LOVELORN

5|Safe haven & sibling drama

.　 . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

NOT LONG after I'd been grounded, my mom took away my phone from me, effectively cutting out my communication with the outside world. I hadn't even gotten to texting Zora yet, so she probably assumed I was ignoring her.

It wouldn't have been an unprompted presumption either. There had been multiple occurrences where I was drowning in my debilitating thoughts too much to muster up the strength to reply to her apprehensive texts. When I got so stuck in my head, it was like communicating with a brick wall.

Unresponsive and unbothered about the outside world. Too fucked to even notice my head was floating in another dimension. Trapped in a vacant galaxy where nothing felt real and everything was closing in on me. It was gradually suffocating me until I was using the last air in my lungs to call for help and reaching out into nothingness with nobody there to hear me or lend a hand. Only I.

I was never strong enough to pull myself out of that hollow space. On those days, the horrible ones, I felt like a missing person with no one searching for them. Gone without anybody to care or notice. I didn't know how it was possible to feel like you took up too much space yet no space at all at the same time. Too dismissed and forgotten about to even be a burden. Those days, weeks, and sometimes months, were miserable. I could barely tell I was falling into them until I was already tripping over the edge. At that point, it was too late and there was nobody or nothing to grab onto to haul me back up again.

Right now I was pretty sure I was on that edge, on the verge of plummeting down into the darkness. Nevertheless, I didn't care enough to stop it. Even if I did want to, I wasn't sure I could.

Naturally, this made getting out of bed the next morning more of an impossible task than usual. Mom and Dad had already left for work while Avi was banging on my door like a lunatic, yelling at me to get up so we could go to school.

"Look, I'm sorry about yesterday but I'm pretty certain Mom and Dad won't be happy about you missing school after yesterday!"

"Like she'd notice," I called back.

"If your teacher reports your absence, yes, she will."

"Tell her I'm violently throwing up or something. Leave me alone."

There were a few more minutes of arguing until Avi gave up at last. He sighed and told me he'd cover for me before leaving the house. I'd asked him to tell Zora I was sick, and he'd agreed, then he was gone and I was alone.

The entirety of the school day I spent in bed, my mind wreaking havoc and turning all my thoughts sour. There was a fight between anxiety and depression up there. One side was telling me to get up out of bed and do everything I needed to do, the other was screaming at me to rot in bed. Both were equally loud, but fulfilling what I needed to do took a lot more effort, and the fear of failing kept me from even starting.

At 4 p.m., someone rang the doorbell. I left it alone until they continued for a good five minutes. Realizing they wouldn't give up, I dragged my heavy limbs out of bed and went to open the door.

"What is-" My words promptly trailed off when I saw who it was. "Zora."

"Hi, Naya."

There was something about Zora that made me feel lighter by just seeing her. My eyes softened for a split second until I saw Avi next to her. It instantly reminded me of the events of yesterday.

Zora took my hand and pulled me upstairs. I ignored the goosebumps forming on my skin and let her. She closed my bedroom door behind me and turned to look at me properly.