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When I got back to my temporary home, Chris texted me, offering to bring me dinner that night, but I told him there was no need to. In his next message, he asked me if I was mad at him, and I told him I wasn’t. That was the truth, but at the same time, we had seemingly drifted so far from reality that it didn’t feel true anymore. And that was my fault. I was dissociating on some level. I was pulling away from the plane of existence and trying to take him with me. The abduction wasn’t intentional on either of our part. Chris had tethered himself to me without realizing how dangerous it was for him to do so. And I had never told him how dangerous that was.
I needed to tell him, though. There seemed to be some sort of moral imperative to tell him that I was destruction otherwise unspecified. But the words didn’t come to me. There was no space in my mouth or on my tongue for that declaration. Something else was sitting there, something painfully honest, that I needed to say first.
I texted him, I still want to see you, though.
I cursed myself as I sent the message. That wasn’t the thing I knew I had to do, the only morally justifiable thing. Rather, it was the self-serving thing. It was yet another game of tug of war that morality lost, which should have been surprising. Morality was supposed to always win out, especially when it came to something like love. And I did love Chris, which should have meant wanting to keep him safe and protect him, especially from myself. But I couldn’t seem to do that.
With no knowledge of why he shouldn’t, Chris agreed immediately. He couldn’t wait it seemed, judging from the many texts he sent back and in rapid succession.
Heck yeah!
Looking forward to it.
I’ve missed you.
Are you sure you don’t want anything from Happy Flour?
Or maybe Pasta Pizzaz?
I wasn’t hungry, and I told him as much simply and plainly without explaining why. I had a dead weight sitting in my stomach, feeding off of the silence in the cottage as I sat alone in that front room, on the couch that replaced the one I had spent so many dorm retreats on.
My mind still hated silence, but it was a monster that had started to evolve. It wasn’t just the absence of noise now. The podcast playing off of my phone would have been able to chase it away if so. But though I had the phone playing at full volume, I still felt my doom creeping towards me, its long talons reaching out and brushing against my skin.
Unsure what else to do, my mind tried to retreat and busy itself with its own thoughts. At first, it thought of Ellie, as it often did. Her face–specifically her blithe smile–was never far from my mind. And as a result, said mind wondered what she was doing right then and if she was with her new boyfriend. I had no way of knowing, of course. I had no right to know. But the mere thought was a spark that set off a raging fire in my soul. The flames tore away at me and ate the bits of me that came loose. And yet, I could not turn away. I couldn’t help but look at her, no matter the pain it brought me. In those flames, I could see an image of Ellie, alright. She was in her kitchen with this mysterious man coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. It was his prerogative to do as much, with her permission, of course, and she would be inclined to give it. That was her boyfriend. She had chosen him. Not me. She would have never chosen me. I was never even in the running.
Chris had to be driving by then. He had to be navigating Dustford’s winding roads and endless sea of roundabouts. He wasn’t going to be sending another text, so I took my phone and tossed it lightly on the coffee table in front of me. That likely wasn’t wise, I knew. Modern phones can be somewhat delicate, and the clear plastic case that cradled it was fairly cheap and useless. But I didn’t care. There was something cathartic about it, about releasing some of my anger into a device that had been the portal to so much heart.
The empty space within me soon filled, however. Guilt slowly crept up, feeding off of the disorganized memories of my lies to Chris and Professor Evory and all the ways I had let them down.
If Lynette asked me about myself, that was the best place to begin, wasn’t it? I always thought she would focus on our dad, but I supposed that as her sister I was also fair game. But if she did ask, I didn’t have an answer ready for her. I never knew how to describe myself or talk about myself. So there was no other place I could think of to start. It would have to be here with the fact that I lied a lot. I could come up with justifications for the twists of the truth that slipped off of my tongue, but was there ever really a good reason to lie? Our dad would have thought so. He lied frequently. But that wasn’t a widely held opinion by any means. And maybe there was something to be said about the people who held it, some trait that united us all.
