Anxiety is a Bitch // TOMMYINNIT

>paper ticket<

Tommy had heard about people not being able to take showers while being depressed.

He'd never been able to understand it.

He was able to understand the wanting to lay down and die, to never wake up, to fall into your abysmal mess so that you were one in the same as the destruction you created around you. He understood the not wanting to eat, the not wanting to face other people, the want to claw at your face until you had rips down your face.

But not being able to shower, that's something he'd never understood.

Standing under the hot water, it was easy to close his eyes and disappear. Just... exist. Not to be Tommy, to be air, an empty brain like an empty cup, filled with hot water. Water that was probably too hot, that scalded his back, that sent pain down his skin. It was like a game, turning it up little by little to see how hot he could get it before it scalded him. He deserved the pain anyway. The only problem with that was that his parents would complain about the lack of water, and if he took too long of showers he'd get blasted with cold water from the dishes being started.

Normally the hot water and steam was his safe place. It allowed him to melt for a couple minutes. But today, that was not the case. Today, his mind was racing.

The date on his phone had been marked for a long while. It was something that used to fill him with excitement, with hope. He hadn't seen a lot of friends lately, he'd been doing solo late night streams when he couldn't sleep and pre-recorded videos he had saved in case he was ever sick, therefore he hadn't had a lot of talk to the others, even in the public eye. So when his spring break was cleared because his grandparents canceled their annual family reunion trip, Wilbur was the first one to invite him over, excited at the chance to spend some quality time with his MIA friend.

"It'll be an SBI holiday!" Tommy could practically hear his smile over the phone. "Me, Phil, and even Techno is flying in! It'll be wrong without you. I know you already want to come, but do your best to convince your parents! Listen, you can vlog, we can stream, we can make content, and then we can just chill. It'll be the best spring break you've ever had."

Now, looking at how thin he was, how sick he looked, how... dead inside... he was starting to dread the upcoming Friday. He already had turned around the mirror in his room, and he didn't ever look in the bathroom mirror unless the lights were off.

How was he supposed to be presentable by the time he'd have to face them all?

The date was looming over his head. He'd kept pushing it off, the thoughts too much for him to deal with. But now, he knew he had waited too long to think of an answer. Running his hands through his wet hair, he could really think of no way to hide what was wrong with him before they'd be able to see how broken he was.

He didn't have a lot of time. The trip was tomorrow.

Getting out of the hot shower, steam sticking to the mirror, his phone on the counter screen lit up with a message.

Tommy hadn't been ghosting anybody. At least, he was trying not to. He just didn't have the energy to respond to people, he would often go days without checking his phone for messages, instead going straight to his friends videos or streams. It took much emotional energy to do talk instead of just lurking, and emotional energy was something he didn't have much to spare right at the moment.

But the SBI group chat was starting to get really buzzed with the upcoming weekend.

As pings came in, discord blowing up, all Tommy wanted to do was throw the phone down the sink and run it under water until he couldn't hear another ping ever again. But eventually his hands itched and he wanted to read the words of his second home, even if he didn't feel like responding.