Third Time's a Charm ✓

eight

FRIDAY. 25. FEBRUARY. 2022. (unedited. please see the note at the end!)

IN THE PAST hour, I had called my mom thirty eight times and— if the desperation of my numbered attempts didn't give it away— she hadn't answered a single time. In fact, the only reason I had given up was because she had either turned her phone off or it had died. I wasn't sure. All I knew was that it had stopped ringing out and that was enough for me to realise that she was either intentionally ignoring me or was intentionally ignoring her phone. Neither option particularly soothed me and I didn't even want to think about all the intrusive scenarios that my brain could conjure as explanations for her absence. They would only set me off.

This was the longest that she'd ever been gone. Usually, she would come back after two days. It had been three and there was still no sign of her, not even a message to let us know that she was alright.

I was beginning to lose my mind, slowly losing any and all control I might've had over the situation. It was getting so bad that not only was I losing control of it all, but I was losing the illusion of it, too. Being unable to sleep and not being able to stomach a full meal, always having the faint urge to throw up and having my heart split my chest open, my breath curling into hollow shells and obsessively checking my phone, were all things that I had experienced before— countless times, in fact— but this was different.

Before, the strings had been pulled thin; now they were snapping. Before, I'd been able to knock the pegs into the ground before I lost control of the tent; now I couldn't even find the hammer. Before, even through lost sleep and missed meals and panic attacks and dissociation, I had been able to grip onto the maintenance of my outward composure, but now it was slicing my hands open.

Any facade I'd been able to wear in the past was shattering and all of my fear was seeping through the cracks. All day, my friends and close acquaintances had been asking me if I was getting enough sleep ('yeah, plenty, thanks') and if there was anything that I might need to talk about ('nothing I can think of'), but I couldn't bring myself to tell them the truth.

Quinn had argued relentlessly that I was acting weird and she seemed excessively worried about the fact that she hadn't seen me eat lunch in three days. Everytime I attempted to assure her that I was fine and just wasn't hungry, her suspicious eyes would flicker over me and she would hum dubiously, only to ask me the exact same set of questions rephrased no more than an hour later. There was no convincing her. It didn't seem like I could convince any of them anymore and this was a new experience for me. Usually, I did such a good job of concealing my stress that people didn't even guess that anything was wrong and that was exactly how I liked it.

Thankfully, Quinn was the most vocal about it, the most openly persistent. After insisting that I was alright, the others mostly offered me worried glances or made casual offers to drive me home early or give me their fries.

For Finn, concern took shape through a deep frown; knitted brows, a wrinkled forehead and a stubborn mouth. He would frown and stare at me, his eyes narrowed and suspicious, until I asked him if something was the matter. At that point, he would always shrug or say everything was fine, his frown would melt and he would shake his head before briskly directing his gaze somewhere else, like there was something off about me he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Neither of us had apologised to each other for the brief screaming match outside Quinn's yet but it was pretty much an accepted fact that we weren't pissed at each other anymore, even if the air still felt vague whenever we were alone. It wasn't an uncommon thing for us, so I wasn't too worried. Besides, I had much more important things preoccupying the vast majority of space in my brain and I knew that, despite things being slightly off between us, he was worried about me, regardless of how he expressed it.