Chapter 36
thirty-six
JOHANNA
It’s Wednesday .
But not just any Wednesday .
May 17 is a day that will forever be ingrained in my brain. A day that started so perfectly but ended as the catalyst for all future years. It’s not to blame for how everything turned out, it’s just another devastating day in a timeline of events out of my control.
The evening before is a memory I replay often. It kept me warm when the chill of depression and anxiety tried to suffocate me, reminding me I don’t have a bad life.
My journey with anxiety and depression didn’t start on this day six years ago, but it took me some time to come to that realization.
I’ve been on this journey since the summer we lost Mom .
No one is ever prepared to lose a loved one, so when my kind, beautiful mother slipped away in the middle of the night from an undetected brain aneurysm, it was earth-shattering.
What few people know, and something to this day I still struggle to comprehend, is that I was the one to find her.
Dad left for work early, well before any of us had woken up, making the most of lazy Sundays in bed until we had to go back to school. Harriet and I woke up, watched TV , and didn’t really question why Mom hadn’t come down yet, and presumed she wanted to sleep in.
It’s very difficult to describe the emotions of that day and those that followed. Numb and excruciating are probably the most accurate.
Despite my dad pleading with me to see a therapist, I refused. It felt like a way of keeping alive that traumatic memory, being forced to talk about her and that morning with a stranger.
And that’s basically how my journey with denial grew, slowly branching off into depression and the root cause for my Generalized Anxiety Disorder .
I experienced bouts of low moods throughout my teens and early twenties, but I brushed it under the rug and hid it well. Being an adult is hard, tiring, and demanding, so nobody questioned if I wanted to stay in bed for days on end or lost interest in things.
Life was busy.
But it was on this day six years ago that everything I’d spent years hiding—the grief, anger, and anxiousness—refused to stay hidden any longer. And like a dormant volcano, it blew up in my face. I was no longer able to put on a mask and show the world I was okay.
Because this day six years ago, despite how joyous it started, ended in misery.
Patrick and I had spent our first night together, crossed that line between friends and more.
The night before, Patrick and I were closing the restaurant together. It was like any other shift, easy and full of laughter. We worked together like a well-oiled machine, teasing and joking with one another. But in those last few months before I left, the air had been shifting between us. I lived with my dad at the time and Patrick had a small apartment a few blocks away from the restaurant. After we closed, we weren’t ready for the night to end. I think we were full of energy from a busy shift and sleep wasn’t going to find us anytime soon.
We headed to Patrick’s for a nightcap, which turned into half a bottle of whiskey—which led to more, so much more. The more I had wanted for so long. That night confirmed that we’d held the same quiet longing for one another for years, both too afraid to make a move.
It felt like we went from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye. Like the moment his lips touched mine, a switch was flipped. I’d been looking at him with tinted glasses all my life and when we finally stopped fighting it, I saw him in a kaleidoscope of colors.
It wasn’t love at first sight, because I had loved him my whole life. It just shifted to something I hadn’t realized was possible.
We made plans to go on our first date later that week, though when I look back, it’s funny to think what difference a date would have been compared to all the other outings we had been on together.
We never did get to go on that first date.
The restaurant was closed the following day for some scheduled maintenance. Patrick left me in his bed to head over there and meet his dad. I showered and locked up with the spare key I had to his apartment, but the moment I turned the key in the door, my phone rang. And I just knew. I knew something was wrong. I can’t explain it, but I did.
I’ll always remember that phone call. The sheer panic and distress I heard over the line. How he couldn’t get his words out to tell me what was going on. My heart broke at the sound of tears in his voice, begging me to come to the restaurant.
It’s bad, Jo . It’s so bad.
Ted’s death, much like my mom’s, was without warning and cruel. He was refitting some light fixtures and on top of a ten-foot ladder when he fell.
He never felt a thing, and we had to take comfort in that knowledge.
Only I couldn’t. Because another person I loved had been torn from my life.
When I reached the restaurant, medics and police were already there. It wasn’t chaos like I expected. It was eerily calm. The air was heavy with misery and grief. When I saw Patrick sitting on the curb, eyes bloodshot, skin blotchy, and pale, I threw myself into his arms. The devastated look on his face was one I knew all too well. I held him as he sobbed and sobbed in my arms, clutching my T -shirt like he was petrified I would slip away too.
He was living my worst nightmare, while I relived it.
