Miss, Do I Know You?

23 - Saturday, January 9

It frightened me to see how much I had deteriorated in just a few days. While they dashed onwards, I found myself with only so much energy to go around; I felt as if time was about to run out. Winter break had already melted away, but I remained at the apartment, straining to muster the courage to step into the world beyond us two. I just couldn't will myself to leave the little bubble I had created in my head. As if I had slipped into a strange episode, my senses dulled and my energy sapped, no trace of any intoxicant left. I felt like half a person, a shadow of myself trailing behind somewhere.

Alex showed such selflessness and patience with me that it overwhelmed me with so much guilt that I didn't know what to do with myself. Despite her own responsibilities and commitments, she was robbing her own time to help me cope with my misery. Listened to all the bitterness I had bottled up. Saw through me, past the words I said and the ones I didn't. Sat with me through the silent cries at three in the morning, and the hours spent with no words at all. Continued to take Benji to and from school each day, spent her afternoons with him, and managed her work. 

That was what really got under my skin: having another person carry my weight. I had blown my own life to bits, and still, she insisted on salvaging what was left and mending it, even when I didn't ask and even when I didn't deserve it. There was something in her that just refused to give up on me, this thing I couldn't quite understand but was oddly grateful for all the same when I allowed myself to be, even if it felt an incredibly selfish thought to admit.

It was a strange dichotomy, to feel both grateful and guilty, appreciated and inappreciable all at once. On the days when some daylight seeped into me, I took pleasure in the mundane things like cooking and cleaning and doing the schoolwork Alex brought from the school. But on other days, over and over again, I crawled under blankets and shut myself out from the world. And over and over again, she was the one pulling me out of the bedcovers not abandoned for the whole day, dragging me outside for our evening walks through the neighboring forest, forcing food down my throat, and holding onto whatever shred of sanity I had left.

That usually did work. Her efforts to keep me occupied miraculously also kept me grounded in a semblance of a healthy state of mind, denying any ground for anxieties, but it was when she left me on my own that I began to feel myself losing. It would always take a little extra effort to contain it, to hold it together then. It made me ache with shame, for I felt selfish for relying on her so much, for not being able to snap out of it myself. After all the dust settled, there was just her.

It took a while for my mind to wake up to a morning where the world wasn't drearier or uglier, where I felt okay on the surface, though the nights were still hard. Terribly white-knuckled, feeling like I braced for something that I didn't quite understand, except its raw discomfort prickling against my skin. Sometimes, I would wake up to random noises, and sometimes, it was troubling dreams, if I managed to sleep long enough to have those. I had to force myself to choke it with a pillow shoved over my head, blocking out everything. Most nights, it never felt enough. I was too tired to talk, too drained to listen, too dejected to be okay, so I found myself avoiding my own thoughts. It was just a matter of retreating back to where the clouds felt slightly lighter, their edges known, and memories not so saddening.

Tonight was one of those nights. I felt like a rat on a wheel as my thighs ground into the cushions, and the couch protested. My pillow felt made of cement, and my bones felt like they were playing a tormenting game of reshuffling as I wrestled for a comfortable position. My mind raced with a million thoughts that kept me tense until I welcomed music into my ears and mentally reached for oblivion that felt like nothing but a worn-out dream.

I continued to blend into the shadows until I spotted Alex quietly creeping into the apartment. Her nocturnal tendencies had also not escaped my notice; she was often up at odd hours of nights and mornings, working at the kitchen island, only the scratches of her pen or the soft clack of a keyboard piercing through the silence. I'd catch her drawing or reading books in bed more often than not, and there were times she disappeared without warning in the middle of the night, only to come back a few hours later. Like that night.