I closed my eyes. I wanted to stand up, to move about and burn through the excess energy coursing through my veins. There was so much happening within me. So much of my body seemed to be in complete mutiny. My throat wanted to scream. My eyes wanted to cry. My shoulders were voting for an outright sobbing fest should I decide to follow my eyes. But my legs wanted to run, namely because I wanted to be anywhere but that cottage where the laughter of my old classmates echoed through the halls.
Not mine, though. I actually didn’t enjoy those retreats that much. I just went in the hopes that I would, that people would want me there, but frankly, I always knew no one would notice if I hadn’t shown up.
It was a truth I knew but not one I wanted to accept. I had successfully avoided it up until that point. But in the silence, I had run headlong into it. My full body broke on impact. It shattered, though the pieces did not drift away. So I placed my hands on my shoulders in an attempt to hold myself together.
It didn’t work well, but it didn’t have to, really. This was just a temporary fix. Chris would be here soon, I knew. He was on his way. I just had to hold it together until he got there.
To hold myself, I tried to think of his face. But to my dismay, it did not come to me as easily as Ellie’s did. Her features came through loud and clear: her heart-shaped face and round eyes, her thin lips and dark hair. I could see Ellie whenever I wanted, whenever I turned my mind to look into her direction. But Chris’s features were more distant and almost from my reach when he was not right there beside me.
When I realized as much, I grimaced and went searching for that face. After a moment more, I found it and studied his profile as I saw it from my car as we drove away from that ill-fated meeting with my godfather. The memory was bitter and colored by said bitterness.
The moment’s discomfort revived the tears that sat in my eyes on that drive home. Chris asked me about them. I dodged his question. All throughout that entire strained and difficult care ride, his expression remained firm. There was a subtle strength to it. His brow was flattened. His mouth was set in a neutral position. He was steadfast, but there was also hardly anything to see. When his expression was flat like that, I struggled to recognize him. That wasn’t the face I knew and had fallen in love with. I knew Chris’s joy, and I knew him by that joy. There was his nervousness, too. That had come up frequently, especially in that new beginning. Sometimes, there was concern. But from that first encounter with said concern, I knew it didn’t fit his features well. It wasn’t something he was meant for.
And there are implications to that. Most relevantly, he wasn’t meant to be concerned about a partner but to have a partner who could focus their concern onto him, who could help him with his stressful life and not lay down yet another burden at his feet. After all, he had to care about so many others. He had two fully staffed restaurants to run, employees who needed those businesses to thrive for their paychecks undisturbed. And from those slips of paper, their entire lives were grounded. They needed Chris. He took that need seriously. And so did his partner. He needed a partner who could help him with that.
And I couldn’t be that. I would never be what he needed.
As I settled into that thought, I heard Chris’s knuckles firmly strike my door. He didn’t have a key. I hadn’t gotten around to making him one or asking the university if I could. It would have been easier for him if I had done that. It would have meant he could just come inside and not wait out in the chilly night air for me to get myself together and answer the door.
I should have been quicker about it than I was. But being weighed down by my feelings and the sudden awareness of our incompatibility slowed my steps. My legs hardly lifted up. They could not seem to rise, but when they fell, they landed clumsily unable to grip the flat ground.
Each second he was left out on the porch was another way in which I was failing him. The list of my transgressions grew with each passing day together, and it had finally reached a point I could no longer overlook. And once I was looking at it, I couldn’t look away. Worse yet, there was more to see with it. There was the conclusion that I needed to end this relationship for his sake. No matter what line of thinking I took, it all led back to that.
And I really had to be the one to do it. Chris wouldn’t know he needed to do it because he had no way of knowing how destructive and terrible I tended to be. I had been good at hiding my flaws either through avoiding them, lying, or otherwise covering them up. But of the parts he had seen, he hadn’t reacted like he ought to. He’d had a taste of my inability to stay engaged in a relationship, and even then, he didn't have the sense to walk away. However, he didn’t know that I was–by some standards–emotionally unfaithful to him (though my ghosting Ellie was–on some level–a solution). Nor did he know the person my father could be or that I was seemingly cut from the same cloth.
I always thought I could see my dad in me. Not just in mirrors or any sort of reflective surface, but I knew there was some deeper resemblance that I couldn’t escape. I thought it was just my grief talking, but Stephen clearly thought it was more than that. He saw the resemblance. And now I could see it too. There was no doubt about it or way to avoid it anymore.
