It's Cold Upstairs | ✔

(12) Downfall

I've made a mistake. Oh my god, I've made a terrible, TERRIBLE mistake.

M, I'm so, so, so, so sorry.

I'm so sorry.

I'm scared.

Everything was fine when I went to bed last night. M was gone. And I mean GONE gone. That part of my head was silent for the first time in... as long as I can remember. And that was weird, but I was okay. Okay enough. Still shaking a little, but okay. I went to bed, and everything was fine until I woke up again.

In the middle of the night.

Terrified about the end of the world, and M wasn't there to say we would be okay.

I'm not the one who will survive the end of the world. I don't have those skills. I mean, I have some of them because M stored them where we can both access them, but I don't have the mindset. I couldn't hunt. Couldn't hurt people. I wouldn't know where to start, what to do, how to protect people. I said I'd learn to protect myself, but it's not just myself; M would have protected my family, too. My siblings. Any friends I made.

But I'll be fine. I told myself I'd become that person.

And then I woke up this morning, and half my memories of grade one were gone.

That was one of M's years. I joked about it, half believed it, but it was real. They're gone, they're gone, they're gone, and they took their memories with them. Fuck you fuck you fuck you... I'm sorry. Please come back, M. Please come back. I don't want to lose those memories; my favorite teacher was in there. It was only the students that were terrible.

I can still remember the teacher. But her name is gone.

I can't remember her name.

I don't know how to lie anymore. I got up this morning, and mom asked me how I slept, and I tried to lie, and I couldn't. It came out all wrong and fake, and I didn't know what to do with my facial expression. I wasn't the one who learned how to lie. M was. It was one of their ways to protect us. Mom got all concerned and asked me questions for half the time I should have been eating breakfast, and ended up asking if I felt okay and if I needed to stay home from school today. I broke down crying and said yes.

So now it's just me and this journal, and it's just me, and I'm scared.

I can't lie anymore. Does that include white lies? I need those. What if someone tries to pick on me? M had a thing they did, where they just stared at people who picked on us, until those people went away. I hid when they were doing it. I've been reading their journal entries this morning, but they never explain how they do things. Just that they DO. Like manipulating people. Even in little ways, like making group projects easier, and making people like us, oh my god, was that one of them, too?

That was one of them.

That way of theirs, of evaluating people for safety... that was another.

I need those skills. I'm scared.

I can't be scared. I said I'd be someone who didn't need M. I'll just develop those skills myself. It'll be harder. But that's the price I'm paying now.

No, I wanted this. We—I'm better off without M. If I develop those skills, it'll be on my own terms, without all their dark ideas and weird ways of interacting. I'll gain those skills, and gain them better, and only use them where they benefit me. That's the difference between me and M. M tried to hold all their skills in a whole personality that had to come together with things like lying and survival, and I had to get rid of both in order to separate them. Now I can just get the one I need.