When The Time Comes

chapter 21; Lib

tw: dark thoughts in the first couple paragraphs including suicidal thoughts and SA. Skip to 7th paragraph.

It's funny. You spend so much of your life wasting your younger years, wishing you'd die sooner rather than later. I wished for that a lot as a kid. Maybe more strongly as a teenager.

Now that the stag mail tells me that I got what I wished for, I'm chasing after life like I've never wanted anything else. Despite this making me one of the biggest hypocrites on the planet, it also makes me wonder if I'd done something to cause all of this.

Could it be possible that one decision, linked to other nano decisions, a butterfly effect like the movie, led to me getting that damned letter. It's the same rabbit hole I dug when Andrew did what he did. Was there something I could have done differently? Was this my fault?

  Cutting my hair in the fluorescent lighting of the hotel bathroom with scissors I got from a vending machine grooming kit was the most control I've felt in weeks. I fucked up a little on the right side, chopping too high which the hood helped with. It didn't matter though. Of course it didn't- not when I was going to be dead in a few short weeks.

Control. That's what everything eventually melts down to. Most of what we do is to feel like we're in control. Like we aren't just spiraling balls of hay in a mid-western movie.

Andrew took a lot from me. But the thing I resented him the most for was stripping me of the control I rightfully had over my body. It's difficult to come back from something like that. If there is such a thing.

The more I think about it, I think I followed Omar here because I had hope that I'd find some of that lost control here. Even if it was just two days. I still had hoped for more than this which is why I've decided to ditch Omar, the same way Ben ditched both of us. We tried but now it's time to face this shit alone.

I sit on a park bench, close to the bridge where every few minutes, people walk by. Some walk their dogs while some stroll with friends. After a while, I stop watching them and look out at the water that glimmers like a few hundred diamonds floating on it.

  A subtle weight on the bench makes me turn my head. Omar sits down, setting his backpack on the ground between both his legs.

"Why are you here?" I finally ask.

"Because I don't want to be leaving you behind like this," he replies. "And because I think I figured out why you're doing this."

"You do?"

"Is this because of Andrew?"

"No this doesn't have anything to do with him, why?" I say brashly.

"I've seen the news articles, Lib," he turns towards me.

He cuts me off before I can say anything else.

"The cops know it was you who stabbed him," Omar continues. "You're scared of being recognized. That's why you cut your hair."

"Omar you should go."

"No fuck this," he shakes his head. "You don't need to stay in fuckin' Baltimore because of this."

"The cops will know if I go back home," I clench my teeth.

"Then don't go home, crash at my place but Lib, they don't get to keep you away from your family."

"Obviously this isn't a choice for me," I say through my teeth. "I can't bring this all to my mom. She's already struggling as it is."

"She might already know," he says in a low voice.