I was Mia Vogel, the daughter of Will Vogel, his heir in all that he couldn’t escape from. I hated that, but not as much as I hated myself.
The thought began to swallow me up as I reached for the door, though I did my best to shove them down. With each shovel of dirt laid upon it, however, the self-hatred I was so desperate to bury grew instead. It rose up and filled my chest, but it did not try to escape through my throat. Quite the contrary, in fact. It seemed content to sit there, pushing against my lungs and pressing into every organ in my body. It only grew larger with each beat of my struggling, with each passing moment.
And once again, I was struggling to breathe. But it was different this time. It wasn’t that my lungs were collapsing in on themselves or gripped by some unseen force. There was just no space for them to expand.
My lungs had just enough room for a sharp inhale as I swung the door open and saw Chris in all his glory, which was defined by his flour covered polo and hands shoved into the pocket of his work pants. Their creases and lines were still crisp against the darkness of the night despite the full day of work they had endured. As for his face, he wore a soft smile on his lips and a warm flush in his cheeks.
“Hey,” he whispered.
And with that single word, I felt a rush of relief, of joy, and of comfort. From that single word, he made my day better. He made me feel better. With that, I couldn’t think about all the terrible things that had plagued me before he appeared. I was just at peace.
So even though I knew I shouldn’t, I extended my arms out to him and wordlessly asked for an embrace. He didn’t hesitate to return it. He simply reached for me. His arms fell into what had become a normal position, a normal part of our lives, a habit that didn’t need to be broken. Hugging me came naturally to him. And I wanted to think it always had, even though I knew that wasn’t true. His arms took what they thought were their rightful position around my body, and mine clicked into a place around his. I buried my face into his chest, drawing out all the dissenting in my head. They didn’t need to be a part of this. So I took a sharp breath in and smelled what I thought was the spilled flour on his shirt. It was hardly anything at all, though, just the faintest smell of earthy wheat. But it was Chris’s smell, and that made it heavenly.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything?” he asked. “I can race back out and get something for you.”
I flinched at the question despite the steading presence of his chest against my face. He didn’t seem to feel the movement or know what to make of it. Either way, he didn’t respond, leaving me with his offer. It was vaguer than when he first asked it. Earlier he was concerned about feeding me, and I was sure that was still on his mind. But really, I needed other forms of nurture and care from him. I wanted his company and for him to stay over for the night. I wanted to go back to Pasta Pizzazz with him and pretend we were on that first date, when everything was new and I wasn’t worried about the damage I could do to him.
More broadly, I wanted to be truthful with Professor Evory. I wanted to be back in Chicago, back where I could get lunch with Ellie regularly. I wanted to be back thinking about writing, dreading the fact that I was not doing it and had nothing to show for all the hours I sat at the computer smacking my keyboard. I wanted to only have two sisters who hated me and not a third with an unsettled opinion.
I wanted so many things, but above all, I wanted to cry, specifically while Chris held me and told me everything was going to be okay. He didn’t have to be convincing when he said that. No matter how good the performance was, I wasn’t going to believe him. But it would have been the thought that counted. It would have been enough to know that he was willing to try. Because his willingness meant that he cared about me. It would have meant, technically, that I deserved care, at least in his estimation.
And I did want to deserve those things. But I didn’t.
That realization, the thought that had gone dormant when I first saw him, came back to life, stronger than before. It roared loudly, and its primal war cry shook my entire world. And yet, Chris didn’t feel it. But with that cry, all the other feelings that were banished by Chris’s presence came alive again. Cue the shame. Cue the guilt. Cue whatever unnamed love children they may have had together. They were all there with me, eating me away bit by bit. I could feel the small bites, the erosion of myself, and the resulting burn.
And I worried Chris could feel it too. I was worried it was going to get him too. There was no telling how infectious this was.
To quarantine myself, I pulled back, ending the embrace I had been so desperate for. Even then, I still craved it. My soul cried out in need and agony when I pulled away. The scream echoed in my ears, but it was less fearsome than the roar that had wrecked my body moments before. And so, I was undeterred. My focus was locked into place.
