PART TWO: LUCA
Dating Theo could be difficult sometimes. And not because I didn't love him, or I didn't want him, or I didn't think that the world (or at least, my world) revolved around him. But because he had depression.
From the age of seventeen, I had watched from the sidelines as depression tried to kill the boy I loved. It tried to rip him apart. It tried to eat him whole. And it was scary — it had teeth, and claws, and an appetite. I was no match against a beast like that, and neither was Theo.
Sometimes, I could see it, rising up inside of him, only to drag him back down again. He would spend weeks in bed, barely eating, barely talking, barely acknowledging my existence. It didn't last forever. He would eventually get of bed, and have a shower, and put on clean clothes, and apologise. I would tell him he didn't need to, but he would anyway. He would cry. Sometimes, I would, too.
I was proud of him. Because even though he would never be 'better' — a word, I learnt, doesn't actually apply to mental illnesses — he was healing. He took his medication, and he attended his therapy sessions, and he told me if he was having a bad day, so I knew to be gentle with him. And I was gentle with him. I was so gentle with him that it infuriated him. But I couldn't help it. I loved him, and I was proud of him.
The worst day of my life was when I found him on the floor, covered in blood, a blade discarded beside him. I could see that he was breathing, and I could see that was alive, and yet, the only thought I could conjure was 'he's dead, he's dead, he's dead, he's dead—'
He wasn't dead. He was just bleeding. And crying. And apologising. And hyperventilating. And bleeding.
He didn't need stitches. He just needed to be told that it was okay. And I told him that, over and over again, for weeks afterwards, until he was tired of hearing it.
I didn't leave his side for a long time afterwards. I was scared to close my eyes in case he was gone when I opened them again. In case he was bleeding. In case he was dead.
It took a while for us to get past that moment. That one moment that had changed everything. A mistake. A relapse. A regret. It affected me more than it probably should have, and I felt so guilty for so long, because it wasn't fair for me to be in so much pain, when Theo was the one who was hurting. But we did get past it, just like we did everything else, together.
So, yes, dating Theo could be difficult sometimes. But it was worth it. Because he was worth it.
We kissed a lot, and we hugged a lot, and we held hands a lot. We talked about the past, and we talked about the future. We showered together, and we watched television together, and we cleaned the apartment together. We had too much sex — to the point where we would always be late, because getting ready took a while when you lived with someone whose body was as distracting as Theo's.
The first month of living together had been a dream. We slept in, and we ordered takeaways, and we talked about getting a cat, before actually getting a cat. We stayed up late every night telling each other stories from university, and the next morning, we would cuddle under the bedsheets. We had sex all over the apartment, and made as much noise as we wanted to, because we knew that nobody was coming to disturb us. Because this place was ours.
Eventually we fell into a routine. Work, then dinner, then movies, then sex, then bedtime. Sometimes, the sex would happen before work, too. Because honestly, we couldn't keep our hands off of each other.
