it was always her - billie eilish

bed rot

two weeks into the breakup and id completely absorbed myself in school and work. no more time to leave the dorm, just me, my computer, the daily outing for a photo shoot, and my bed which was covered in empty beer cans and fruit gummy wrappers. depression always lingered with me but when it hit full force it was nearly life ruining. i only ever saw my classmates and arabella, the rest of my time was spent avidly avoiding everyone i knew.

bella had dropped off the rest of syds things and now we were just waiting for syd to get mine together. she was dragging the process out, sending her friends to harass me, and making account after account to reach out even though most just got lost in the floods of messages i received. i heard she'd been seeking me out on campus too which added another anxiety to my list, i'd wondered what she'd even say when she finally found me. i didn't understand how a person could be so persistent with one thing when it had been turned down so many times, i mean at some point the rejection had to get too embarrassing to continue? maybe that's just me or maybe some people are just too spoiled to take no for an answer.

i'd avoided billie too, not intentionally really, but just because i wasn't choosing to see anyone, rather only interacting with the people i really had to. if i had it my way i'd be hiding out somewhere where no one would ever come bother me.

I was probably a full week ahead in all of my classes by the time arabella was sick of the state of the room and the lack of my actual presence within it. she'd started to throw goldfish from across the room, repeating my name in an endless loop.

"can i help you?" i turn slightly, my eyes tired from staring at the computer screen in front of me.

"oh my god... it speaks??" she throws one more for good measure, it nails me straight in the forehead.

"haha." i rub the middle of my forehead "what do you want from me?"

"i want both of us to get up, clean our little depression pit, and get the fuck out of this room."

"and i want a million dollars."

"no seriously, your depression is rubbing off on me and if we both get down bad depressed... god i don't even want to think about it. an endless loop of bad bitches being sad." she throws herself up out of bed and rummages through the tub of cleaning supplies in the closet "it's a small room we can get this shit clean as new in like an hour! plus i think it will make you feel a little better right?" she throws a trash bag my way and grabs one for herself "beer cans first, the RA will lose her shit if she sees this."

she drags me out of bed

"That sounds like a lot of effort." i groan slightly, turning back to the homework in front of me "i'm trying to catch up on school, we can do it tomorrow."
"By the looks of it you're halfway done with finishing up the homework for the semester. I know you're tired, but WE will feel better if we get it done. swear."

"is any of this negotiable?" a shower was needed though, and to some extent i know it would make me feel so much better.

"no. go shower."

i shower, one that was more emotion inducing than i'd expected it to be. I guess breakups usually entail those few breakdown showers where your thoughts are inescapable and the load of repressed feeling you'd been avoiding crashes down on you with each drop of water. maybe it was all apart of bella's plan, get out the emotion, finally take the shower i'd needed for days, and desperately try to clean the room to the best of her ability before i came back to protest. I didn't understand why i was so sad, to an extent i knew the end was coming, i was miserable, unable to do anything without some sort of backlash from her. The blow of being cheated on more times than you can count on your fingers was however a devastating and humiliating blow. Entrusting someone with the most buried parts of yourself for years, only to be completely violated in the deepest form. The people around me understood what I was going through but not deeply enough for me to feel seen, everyones been cheated on but, and maybe this is a self centered way of thinking, but they didn't understand the difference between being cheated on once versus being one of 20 girls your partner is seeing. i wanted to be small, i didn't want anyone to look at me ever again let alone acknowledge my existence. just fucking humiliated.