Chris stepped inside when his body was free. That calmed me a bit, though I hated admitting as much.
“I’m sure,” I said softly as I shut the door behind. My voice was just above a puff of air, but it was just loud enough for him to hear me over the podcast episode still playing off of my phone in the other room. “And maybe you shouldn’t worry about me so much.”
Those words revived that early fight, the one in the car that we had never properly discussed. But we had also never really talked about Stephen, my presentation, or much of anything as of late. Car rides were silent. Text messages were few. I was distant. Chris had dealt with it.
“Did the class not go well?” he asked.
I tried to nod my head, but it wouldn’t move. “I think it went okay,” I lied. “I mean, they just wanted me to talk about my book and the publishing industry. It’s not like I haven’t given those same mini speeches a thousand times before.”
I knew his questions wouldn’t end there, but in an attempt to escape them, I brushed past him and walked into the living room. My earlier despair still hung in the air, and my phone sat on the coffee table where it had been tossed. It was all as I had left it: a vision of the moment before. Eager to dispel the phantom, I hurriedly picked up my phone and silenced the podcast episode about lemmings. I hadn’t been paying attention to it anyway.
Chris followed me into the room with a quick step and worried breath. “You know, we didn’t talk about that godfather-guy,” he said.
My lips twisted. That had been my choice, I wanted to say. There hadn’t seemed like anything to say when Chris drove me home. Nothing Stephen had told me was all that new or groundbreaking, and the parts that had come up were the very things I had deliberately hidden from Chris. When we pulled up in front of the house, I assumed I had won. I thought I had escaped the issue, and the two of us would move onto the next thing: that presentation for Professor Evory’s class and all the anxieties that came with it. It had seemed like a foolproof plan, but Chris was trampling on it now.
I gritted my teeth and took another sharp breath in. That was all I could take in with the building pressure still growing in my chest. It was pressing against my heart, and I still didn’t know what I could do about it.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I tried to say. “Do you want a drink? I have some pink lemonade.”
Chris didn’t seem to hear my question. He said nothing in response, and I turned to face him as a means of directing his attention. But once his eyes locked onto mine, he took control of the conversation again.
With that, Chris outright asked, “Did that meeting go okay?”
It was a reasonable question, but it went unanswered. I said nothing, and he started to search my face or some sort of clue. But there was nothing for him to see. I didn’t react. I didn’t give him a single sign.
Without anything to go off of, he grew more desperate. “Babe,” he begged.
I liked it when he called me that. The word came with a type of intimacy that I never thought would be mine. But that wasn’t the time for that closeness or anything of the sort. I didn’t want Chris to get too close to me right then. I was afraid of what he would see. So I said nothing in an attempt to push him away. And when that didn’t work, I tried to move away.
Before I could retreat to the kitchen, Chris took a step towards me, closing the gap between us. His hands reached for my shoulders. “If that fucker did anything–”
I didn’t let him finish the thought. “We just talked. It was fine.”
He scoffed. “But it doesn’t seem fine!”
And he wasn’t wrong. I knew that just as I also knew that I was somewhat duty-bound to tell him the truth. Couples share things. Chris shared things with me. But I wasn’t returning the favor. I was holding my tongue, deciding unilaterally that doing so was the best thing for us. That wasn’t right. And yet, I remained firm. Chris was frustrated. I was steadfast.
But feeling guilty, I tossed him a scrap. “I’m not thrilled about what Stephen told me.”
That small bit was meaningless, which had been my point, but it was not the sort of thing Chris could accept. “So he wasn’t helpful or...?” he offered.
I brought my hands to my face and held them there for a moment. It was just to buy me some time, a couple seconds to get my thoughts into some semblance of order. Because Chris was right, what Stephen wasn’t helpful, but did we really need to get into the why? I was afraid that was where this was going.
Chris started to embrace me again. His arms started to find their usual place around my body, but before they could click into place, I stepped back and put my hands out.
Exasperated, I just said, “My godfather who was never really in my life because of some falling out with my dad wants to now be in my life a decade after my dad died and when I actually needed him. There. That’s the condensed version of what’s wrong. Okay? Stephen wants to be a godfather now, but it feels like that ship has sailed off into the horizon never to come back. Just... Gone. It’s gone. And I thought he would know, but I guess not.”
