Gaslighter

39

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

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2022

          Stephen Delaroux being on his deathbed really helped put things into perspective.

          For one, it reminded me of how abhorrently selfish of a creature I was for being so preoccupied with myself, my relationship woes, and my personal problems when a close family friend was dying. Even as the days slipped away into memories and March warmed up my weary bones, which should help me feel better, there was no evidence pointing towards a definite recovery—either for Stephen or for myself, but the damage done to both our hearts was vastly different. Though I could argue my heartstrings had been so strained they'd ruptured and suffered potentially permanent danger, I could still go on with my life and appear normal, albeit 'melancholic', according to my parents. 

          Stephen hadn't lucked out that way.

          Second, I spent some time living under the illusion that I could somehow change my perception of reality if I just made the conscious effort to force myself into believing my parents and my best friends. In all honesty, why I had even considered giving them a chance to prove to be right and what had prompted such an impulsive decision out of someone who was as obsessive and prone to rumination as myself, yet there I was.

          For a while, at least.

          It was a difficult and awkward position to find myself in, to put it mildly.

          I was being confronted with two conflicting versions of reality and wasn't sure which of them was the true one—or if there even was a true one. Both of them could easily be false, influenced by whatever the people responsible for them believed and wanted me to believe, and I couldn't help but feel used. I couldn't help but feel like I was being mindlessly tossed from side to side like a tennis ball, requiring other people to tell me how to feel, what to think, what to believe, who to trust, who had been manipulating me all along, because I simply wasn't capable of completing such complicated cognitive tasks on my own.

          It couldn't have all been a lie. Some of it, no matter how small, had to have been real, and it had felt real within the depths of my soul. It had always been real to me and from me—I'd been genuine all along, loving Chase like I'd been born to do that one thing right, no matter how idiotic it sounded. I knew it sounded pathetic, like I would never amount to anything if I couldn't have him, if I couldn't love him, if I couldn't believe he loved me, but how was I supposed to reframe and reshape everything I'd believed in for nearly four years in the blink of an eye? Why was I expected to do it with ease, too?

          The ruminative, repetitive state I'd locked myself in was exhausting even for myself, the only person who would ever be permanently stuck with my own thoughts, and part of me wanted to find someone else to talk to. However, there was no one out there who would listen how I wanted them to, and I couldn't risk getting someone else involved.

          Opening up to the people I had spoken to so far had been the greatest gamble of my life, far more dangerous than pursuing Chase and trapping him in a relationship. I had broken his trust by shattering the vow of silence, risking everything we'd built together, risking his career and reputation, and there was a semblance of comfort in knowing I'd be protected regardless, but it didn't mean I was oblivious to what would happen to him if the truth were to ever come out.

          There were sprinkles of it all over my senior project, the one thing I'd found I could devote my heart to when I couldn't do it with and to him, and the words had spilled out of my fingers onto a document before I could halt it. He would read it and recognize himself, recognize us in those words, but I had to present something, and I could never allow myself to conclude my college career without being genuine and faithful to myself. I wasn't great at faking my emotions, even with all the suppression they'd been a target of these past few years, and it would be obvious I wouldn't be speaking from my heart if I chose to pretend nothing had happened.