she’s going to complain about her leg going numb in approximately ten minutes but I say nothing.

It’s a thing she always does. Makes herself as uncomfortable as possible but then acts personally offended by her own body for objecting.

“This one is the birthday post. 10/10,” she says, turning her screen toward me.

I look at the picture. I knew refusing would make it a thing, but I really don’t like my pictures being put online. Hell, I don’t even like people taking pictures of me.

It was me, standing in front of a dusty shop window, in my oversized sweatpants and matching shirt, looking bigger than I do in real life.

Or that’s at least what I kept telling myself to feel better about the few excess pounds I accumulated eating Nutella straight out of the jar.

With a big spoon. Like it was ice cream.

My hair was loose from the clip that was probably hanging to the back of my head for dear life, and my hands were wrapped around a cider cup, obviously for emotional support.

“No,” I say.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“You look cute.”

“I look like I just escaped from a mental institution because they decided to put me on a weight loss program as well.”

Tessa snorts. “Exactly. Relatable content.”

“Tessa…”

“Julia.”

“Please don’t make me block you.”

“You still haven’t blocked that former colleague who keeps commenting ‘so pretty’ on your plants.”

“She’s nice.” I shrug.

“Bitch, your plants are dead.”

“My house is their final resting place. It’s nice.”

“It’s torture, but whatever.”

I smile, turning my head toward the window. For one stupid second it feels real. Honest.

But that’s the thing that always gets me.

Not the bad moments, those are always there and I know what to do with them.

That’s functional depression for you. You know how to brace, how to keep your voice even while something inside you is quietly bleeding all over the carpet.

You learn how to go through the motions of appearing as a functional human being.

It’s the good moments that catch me off guard.

The weekend we just spent together that was actually nice.

Tessa’s laugh and how easy and familiar our friendship is.

The owner’s dog I spent a concerning amount of time petting, and talking to like it understood every word beside “chimken” and “cookie”.

All these dangerous little illusions that I allow myself to think that maybe, just maybe… I’m not that broken after all.

But then my ears skip from that annoying sound of someone chewing gum like a starved cow, and zone in on the music coming from the front of the bus.

“In the air tonight” by Phil Collins.

The first note slips through and my body knows before my mind catches on.

It’s never dramatic. That’s the worst part. The world doesn’t tilt, the sky doesn’t split open. Nobody looks up to realise that the air has changed. That something invisible is reaching from the radio and wrapping its fingers around my throat.

To everyone, it’s just a song. They are still doing exactly what they were doing up until this exact moment. Reading books, talking, sleeping, chewing… To them it’s just a song.

To me? The haunting guitar wail is an all too familiar ache.

Three seconds or maybe more. That’s how much I have before the cup in my hand feels too thin, too fragile, like losing my footing.

No.

The second note follows.

No, no, no.

My lungs go still. Not yet tight, just still, as if breathing will somehow make everything worse.

Please, no.

The song fills the narrow space between the seats, Phil’s voice gentle and cruel all at once, and I’m suddenly eight years old in the back of my father’s car, staring at him as he turns up the volume and sings off key, never once looking in the rearview mirror.

I’m twelve, standing in the dining room at two in the morning, my mother hiding in the adjacent pantry, going through his phone and muttering like a crazy person about the woman he’s been seeing, but he deleted the texts to hide the proof.

I’m nineteen and curled on my bedroom floor, locked in a fetal position as if that will protect me from going insane, my Nanna begging me to get up.

I’m twenty-three and already tired in a way nobody that young should be tired.

I am thirty, phone pressed to my ear, eyes fixated on my work screen, listening to a woman’s voice say “missing” like it’s a word that makes sense when attached to a man who has already been physically gone from my life for years at that point.

“Jules?”

Tessa’s voice comes from somewhere beside me, sounding like an echo through the beats of the song.

I try to answer. I know because I can feel my mouth moving but nothing comes out.

The song builds up to the sound of drums that sound like cracking thunder.

My father loved this part. He used to hit his hand against the steering wheel, perfectly matching the beat, singing along and shaping his own words, his face looking happier and softer than it ever was when he would look at me.

It was in those moments that he looked almost human.

Almost happy to be a part of our family.

And that is the part that cuts the deepest. Not that he was cold or detached. Not that leaving was so easy for him. Not that he spent years choosing other women and their children over his wife, over his own daughter.

It was that in those moments I wanted him anyway. That in those moments I let myself believe that I had a father.

The coffee cup slips from my hand, or it feels like it does before Tessa’s fingers wrapping around my wrist.

“Hey. Look at me.”

I can’t. I can’t see from the tears that seem to burst all at once. If I look at her they will spill over and I don’t… I can’t….

If I do that, then I have to be here. And if I’m here, then it’s really my birthday and I’m stuck on the bus, listening to my dead father’s favorite song, exactly 3 years and three hundred and fifty days after the police asked me for a DNA sample because his body had been out there too long for a face to mean anything.

My chest locks. The first breath doesn’t come. Neither does the second.

I can feel my face distort before a sound claws up my throat, raw and desperate, and I bite the pad of my thumb before it can break loose.

My teeth catch the side of my hand, hard enough to make my tears spill over.

I bite harder, pain blooming bright and immediate, and I hold on to it.

It makes more sense when I can feel it, when the pain has a location.

“Shit.” Tessa whispers and moves closer. “Okay. Okay, I’ve got you.”