At first, Chris said nothing. He waited to see if I was well and truly done with what I was trying to say. He waited for any stragglers or leftover words before he finally shook his head and muttered, “That guy’s got some audacity.”
I hummed. “Quite.”
The tension in the air broke. A lightness fell over us, but Chris did not seem to recognize it. “So that’s what’s wrong?” he asked.
He was searching not for certainty but for what he thought certainty was going to give him: that comfort, that end to the buzzing happening in his head, a buzzing I was sure he didn’t have to deal with before he met me.
With a shrug, I said, “Look, it’s a tempting fantasy. Even for me.”
I cast a hand to the couch, reminding him that he was welcome to sit down and to make himself comfortable. He was welcome to make use of this home, but we were in the middle of me serving him something to drink before he once again distracted me. But he didn’t seem to notice or hear what I was trying to say. There was a thought still sucking up his attention and taking it away from me.
Just as I was about to ask what was on his mind, he suddenly said, “You don’t really talk about it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Talk about what?”
“Your dad.”
To his credit, he tried to soften his words. His tone was lowered, and each word was said gently. But the phrase itself stung like a slap across the face.
I muffled the ensuing flinch and reminded him, “Chris, I’m literally working on a book about my dad.”
He shook his head. “The way I see it. You’re writing a book about Will Vogel. I mean, when you’re telling me about your progress, you’re talking about some man. You don’t talk about the father. You don’t talk about how you feel with him gone or if you miss him or what about him you miss.”
Because I’m numb, I wanted to say. That was the truth. I was numb and had been for a while. There's only so long you can grieve before whatever nerve endings are involved in that act get completely worn out or eaten away. Mine were long gone. There was no getting them back. Not that I wanted them back.
But that was a hell of a thing to say. So I didn’t.
“Part of me misses him. Part of me doesn’t,” I explained, but it wasn’t a good explanation. I just didn’t have a good one to offer. “But yeah, it would be nice to have something vaguely akin to a father figure again.”
“Like Professor Evory?” he asked.
That time I couldn’t catch the flinch before it happened. And knowing that I had let my guard slip in that way, my face went red. I closed my eyes and turned my back to Chris in some vain attempt to escape this mess.
But as I pulled away, I fell deeper into something else. I didn’t realize it right away. My numbness shielded me at first. But the cold chill of the memory revived all the nerve endings involved in my grief. Suddenly, they were reborn and so much more sensitive than they had been before. And I felt it again. I felt the rush of cold water over my body. I felt it envelop me, trapping me in an unbreakable embrace. I felt my clothing drifting in the water around me as I hung there, suspended.
No, not suspended, I suddenly told myself. I was trapped. I was being held in that one spot, feet below the surface of the water. I didn’t want to stay there. I needed to pull myself up and out of the water. I needed to swim up. But I couldn’t swim. I could scarcely move.
My throat started to tighten. That sensation was real. The muscles that should have been protecting my airway were actually collapsing in on themselves. This wasn’t a part of the memory I had unwillingly been pulled into, the memory I had somehow fallen into. It might have been caused by it, but it was a different problem.
I tried to swallow. I tried to use the saliva in my mouth to force my throat to open back up. But it didn’t work. For all my effort, I was only left with a lump sitting on the top of my throat.
“What’s wrong?” Chris asked.
I shook my head. Resentment started to stir within my core. It found a thread to grasp onto and held on tightly to it. From that, it grew stronger. It found reasons to exist and to infect me with its venom. Chris’s question might have been asked in good faith, but it was a question I had already answered. I might not have answered it well, but that shouldn’t have mattered. The exchange had been done. He’d asked, and I answered. But instead, he was attempting to double charge me by asking again, this time when I was more vulnerable and my guard was lowered. He seemed to be coming at me in my distress, which gave him the upper hand.
And I needed to point that out, to reject his attempt. I needed to push him away, but instead, I coughed and took a loud, desperate gasp for air.
