What if your favorite characters needed your help?
Sunset has always been in love with books, although after the death of her mother, she has stopped believing in happy endings. When she starts working in a library located at the basement of Stard...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
⛔ Mental Health Warning
Uber Drivers, Deep Talks, and Finding The Will To Heal Lung Cancer
I wonder if car stereos are cosmically synched to the current mood of our lives. The sound of Stop Crying your Heart out by Oasis hums in the background as Raiden instructs the Uber driver with the address to our flat.
We are both at the back of the car—separated by the abyss of the middle seat between us.
My forehead is stuck against the cold window glass in an attempt to avoid his gaze.
He exhales loudly. "It's always the same story with you, Sunset."
I can hear the disappointment in his tone.
"We hang out. You become friends with my friends. You date them. You drive them crazy. They hurt you. You burn something of them. They find out and I end up fighting them for you," my brother rants.
"Too much partying you two?" the Uber driver interjects.
Raiden and I glare at him.
"You always do the same, Sun. After everything that happened, I thought you would have grown up a bit. And I was happy here. It was hard for me to be here on my own, and I manage to find a community. You can't come here and just ruin it for me."
A tear rolls down my cheek, and many more choke my throat.
I always repeat the same story. He is right.
"I'm sure you can find friends of your own. If only you'd actually attend university. Dad doesn't deserve that. Neither does mum, you know?"
I swallow hard. "But my anxiety-"
"Enough about that. Just overcome yourself. Grow up. Where does your anxiety go when you take the bus? or when you got o work? Or when you flirt with my friends"
His words silence me because now I see that he will never get it. I know it feels picky, but for some reason, my anxiety only triggers at university and when I drive—which makes sense because that's the last place I was with my mum before the accident and during the accident. So, I just think it's so much more than my anxiety. My mind feels like a cake with too many layers, the anxiety being fresh putty at the bottom, and the rest a clumsy mess, tilting close to mental failure.
Explaining this to him gives me an acute headache, piercing my brain from right to left and the other way around. People shouldn't need to explain or justify their conditions to be understood. I'm afraid the world is not there—yet.
"Seriously, Sunset. And now with Dean and Lukah? Please, this is too much. Just wipe away all your feelings because it's gonna end badly. And you like flirted with both of them?" he raises his voice, anger kindling his tone.
"I...I- it's not like that!" I defend myself. "I didn't know they were different people! And you should've told me in the first place!"
Raiden clicks his tongue."Do you realize how fucked up this situation could have become?"
