The State of Broken Things

T is For Trauma

Cassiel ~

"[Taking care of me] is rotten work./Not to me. Not if it's you."

- Euripides: Orestes

T is For Trauma

Breathing is a natural human function.

We learn about it in anatomy. It happens without thinking. The human body is kind of amazing in that way. Your heart wants to pump blood. Your lungs want to breathe. Needless to say, when those functions start deteriorating, that's when it's time to worry.

The reason why your body starts to break down could be pretty much anything. Panic attacks and your brain and lungs start to malfunction, DIC and all your organs start to fail.

Your body does its best to take care of you.

The way we treat it isn't always the best. Stuff ourselves with unhealthy food, not exercising as much as we should. Doing drugs. Smoking.

Even more so, though, our mental health. I don't think people take into account how much our mental health can affect our physical state of being. You stress yourself out too much that can lead to nausea. Headaches. Sleep deprivation.

I like to think I take pretty good care of myself. I don't eat too much, and I dance a few times a week. Less, now.

Adrian, on the other hand, eats like a horse. But he also has football practice a few times a week, and goes to the gym more times in a month than I've gone in my entire life. Sometimes he asks me if I want to go with him, but I always decline and end up going with Katrina and Addie somewhere and he meets us after.

However, he's also terrible at taking care of himself. Mentally. He's still working through a lot. There's so much trauma that he hasn't even begun to process, and there's no way you can spend time with him and not notice. He hides it well, but sometimes that takes more of him than he has left to give.

Not to mention, he also smoked for more than a year before he met me, and his lungs don't hold up super well when he gets sick or after extensive exercise. Or when he spends hours crying.

It isn't like heavy, gasping breaths. Just wheezing, but still loud and very concerning to see in a 17-year-old boy. Even now, after his breakdown last night. It's still fairly early in the morning, and I've been awake for a while, just watching the rise and fall of his chest, trying to ignore the darkened bruise and the caked blood around the cut in his lip.

He scared the shit out of me last night. It freaked me out more than I'd care to admit, seeing him so messed up. Addie brought him home and I was so shocked at his state I didn't even know what to do. It was terrifying. I got so scared I almost wanted to be mad, but I couldn't deal with seeing him like that and knowing I could have been part of it. He was in so much pain, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Once I had caught up with him in my room, I closed the door behind me and locked it for good measure. I followed him into the bathroom where he was sitting on the floor with a wet washcloth pressed firmly to his face.

There weren't any tears left, though. He had cried them out already.

"I didn't hit him."

His voice shocked me, and I blinked, not really hearing his words beyond the distinct half-slur and the fact that he was speaking Spanish almost mindlessly.

"What?"

"I didn't hit Brandon today," he says, and the words are muffled behind the washcloth. Once he pulled it off his face, I cringed at his messed up face. He looked back up at me with miserable eyes.