Chris flew to my side. His hands gently rested on my shoulder and back, just as they so often did. It was the final piece in the plot, in this attempt to get me to open up. It was a distraction of sorts, another to add to the pile of sensations swirling in my mind. I was so consumed by him and my own physical dysfunctions that it couldn’t stop a certain sentence from slipping out.
“I thought I knew how to swim,” I whispered before I could realize what I was saying.
Once I did, I pressed my mouth shut. I clenched my jaw as tightly as I could and screamed in my own mind about my carelessness and stupidity. I screeched about my lack of strength or sense. The barrage was harder than anything I had been hit with before. But it felt natural to me. It came easily. It all flowed like the river that killed my father.
After all, I had no reason to say that. I knew better than to say that. What the fuck was wrong with me that I would say that.
But my words, said so softly as to just be flickers of sound in the air, did not strike Chris with the same force they had hit me with. He hardly heard me. So he asked me to repeat it, drawing closer to my lips and craning his ear to hear whatever I had to say. But it was that movement that snapped me out of my trance.
“Nothing,” I said as I tried to stand up.
That word came through more easily. And when it did so, it cleared my throat. It forced an airway of some kind, though it was smaller than I would have liked.
And yet, straightening up still proved difficult. My back had locked into its bend, and Chris’s hovering presence did nothing to help it. And yet, he refused to move.
“No,” he insisted. “It wasn’t nothing. You said something about swimming.”
My heart stopped. I hadn’t realized he could make out that much. He caught the worst of it really. And Chris was right: it wasn’t nothing. It was too much of a very particular thing. My lungs twisted themselves up either in punishment or because they were locked in their own repeat of the events that were now so much fresher in my mind. Either way, it wasn’t something Chris could help me with. This wasn’t something anyone could help me with.
I started to shake my head, but I was immediately seized by an unexpected weakness. Even still, I choked out, “No,” without knowing what specifically I was rejecting.
For emphasis, I stepped forward, which led me towards the entryway. There was no reason behind that step. The promise of fresh air meant very little to me. But there was something about that movement, about that direction, that I couldn’t resist. There was something pulling me along, but it didn’t explain why.
With the second step–yet again another step I took out of instinct and impulse rather than conscious choice–I felt myself fall forward. An act that should have been so simple was suddenly beyond me. At first, I didn’t know why. But then I felt the faint tremble through my body. I felt the small shake starting from my chest and extending outward.
That was why, I realized. I was getting worse. And Chris was there to watch the whole thing unfold.
“Mia?” Chris cried out in a panic. “Mia, are you okay?”
Once again, I couldn’t shake my head or move. But it was worse this time. It was worse when I went to take that third step and fell to my knees. I tried to take a breath in, just to prove to myself that I could, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t breathing. My lungs weren’t taking in air. They were locked in a deflated position, and while small tufts of air could sneak in, I couldn’t take a deep enough breath to sustain myself. I was trying. But no matter how hard I gasped, I couldn’t take in a meaningful amount of air.
Through my gasps, I choked out “Fine.”
I closed my eyes only to immediately regret it when I felt the rush of river water overtake me again. The chill cut down to my bone. And with the rush against my face, I couldn’t do anything, not that I didn’t try. I put my hand onto the floor in front of me and began to push myself up. But even that simple act was difficult. The trembling throughout my body made it hard for me to steady myself, never mind move. I couldn’t do anything. I was just as helpless as I was back then.
All the while Chris watched, studying my every movement as he did his best to find some way to help me. He was desperate to help me or to do something to that end. His thoughts raced as his eyes darted around the room for some sort of hint to this puzzle. But there was nothing around to help us.
Chris then came closer and reached for me. He tried to tuck his hands under my arms, but that embrace did not come as naturally to him as every other one had. His hands struggled to find the right resting place as his mind struggled to put together a plan. This was just another problem to him, a recipe that wouldn’t come together, a register that wouldn’t open, an employee schedule, or a negative review. Chris stood over me not as a partner but as a problem-solver.
And that still bothered me. It shouldn’t have, given how terrible of a partner I could be, but I wanted Chris to think of me as his partner, as some sort of equal at the table and not a project he needed to work on. I wanted the romantic type of love that I thought he had been giving me this whole time. I didn’t deserve it, but I thought I had had it anyway.
