Penelope wasn't sick. She was unwell, but she wasn't ill.
She was too tired to get out of bed, too weak to pull her lead heavy limbs off of the mattress. It was too much to ask of her body. Too many big movements felt too taxing, so she didn't try them again. She wanted to sleep and recover the energy she'd lost, but her eyes remained open. She stared at the wall, blinking every once in a while, but otherwise nothing happened. Her legs felt too heavy. Her arms felt too heavy. Everything felt stuck in place.
Especially her heart.
She stared at the wall, her throat tight as she wondered why this was happening. Why was she heavy? Why was she like this? Why can't she be normal again?
The tears tried to break through the dam, but Penelope was too numb for that.
Everything was heavy and numb.
She pulled the blanket up to her chin and continued to stare at the wall. The silence hugged her, keeping her more company than her blanket or Ronan Raccoon was. He was laid behind her, his furry body doing nothing but tickling her skin and she couldn't even make herself giggle at that.
Her eyelids were falling, becoming just as heavy as everything else, and she thought she might be able to sleep through it when her phone buzzed. It startled her awake. She couldn't be bothered to check it, though.
She felt awful for ignoring it. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. She didn't want to deal with it. She didn't want to deal with anything or anyone.
She kind of wanted to sleep for a year, maybe longer. Maybe when she woke up, her heart wouldn't feel so full. Maybe she could actually tell someone about her feelings.
Or maybe she could keep them bottled up forever. Writing them down seemed to work out better than telling anyone. Her journals never looked at her weird, but people would. She didn't need their judgment on top of everything else.
Her loss.
Her grief.
Her low self esteem.
It all melded together in a rather unflattering way.
Penelope hated her body. As heavy as she felt today, it made her feel fat as well. She was already fat, but she felt fatter. She felt like a whale or an elephant or a pig. Her hips felt like they were too big, too curvy; her bra felt like it was too full; her belly... it was ugly no matter what way she looked at it. She was fat and ugly, that was all she could think of herself.
She would never be anything other than quiet, shy, ugly, and fat.
She felt lazy, like she should have gone to karate - as if that would somehow make her feel better. Or she should have at least gotten up to clean the kitchen - it was her turn after all. But she couldn't get up.
She felt weighed down to her bed, trapped under some unseen weight that pushed her down into the warmth of her blankets and pillows. It was trying to trick her into believing this was comfort. It wasn't comfortable at all. Not even close.
She didn't want to go to karate and she didn't want to do dishes. Penelope just wanted to lay there and let the weight crush her until she couldn't feel it anymore. She wanted it to squeeze all of her unshed tears out of her eyes so that she could stop feeling as though she might cry. She just wanted to cry and get it over with.
Instead, she was just feeling the pressure behind her eyes, but nothing came of it and she lay as nothing more than a heavy body on a bed in the middle of her house that was not a home.
Part of her didn't even feel human.
She just felt numb.
She only felt numb.
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Forbidden Things || Cobra Kai
FanfictionBest friends Frankie and Penelope have just arrived in the Valley seeking to escape the past. All they needed was each other and a fresh start. They make new friends and potentially find love. Unbeknownst to them, they stumble upon a war between two...