She moves fast, shifting in front of me, positioning herself so that her body shields me from everyone’s curious eyes, angling her body between mine and the aisle. This is not the first time she’s seen me like this, she knows better than to hug me at this moment. Not this time. Not like this.

The woman with the cowboy book looks over. The loud chewing quiets.

“Don’t stare.” I hear Tessa snap.

Not loudly, she knows not to draw more attention than necessary, but with enough venom that the air around us tightens in time with my lungs.

“Go back to reading your book.”

I can’t fucking breathe.

I should be embarrassed. I am fucking embarrassed.

It flares humiliatingly and insistently underneath the panic, but I can’t do anything about it because my lungs are fighting every desperate breath I try to take.

Tiny scraps of air drag in through my nose but go nowhere.

My heart beats too fast, my body is shaking and my skin is damp from holding in the screams.

The song is equally relentless as my panic attack. He sang this part badly too. Alive.

I bite down harder attempting to still the panic with pain, something solid, something I can focus on, something... tangible.

Tessa’s hand lands on my knee, pressing against it as if grounding me. I lean towards her, my forehead hits her back and I fold because there is nowhere else to go. Her sweater smells of sleep and her favorite fabric softener, and that nearly destroys me.

Her head turns to the side, towards me. “Breathe with me.”

I shake my head against her back.

“Don’t argue with me right now, Julia. I swear to fucking Christ.” She hisses but not in anger. Never in anger.

A broken, choking sound slips out of me, almost a laugh, almost a sob, ruined before it becomes either.

I can feel her upper body shift, she’s turning more to me now.

“In,” even her voice sounds less distant. She’s breathing loud enough for me to hear her. “Come on, just follow my lead. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

I try, I honestly do, but I can’t do it at all.

The bus is too small, the windows too dark, and the music feels like it's burning through my veins and sinking into my bones - spreading like poison, like the kind found in the depths of Hell where you put memories that you can't deal with now but know you have to, the ones like the single sock found in the depths of a drawer, long forgotten... until it's not.

I try to pull air but it just digs the invisible knife in my lungs further in.

I try again and my father’s voice sounds louder.

Try again and I’m back in that span of fifteen days, working with my phone beside the keyboard, answering emails and managing phone calls with clients, all the while imagining every ditch, every road, every possible location he could be.

Fifteen days of people calling me, leaving clues.

Fifteen days of being practical and on top of things because someone had to be.

Then the police. The DNA sample. The flower arrangements. The funeral home asking questions about what kind of music he would want, what suit he should wear, what words belonged to a man who spent the last decade pretending I never existed.

My teeth finally break through skin and Tessa zones in immediately.

“Baby, no.” She whispered like she’s soothing a wild mare. “Let go. We’re not doing that.”

I don’t. Not right away because if I open my mouth, the sound inside me will burst out and I won’t be able to take it back.

The bus slows, voices blur and I can hear Tessa talking to someone, maybe the driver. Her voice is sharp and determined, her one hand still holding onto me as if it’s the only thing keeping me from falling apart just on sheer force of will.

I catch fragments of what she’s saying. Pull over. Now, please. She can’t breathe. She needs air. Then the rain suddenly sounds louder against the metal and the music stops. Doors open with a muffled hiss and cold night air rushes inside.

It should help. It doesn’t. Because my body is still back there, trapped in the note, still standing between the grave and a birthday cake that never had a chance.

“Come on,” Tessa says. “Up, I’ve got you.”

My body moves on autopilot because I don’t remember standing.

I remember her hand under my elbow and her leading me down the aisle towards the exit.

I remember my knees nearly giving out because the distance felt impossibly long.

And all that time I kept my eyes glued to the floor because if I looked at anyone’s face, I knew I would see pity.

And pity was the last thing I wanted to see right now.

Once we were finally outside, in the rain, Tessa guided me to the side of the gas station, away from prying eyes.

I lean against the cold concrete wall, then bend forward with my hands on my knees.

I drag air into my lungs like I have been buried underground and somehow the comparison feels like a perfect pun.

Tessa stands in front of me, one hand rubbing circles on my back, the other holding the coat around me even though I know she must be freezing.

“I’m sorry.” I manage.

“Don’t.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“I made everyone stop.”

“Nooo,” she drags it out. “That would be me. You had a panic attack.”

“On a bus.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve always been a little bit extra.”

A laugh comes out of me, thin and painful and I finally straighten to my almost full height, my shoulders still slouching.

“There she is,” Tessa murmurs, but her voice shakes on the last word.

Her eyes are wet and that is somehow worse than everything else.

“Tess.”

“Nope.” She wipes it off with her fingers, annoyed at herself. “I’m allowed one tear. Maybe two. You scared the shit out of me.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“I know you didn’t. That’s not the point.”

I shiver a little because my hand throbs where I bit it. I look down, the skin is already swollen into a crescent mark that looks as painful as it feels.

Tessa follows my gaze and takes my wrist before I have the chance to hide it.

“Jesus, Jules.”

“It’s fine.”

“How is this fine?”

“It didn’t bleed.”

“Oh, when you put it like that…” she plays it casually but then her voice hardens. “That is not the bar.”

I pull my hand back gently. Not because she’s not right but because her tenderness keeps trying to find places to land and I have nowhere to put it.

I avoid her stare, focusing on the bus waiting near the curb, hazard lights blinking yellow through the rain.

“I need you to go back,” she says.

I don’t look at her but I know what she means.

Therapy.