The truth struck me roughly. Bitterly, I croaked out, “I’m fine.”
It was just the first sentence, the first of many things I knew I needed to say. It was just easier for me to say that part because of how often I had said it. The repetition made it easy.
Chris did not react to my empty assurance. He stayed at my side and continued to try and pull me to my feet. He was hesitant, though, unsure if this was the plan he should be going with. I could see the wheels turning in his mind as he debated leaving me where I lay for the paramedics to lift or if he could safely help me. While he meant well, he was also out of his depth. This was a problem he knew nothing about.
I winced at that thought, at this brief foray into Chris’s perspective. It stirred old thoughts in me and awoke more of the storm that he had first walked into. He sensed it was there but had no clue what it really was.
I must have looked so helpless to him, but I wasn’t helpless. I knew what I had to do.
My elbow flew up and back, searching for him just to push him away. It didn’t strike him directly, but it brushed against his chest and eased him away from me. It was a subtle hint, and he didn’t take it. In fact, he moved closer, placing his hands onto my shoulders for reasons I didn’t understand. It just didn’t make sense. Grabbing me from under the arms seemed like the most logical vantage point, but he was coming around from the top, which made no sense at all.
I opened my mouth to rebuke him, but all that was released was a desperate wheeze. With it came a whistle that pierced the air. It was frightening, yes, but I had heard it before. It had happened before, and those previous encounters had inoculated me to that fear. After all, it hadn’t killed me yet, so it seemed likely that I would survive it again.
With another push against the ground, I straightened up a bit. I was not fully upright, but one foot seized the chance to tuck itself under my body. It was a start, a first step to making it back onto my feet.
I was doing fine, I thought to myself. I was going to be fine on my own and if I was alone. And I had to be alone. There was no way around it. That was my destiny, and I could decide whether I could bring him and everyone else down with me or if I could cut myself loose and save them like I couldn’t save my dad.
Chris went to reach for my arm, thinking that had to be the best way to help me. It was a more concentrated grip and one that came a bit more naturally to him. It was something that he had used before, something that would have come up during drunken movie nights and other careless dates. But at his touch, I forced myself to recoil and ripped my arm away.
“Get out,” I spat.
Or those were the words that came out of my mouth without any conscious prompting on my part. They were what was said, and what Chris had to respond to.
While he hesitated, he still released my arm, but what came next remained a mystery. I could see his eyes draw a blank as he debated what to do next. To me, it seemed obvious. I had made my want clear. He just hadn’t listened. Like so many people before him, he hadn’t heard me when I spoke.
So I tried again, louder and more forcefully as I tried again to push up from the ground. Though my movements were slow, I could make it to my feet. It wasn’t easy, but it was possible. The shaking had stopped. If I took several, rapid and shallow gulps of air, I could get enough to survive.
So I slowly rose from my feet and pulled away from Chris when I was upright. But as for speaking, I wasn’t able to do much on that. I had no control of my mouth and no thought to what it might do. In the end, it held firm to the line it had cast.
“Get out of my fucking house, Chris,” I spat again.
I tried to muster some sense of force or power to put behind my words, but it wasn’t a tone I had ever mustered before. Breakups didn’t usually come at my insistence. I hadn’t even been the one to break up with George. Ellie had done it for me. And even this one seemed out of my control.
“You need to go,” I insisted.
He didn’t respond to what I said. Instead, he stammered. “Are you okay?”
Asking that question again was all he could think to do. It wasn’t enough. He seemed to know even then, but it was the only thing that came to mind. It was a basic but tried and true strategy.
And yet, it rubbed me the wrong way. I kept telling him I was fine. I didn’t see why he couldn’t just take me at my word. I would know better than he would. And even if I wasn’t okay, I knew how to get back to “okay.” He couldn’t tell me that.
“I’m fine,” I repeated in a lower tone, but my voice wavered a bit.
