Chapter 59 The Cat Is So Done With Everything
The Cat Is So Done With Everything
DELILAH
Every day, it gets a little harder to keep up the facade.
There’s this incremental constriction of the space between my own thoughts, as though the walls of the house and the problems in the community are closing in one by one.
I do my ordinary routines—working, answering emails, adjusting things to prepare for the new stuff—with the robotic precision of someone on the verge of forgetting why it matters.
It helps to make lists, to check off the little boxes of duty and affection, but beneath the surface, the baseline hum of anxiety, fear, responsibility, and the ache of persistent uncertainty keeps growing louder.
I get up in the morning and the walls shrink more every single hour.
These fucking people are killing my joy slowly.
I love my family, and I love my job—which I repeat to myself like a mantra.
Those are my anchors, the thick twined ropes that keep me moored against the constant undertow.
I hang onto that knowledge when everything else feels like it’s going to pull me under.
The lies I tell myself are that if I say these things enough, they will grow layers of defense against the rot.
It always starts with little things like passive-aggressive comments, petty arguments, and memories of former failures that replay with mortifying edits.
Survival is an accomplishment, and I know that keeping my family afloat and my professional reputation intact is important. But there are troubles at home and community issues, and it just goes on and on, like a tap leaking into a bottomless sink.
It’s making it harder and harder to put on the smiley face everyone wants from me.
The community, for all its promises, is a roiling mess of old wounds and new hostilities.
There’s always a cause that needs urgent attention, and always a dozen voices in the room who want to tell me how I’m failing it.
Some days, I barely scrape together the energy to fight back or argue my case with dignity.
More often, I just nod, swallowing my actual opinions until they gag me on the way down.
It’s not the leader I want to be, nor a good one, but it feels like I have no options sometimes.
To their credit, Talia and Taurus have been attempting to gather allies.
Taurus has wormed his way in with Tamara and Michaela almost overnight.
He spends hours with them doing things I never quite understand—listening to their shit, looking at dumb cars, or whatever else they’re fixated on.
He’s started calling Michaela his ‘little sis’ in a way that makes my heart trip with both pride and a pang of jealousy.
I’ve watched her cozy up to people before, and I just don’t trust it.
Talia has been socializing with lots of people, even though she claims the effort leaves her feeling like she’s been submerged in cold water for hours.
She’ll come home and collapse on the couch, arms flung over her face, and groan about the performative garbage of community events.
But then, a few days later, I’ll catch her texting someone or begrudgingly heading for a meet-up.
She tells me that she hates every minute of forced interaction, but it’s worth it to make sure the people she loves are happy.
I get the sense that neither of them will ever fully understand the panic I feel when I see them going to do one of those things, or the deep primal fear that some unseeable calamity will take them from me.
Sari fucked me up when it comes to being okay with my loved ones hanging out with anyone here, and I know it.
I’ve been doing what I can, despite the occasional bullshit from Sari.
She finds something to nitpick in every action I take, and she’s always around to make me a convenient scapegoat for the collective failures of our efforts.
I play nice, but every interaction with her costs me dearly.
I don’t have to deal with Wilde because he’s been after Rafe and Talia in small, aggravating ways.
Luckily, neither of them is even remotely interested, so I can stew in my fury, but I don’t get worried about it.
Honestly, ignoring him is the easiest part of this shit at the moment.
The people who beat me to death in the meeting make for an especially thorny challenge.
I see them around, and they always give me a smile that doesn’t reach their eyes.
I know I should confront them, but the truth is I’m afraid of what might come pouring out.
So I take the high road and let the insults accumulate in my chest like sediment.
There are days when the weight of it makes my hands shake, and I have to hide in my closet for a while, breathing through my nose until the feeling passes.
Those little indignities add up, and my family sees it, and I know it angers them, but we keep pretending it’s fine.
Rafe is painting more, and Taurus throws himself into his work.
Still, I find myself lying awake at night, replaying every minor confrontation, every slight, every failure to stand up for myself.
I’m ashamed, but it’s the only way I know to smooth this shit out.
There are minor victories, but they are hard-won and fleeting.
When I see Taurus and Michaela crouched in the backyard, whispering over some secret project, or when I catch Talia’s loud, unrestrained laugh at one of Preston’s ridiculous jokes, I allow myself to hope that it’s all worth it.
But even in the good times, there’s a hollow in my stomach that won’t go away.
It’s exhausting; everything is exhausting.
It’s like every aspect of reality is a fresh layer of sticky black goo poured over it.
The world is not so much heavy as it is viscous.
I’m often trapped in this syrup of effort, every motion a struggle against the drag.
There are mornings when I register consciousness with a full-body flinch.
I lie still, blinking at the threadbare ceiling, and try to reconstruct an argument for standing up.
The best I ever come up with is ‘because if I don’t, who else will?’ Lily sure as fuck isn’t helping in the slightest, nor is Dona.
I’m so very worn. The exhaustion is a living thing, a constant weight perched on my chest. Sometimes I fool myself into thinking I’m functioning, but most times it’s awake, reminding me that no matter what solution I cobble together, it will never be enough.
For every leak I patch, three more cracks spider out underneath.