I didn’t cry. Not until I got home that evening. At first, I thought I was desensitized to it all, but the second I shut my bedroom door behind me, the blocker my mind put up fell away. Crumbling and bringing me down with it.
I crashed. Flashbacks of my mom’s death hit me with the force of a freight train.
And I had my first panic attack in four years.
My brain switched off after that, giving me just enough energy to carry out basic tasks, like eating and sleeping. We kept the restaurant closed while we all mourned. I went to see Patrick a couple of times, going with my dad to be there for the Sadler family, helping them grieve.
I was there, but I wasn’t present.
It was after my eleventh panic attack in eight days that my dad met the end of the line, the one I’d been dangerously tightrope walking across for so long.
“ Do I need to call an ambulance?” Dad says from beside me on the sofa, his hand rubbing in wide circles across my back.
“ It’s over. I’m fine,” I rasp out.
But I know I’m not . I just want this to stop. The constant panic. Feeling like an alien in my own skin. Every day clouded by crippling fear, with no forecast for hope.
I’m reminded constantly that every day is numbered with the people I love and there isn’t anything I can do about it.
Today’s funeral confirmed that desolate fact.
Harriet passes me a glass of water, her face etched with worry, and when I turn to my dad, his worry mirrors hers.
The black dress that’s been choking me all day is now covered in sweat.
“ I - I’m fine, Dad ,” I say, but my voice shakes so badly, the words barely make it past my lips.
“ Johanna , I’m worried about you. Have you spoken to a doctor?”
“ I don’t need a doctor. It’s just grief.”
“ I don’t think this is grief. You haven’t had panic attacks like this in years, not since your mo ? —”
“ No , Dad , please. I can’t think about Mom now.” I’m shouting now, fresh tears cling to my lashes as the tremors start in my hands again. “ Everywhere I look, there they are. Mom . And now Ted . They’re here, but they’re not.”
Harriet takes my clammy hands in hers, the cool feel of her skin pulling me from the after-fog that usually hangs around after I hyperventilate. “ Dad’s right, Jo . I think you need to speak to someone. You’re trying to do too much. No one would judge you if you took the next couple weeks off work.”
Next week the restaurant reopens for the first time since Ted’s death.
“ I need to be there for Patrick …h-he needs me. I can’t leave him right now.” As the words leave my mouth, my voice cracks and I break down into a fit of sobs.
“ Patrick will understand, Jo .” My dad tries to soothe me.
“ I have to be there for him,” I whisper. Someone helps me lie down on the sofa and places a pillow under my head. “ Like he was there for m-me. ”
“ I can’t watch you fall apart like this, Jo . You’re losing weight, barely sleeping, I … I don’t recognize you. We all grieve differently, but I’m worried something more is going on here. Something I can’t stop or help with. Go with Harriet tonight, take some time away from town, from work. It will be here when you get back.”
“ Y -you want me to leave?” I whisper.
“ I want you to put yourself first.”
From the torn and distressed look on my dad’s face, I know I’m fighting a losing battle, and it’s time to hang up my cracked armor. This is like after Mom , only worse.
I’m losing myself in this town, the memories of people I love suffocating me.
So I stop fighting and leave with Harriet that evening.
Only when I get to Tennessee , somehow things escalate. Weeks turn into months. I ignore Patrick’s calls and texts, so ashamed with how I abandoned him, but also, not wanting to give him an excuse to see me this way. Every day is a struggle. I beg my sister and dad not to tell anyone what’s going on, just that I’m safe and need some space.
I wanted to stay but needed to leave.
And I’m not sure he will ever forgive me.
The rest is history.
Only we got our timelines and stories a little wrong. Patrick didn’t stop waiting for me, he came to find me. I didn’t leave him behind to start a new life, I was trying to find myself. We’ve been through so much, together and apart, and we’re stronger for it.
What I accepted as the end of our story, now feels like the end of part one.
Yesterday , I spent my second-to-last session with Amanda preparing myself for what I knew I had to do. I know he’s looking for answers, and something deep within me feels like today, of all days, is when he needs them the most.
I don’t fear the loss of my loved ones like I once did.
I fear the loss of never feeling love .
I came back to Sutton Bay worried there wasn’t much left for me here, but deep down, something other than my dad and the restaurant lead me home.
Patrick Sadler was that beacon guiding me home. My lighthouse in a stormy bay.
On a day I usually hide away from the world, I seek out the person I know needs comfort. A person who always puts others’ needs above his own.
And hopefully this is where part two begins.