not okay {ziam}

twenty-five

{twenty-five}

natalie

-

zayn didn't take me back to his place that night. he didn't take me to mine either.

i kind of made an excuse and he didn't bother to question it, so we split apart and i walked home. he rode away on his stolen bike and i chewed on my bottom lip. each step away from him felt like i was sinking into the cement beneath me. my limbs began to rattle with the endless questions surging through my mind, fingers itching for answers. i can't help but linger on the incessant sound of pills clattering together wherever zayn went. as if it were his mantra that rung through his body whenever he sizzled away into an effervescent melody. the relentless rule-breaking, the habitual deceitfulness, and the absurdity in how he strides through life as if it were a game.

i had spent so much time avoiding the feeling in my gut, that i never stopped and actually questioned him.

when i make it back home, my father sees me from the front yard. there's a flicker of a flame across his face, seething with the burn of his vengeance. it's his usual hostility, his beady eyes narrowing and his red face coiling into an instinctual rage. he looks ready to pounce off his porch and give me one of his usual beatings, however, as if it were a miracle -- he stumbles slightly. instead of acting on his accustomed violent character, he suddenly turns around and storms back into his house. without a promise or a threat, i was left standing there untouched. again, i can't help but wonder what zayn had said to him that intimidated the man into silence.

how can one teenage boy frighten someone so monstrous into submission?

under my bed, i take out the computer that i haven't used in what feels like centuries. i give in to it and the remembrance of what feels like a dirty past life flowing through me. how stalking someone felt like a craft that i had mastered precisely and relentlessly. constantly running on the adrenaline from knowing people's secrets and the thrill of invading past the shallow surface of someone's life. i had become really good at it, until the tragedy of mandy's death and decided i had to stop. i learned that it wasn't fun anymore — knowing too much and living with the truth.

now, i'm sick with lies and want nothing more than factuality. 

without any hesitancy, i find my fingers do the work for me. my obsessive nature came naturally to me, so it wasn't a struggle to get entangled in something so esoteric and intrusive. i'm falling down a rabbit hole from just a quick google search, trying to remember how it had been spelled. it's still clear as day, the bold letters on the endless supply of prescription pills in zayn's bathroom cabinet. something that would seem so mundane -- but instinctually, i had a feeling it would answer some questions. all i can think of is the barrenness of his bedroom, as if it were a display of himself -- the deserted gold plains in his eyes and the lifelessness of his grin. grey, cold -- sterile. 

olanzapine, i finally get it — and then i'm wishing i hadn't remembered. because it pops up, right away, and i'm swept up in the three worded disorder that takes my breath away. it's at the bottom of the list but it flashes at me like a blinding light. i try to not hold my breath but i'm already finding what i want and it doesn't feel like how it used to. there's a chill curling around my spine, embracing me tightly with its silence.

'the treatment of apd, antisocial personality disorder, had commonly been treated with the medication now known as an antipsychotic. the disorder affects 3% of males and 1% of females — leading people with this disorder to often become outcasts of society. yet, with the inconclusive treatment of the antipsychotic on the person suffering from apd, the disorder is known to be lifelong and conditions are incurable. olanzapine manages it, for a while.'