Birds of a Feather

Chapter 7: Everything was too Heavy

Trigger warning: this chapter will contain depictions of serious depression and (a few brief mentions of) suicidal thoughts and some descriptions of self h@rm. If these things may trigger you, I would advise you to skip this chapter (you won't really be missing anything, most of this chapter is moping and grieving and a brief explanation of the dynamics between Alec, Matteo, Idona, and Esme)

The covers were so heavy. They always were. I didn't know if I could move them if I wanted to. I don't think so. Sometimes, I tried to leave. I tried to get up and walk out of the room, but the covers were so heavy. They were heavy when she walked in that day too, screaming and yelling like always. She was pissed, like always. She stared at me and I knew that, deep down, she was praying for me to get up. I tried. I didn't move. I couldn't move most days. She didn't understand. For a minute, she looked so defeated, but this was Idona we were talking about, and she could've tunneled through a mountain if she set her mind to it. She squared her shoulders and hardened her eyes, and then grabbed me by the shirt. She pulled me out of bed, saying something about her parents being gone. I wanted to hold her and tell her she would be fine, but my arms weighed too much. I weighed too much.

I couldn't move even as she dragged me down the stairs, cussing the whole time. I still couldn't move as she shoved me in her car and reached across me to buckle me. I still couldn't move as she waited for her dogs and cat to get in. The world was so heavy. My eyelids were too heavy and my arms were too heavy and my head was too heavy. Everything weighed ten times more than it had before Alec died. I hated thinking about his death, so naturally it was all I thought about. Thinking about him made everything heavier. I couldn't even cry anymore. My heart and soul had been ripped apart. I'd lost the ability to cry or laugh or really smile. Everything was too heavy.

I watched the road pass us by. My eyes were open but I couldn't truly see anything around me. The colors seemed duller than they'd been before. They bled together like a messy painting. I hated it. I hated the tiny bit of sunlight landing on my face and I hated the cold air slapping me in the face from Irina's AC. I wanted to turn it off, I really did, but my hand was just too heavy. Everything was. It all was weighing me down. But the worst of all, was of course, my thoughts. They ran in circles, chewing me out for everything I did and then weeping for Alec. They hated anything and everything and missed Alec more than a baby misses their blankets. All parts of me missed Alec more than I ever thought possible. I was in his sweater right now. I never took it off. I was pretty sure it had developed its own smell, and not a good one. The only time I let anyone coax me out of it was when Idona forced me to shower. She would take the sweater and put it in the wash while I showered and then I would wait to lay down until I had it again. The sweater and an old bottle of cologne were the only things I had left of him. I sniffed the cologne but I was always too scared that the second I sprayed it, all the memories of Alec would waft away with the scent. I was terrified that when the bottle emptied, all signs of Alec would be gone. Idona had refused to let her parents change his room. Their room. In fact, she'd moved out of the room she'd shared with Alec since they moved to London just so nothing would be changed from the day he died. Earlier, I would stand in the center of the room as if his old books and clothes would bring him back to life. When I would start to cry, I would run out of fear that my tears on the carpet would tear away Alec. Even with all my precautions, he was still slipping away from me.

I needed to make sure I wouldn't forget his face or his voice, I had to be sure. So, when I saw Esme's camera on her nightstand one day when I was visiting, I stole it while she was in the bathroom. I took it home with me and hit it in my room at Idona's house. I would've watched the videos if the world wasn't so heavy. But my comforter had always been to heavy to move. I dropped out of school and just laid in bed as the days passed by until one day, it was a year since Alec died. I wouldn't have known the day, had Idona not come home from Hogwarts to tell me. She'd forced me out of bed that day and we sat at the table around us, the heaviness hanging over our heads and threatening to swallow us whole. I thought I might've died from the pain that day. It was too much, threatening to pull me under. I wished it did. I often wished that I would die and join him, but I couldn't even muster up the energy to kill myself. My body was just too heavy to lift out of bed. Sometimes, I wondered how I would do it. Would I jump off her roof? Slit my throat or wrist with one of her kitchen knives? Drown myself in her bathtub? The truth was, all of these always involved her, so I could never follow through. I could never do that to Idona. It was bad enough that I was staying with her everyday, forcing her to take care of me and my heaviness. It was bad enough that I was the reason her brother wasn't here anymore. I killed her brother, the least I could do was stick around for her. Idona grieved in a somehow more productive way than me. As always, Idona channeled all her emotions into being pissed. She threw shit around and broke everything until somehow she got a job renovating houses, often taking axes to walls where two rooms would be combined into one. She worked there from seven to three everyday, then she came home and took care of her parents.