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Our house.
Home.
Her voice breaks on her last word,home,but selfishly, all I can focus on is my own panic, my own heart breaking more and more with each of its thunderingboomsthat pulse through my body.
This has… not been my year.
And I can’t decide which is more infuriating. The thought that I left my hardest days behind only to find myself thrown back into the depths of their murky waters again, or the fact that I’ve allowed the weight of it all to pull me deeper into the dark clutches of its bottomless well more than ever before.
I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Where to pinpoint the moment I messed things up entirely. Was it when I made the terrible decision to reconnect with my mother when she reached out? Was it the futile hope I grasped onto, only to have it yanked out of my hands and shattered at my feet? Was it when my anti-anxiety meds ran out and I thought I could handle a few days off—that then turned into weeks that turned into months? Was it when I started drinking more than usual to help numb my feelings and the constant noise going on inside my head?
I don’t know.
I don’t know; I don’t know; I don’t know.
My mother was a lot worse off than when I had last spoken to her two and a half years prior. And while things seemed okay at first—hopeful, even—the tides quickly changed. I realized I didn’t know her anymore; I didn’t even recognize her anymore. When I didn’t reach out as much as shewould have liked me to, she lashed out, and when I defended my reasons for being hesitant and slow to reconnect, she flipped.
She called me every name in the book, and she said the most hurtful things she could possibly think to say, and then she still expected an apology from me,in the end.
I tried to do the right thing. I tried to give her a chance to make things right. But I wish I never had. For my sanity, and my future happiness, us being in each other’s lives just isn’t an option anymore. And I think that sometimes, saying goodbye to someone in your life who is living and breathing andstill here,feels like a death all of its own. Something to be worked through, and recover from,and that is okay.
But what is not okay is the way I’ve allowed myself to sink so low because of it.
Not taking my meds. Drinking too much. Falling behind in my courses and barely passing. Pulling away and distancing myself from… everyone.
In a matter of months, I’ve lost sight of everything. Myself, mostly.
Is that why Addy is leaving?
Good.
She probably should.
I’m—
I’m tired. And I’m lost. And every time I manage to pick myself up, I’m kicked down again. Every time I find it in me to take one step forward, I’m pushed back three. With every sunrise that feels hopeful comes a sunset that feels unbearable, and some days I want to let myself drown beneath the weight of the mistakes I keep making but most days it feels like I already have.
Quinn wouldn’t want this for me.
The knowledge should be motivating, but it only makes me feel worse. And lately, it plays on repeat in my mind. In his voice, in Addy’s, and in Jude’s, too.
I wish I could say things changed for the better in that regard this year, but they haven’t.
I mean, we are still together. But I keep messing things up left and right. And it feels far worse than when things were good with us, but diluted, or subdued, or on pause for months at a time. It’s why I have always been afraid to hold any hope for us in the first place. But in the end, I was too afraid to let him go. Afraid to lose the peace, solitude, happiness, friendship, and love we found in each other.
I feel like I’ve wrecked that now, too.
I don’t know where to pick the pieces back up and start putting them together again.
I’m not sure he would want to anymore, and I wouldn’t even blame him.
Addy takes both of my arms and pulls them into hers, cradling them, hugging them against her chest. But it feels morelike I’m being boxed in, trapped, and slowly suffocated. “I’m transferring to OSU for the fall semester,” she says, “and… to finish out my degree. I’m so sorry, Dec. I should have told you sooner—theminuteI started seriously considering it, really. But I wasn’t even sure it would work out, and in the end, well… I didn’t want to upset you if I didn’t need to. But I just got the approval this morning and, so, yeah…”
The earth quickens beneath my feet, spinning faster, flipping itself on its head, until I’m not sure what is up and what is down. I feel nauseous. I want to throw up.
“You what?” I ask, and I don’t know when I started crying, but there are two rivers of tears running down my cheeks. “We were supposed to do this together.”
The light in her gaze dims.