[completed] Nova Carter knows exactly what the next few years of her life will look like: she will work harder than anyone else (as she didn't get into New York University to slack off); she'll be keeping her head down and prioritizing getting her a...
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Chapter Twenty-eight | You Can Only Go in Pieces ♫You Can Only Go in Pieces by Shua
I wasn't doing great around the time I met Logan.
At the time I didn't realize it. It's one of those things that dawns on you after a few months, or a few years even. That life felt like something you were pulling yourself through, rather than something you were willingly and actively living.
Being a teenager and discovering who you are is a struggle in itself. Having a disability and no friends (or social skills) on top of that made me feel even more isolated from everyone else. Mom always said I was lucky to have two older siblings who went through everything before I did, but I never experienced it that way. If anything, it made me feel even more alone, seeing them hit all these milestones and failing when I tried to do the same.
It wasn't just them. It was my classmates getting their drivers licenses, but school telling me they didn't want to teach me for safety reasons. And it was wanting to get Lasik surgery, but the clinic turning me away for the same reason. And it was failing at physical education, needing help with small, thin matches in the lab during biology, having my mom tie my hair each morning because my hands wouldn't allow me to, dropping drinks in the cafeteria because those same hands shook too much to carry a tray (and then just skipping lunch because I had nobody to carry it for me).
I felt like I was being rejected everywhere I went. If not by another person, it was by my own body. The embarrassment just made it worse. I don't think my life ever felt heavier than it did, then, I don't think I've ever felt like more of a mistake.
When I sank into that feeling of rejection and humiliation, I started to wonder what the point of anything was. The homework I was doing, the food I'd eat (or refused to eat), the conversations I wasn't having. Why would I go to school if it was obvious I'd never amount to the same things as my peers? Why would I get out of bed if the day would feel so heavy, if I'd once again force my parents to help me all the time, if nobody would notice if I just lied there and held my breath?
It didn't take long before my grades tanked. My parents, who thought I'd just been burned out, made up all sorts of excuses for me. They'd say that I was physically and mentally exhausted and that I'd worked so hard for so many years, I needed rest for a few days. But days turned into weeks. Weeks melted into months.
It was something physical inside of me, I decided. Everything did have a tendency of circling back to my body. It was a heaviness that chained me to my bed. If I tried to stand, it would sink to my legs and if I tried to swallow the food Dad brought to my bedside, it would rise to my throat and pinch it shut. Ironically, it was also the first time in my entire life that my spasms subsided. They didn't even pull at the corner of my mouth, sit in my hollowed cheek. Maybe this being underneath my skin felt bad for me. Or maybe it felt like its work was done, now that I'd given up on trying to fight it.