What I wouldn’t give to simply hand this life over to someone else for a day, to slip out of my own body and let the decisions, the consequences, the marathon of care and obligation become someone else’s fever dream.
But I don’t have that luxury.
I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this and not burn out.
I say that sometimes, jokingly, but the truth is, I’m serious as fuck.
I don’t sleep well; dreams are less a sanctuary than a bloodbath of failure.
Waking up tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, my heart racing, unable to remember if the disaster was real or imagined has become commonplace.
My job is the one thing helping me stay almost sane, but tiredness is even making that difficult.
I sigh when my phone rings, and the sound is so sharp that it jolts me into an upright posture.
For a split second, I imagine just ignoring it, watching it vibrate itself to oblivion.
Hearing it makes me want to crawl into my closet and pray for a bloody stroke.
But I don’t, because I am Deli, the one person in the Rift who doesn’t get time to heal.
Something has to give, or I’m going to lose my fucking mind.
Already defeated, I dig the phone out of the cushions.
The caller ID is a small, sanctimonious icon denoting that this is Constantine.
The sight of his name triggers a whole skein of responses—dread, guilt, frustration, and exhaustion.
I haven’t heard from him in weeks, maybe longer than that, and I’d talked myself into believing he’d moved on.
Maybe he had, but I feel that I’m about to be proven wrong.
Constantine has always been the kind of problem that doesn’t go away when you ignore it.
He’s not a saboteur or a gossip, just one of those people who can’t let go.
He’ll circle back, suddenly bleeding from a fucking paper cut that he wants you to look at.
It’s never important, and to say he doesn’t take rejection well would be an understatement.
I’d secretly hoped that, like Shea, he’d figured out that we’re not happening anymore.
That way, I wouldn’t need to have yet another heart-wrenching discussion I do not have the spoons for at this moment.
It’s not that I’m a coward—well, maybe I am.
It’s simply hard to see yet another person hurt by my choices.
I’d rather take a punch than have to watch a person’s face crumple in real time.
If I could space out the traumas, give myself time to recover before the next disaster hits, I could handle it correctly.
But the universe has never once in its history given me time to recover.
My traumas stack like books on a shelf that is slowly bending under their collective weight.
Every fresh crisis shoves the previous one further back, but the shelf gets no lighter.
I know that, and yet every time I face another call, another confrontation, I try to persuade myself that this one will be different.
Maybe this one will be simple. Maybe this one will not leave a bruise.
Honestly, I’m in no shape to handle something like this.
I’m emotionally overloaded, and I don’t make good decisions when I’m like this.
When I try to power through, I end up making everything worse.
Words come out wrong, or I misread the cues, or I say something that can’t be unsaid.
I have a whole vault in my mind filled with these moments, each one catalogued in excruciating detail.
Yet, I know I can’t ignore this in the current climate.
The last time I talked to this droid, he spent an hour explaining how my new boundaries are hurting everyone, but he did it in that way that made it clear that I was the culprit.
He didn’t want me to solve anything; he wanted to guilt me.
And I just sat there, listening, even though I wanted to tell him I wasn’t coerced into anything.
I chose what I wanted, and despite what everyone thinks, no one is pushing my buttons in my family.
But I just nodded, absorbing his anger like a punch to the solar plexus, and when it was over, I went home and sat in the dark for three hours.
Crying isn’t always possible now, so I have to let my body go limp and my mind races with the problems. It’s painful, but that’s what my reality is right now, and I don’t have a choice in this, unlike what I previously mentioned.
That’s why his name lighting up my phone made me feel the familiar cocktail of dread and duty mixing in my gut.
I’m too tired for this, but if I put it off, it will only get worse.
Amanda was making noise earlier today, and if I shove him off, she’ll point it out at the next meeting.
He doesn’t care about my exhaustion; he cares about my attention.
If I deny him that, it will come back around in some other, more toxic form.
I just have to see him and get it over with.
Maybe then I won’t be accused of terrible things. Or at least, I’ll be able to control the narrative, to tell my side before it spirals out of my grasp. Then I can rest for a while.
I stare at the phone; the screen pulsing with his name, and imagine the conversation.
Constantine, his voice rising as he works himself into a lather, taking every interruption as a personal slight.
I’ll have to be soothing, then firm, then conciliatory, and all the while I’ll be waiting for when he turns, when his face tightens and he lists my crimes.
I’m so tired of being everyone’s villain.
The phone rings until the last possible moment, then jumps to voicemail.
I know I have to call him back; if I wait, it will look bad.
So I stand up and pace the narrow living room, phone in my hand.
I dial Constantine’s number and wait with the phone pressed to my ear, heart thumping out a staccato rhythm. He picks up on the first ring.
“Twinkles,” he says, and the way he says my nickname is grating as fuck.
“I need to see you. It’s urgent. Can you come over?”
I want to say no, but the word won’t form. I nod reflexively, then remember he can’t see me. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” I say, and even my voice sounds tired.
He hangs up without a goodbye.
I stand there for a moment, phone still in hand, and try to summon the will to move. My mind is already running through the likely scenarios: confrontation, accusations, maybe even tears. There will be no catharsis, just an extra layer of emotional sediment for me to carry around.
I wish I could get away, but that’s not in the cards.
Time to face the music yet again, and I hope I don’t do anything stupid I have to fix later.