I couldn’t comfortably hit that note, which showed my weakness. So I didn’t sound fine, and I probably didn’t look fine. My breathing was getting slightly steadier, but it might not have stayed that way. The worst might have still been coming. Maybe this was just the eye of the hurricane–where the winds have temporarily calmed because even a storm needs a base of operations. There was a chance of that, but I chose to not think of that possibility. Instead, I focused on isolating myself again. That was what I needed. Or what I was ready to say that I needed, truth notwithstanding.
But Chris would not honor that request. He didn’t seem to understand. “You’re not fine,” he said.
Which was obviously true. I wasn’t fine or okay. There was absolutely no justifiable reason for me to be left alone, but I wanted to be.
And yet, when I looked into Chris’s eyes, I saw the concern and the love for me. There was no maliciousness or condescension. He wasn’t acting out of some need for control. This was love. Although we had said the words to each other many times before, it was a different experience entirely to feel it like this. It was more intense and frightening.
And I was already scared. I was scared for him and for future-me who would have to deal with the future and all its consequences. I feared the heartache that would come from his leaving me or his hurt if he didn’t. I was afraid of my dependence on him, of how my ability to tolerate being in silence and alone was gone after our time together. That fear further fueled the urge to push him away.
But the kindness in Chris’s eyes was some sort of lifeline. It was a lifesaver tossed out to me. And I could have taken it. Maybe I would have in a moment of weakness. But then he said, “We need to take you to the hospital.”
I snapped back into my earlier trance, into the fire that burned in my core and craved my destruction. His suggestion was a crossed line, even if he didn’t mean it that way. There was no way he could have. But I didn’t care. I held fast to my fears and hesitations. They weren’t reasonable, but they were part of me.
“No,” I said. “Chris, I can take care of myself.”
I started towards the door again, eager to open it just to emphasize my point, but I stumbled when I meant to strut. When I did so, when my body started lowering from the pull downwards, he flew back to my side. He came up right next to me and let his hands hover over my body, but even that pseudo-contact was too much for me. I smacked his hands away. Mine were no longer shaking, which was a good sign. It gave me some sense of force and power. My legs were weaker, but they were holding up. They were holding my weight and keeping me off the ground.
But my lungs were a different matter. They resisted my will, as they so often did. This time, they marked their mutiny with another rattle through the delicate tissue. Though I wasn’t sure what caused it, I forced myself to welcome the sensation. It only happened when I was breathing, after all. And that was my main concern: I needed to keep breathing. That was all I needed right then. And that was what I had.
Emboldened, I continued towards the door. My step was no longer so clumsy or strained. It drew power from the intention I had forced onto myself. There was no second thought. There was no considering the implications of the route I was on. My mind was set. I gave myself no chance to change it.
All the while, I felt Chris’s eyes on me. I felt the weight of his stare. He followed me towards my door. His steps were quick and measured. Maybe he was hopeful that I had changed my mind and agreed to go to the hospital. Maybe he thought I was heading towards the door to get myself out of this house and on the road to some sort of help.
At the thought, my legs buckled, and I fell against the wall. Chris leapt to me. He seized my arm. His grip was strong but not aggressive, and I was able to free myself with one firm pull. The momentum sent me back against that same wall. I struck it with a force that shook the cottage.
Chris began to speak, likely to repeat himself. But I could not bear to hear it.
“There’s no ‘we,’ Chris,” I snapped quickly.
We both felt the slap of my words. We both seemed to recoil in horror at them. But there was more in store for me. I felt another shatter. I felt something break, but this time, I knew what it was. I watched it happen right in front of me. And it was all an accident.
When I said that, I wasn’t thinking about the long term. I wasn’t thinking about much at all. It was his remark about taking me to the hospital that sat at the forefront of my mind. That’s what I was thinking about. That was what I had meant to reference. I meant that I would not go along with his plan. There was no “we” to go to the hospital. I refused it. It wasn’t my plan, and so he shouldn’t use the first-person plural in an attempt to pin it onto me.
But as I looked up at him and watched what little color his face had kept through this episode melt away, I knew that wasn’t what he thought I meant. He took my words to mean something very different.
Underneath that weight, he fell back. He stumbled back while I watched. I watched him suffer. I watched his misery and dread as he tried to find some reason to linger in front of me. It was a chance for me to take back what I had said or to correct myself.
But I didn’t.