Resist: To Love is To Suffer

Chapter Three

Three weeks had passed since graduation, each day exactly the same as the one before it. I dragged my sad ass out of bed at 4am, ran 8 miles on the treadmill, stood beneath a scalding hot shower until I was cooked a perfect medium rare, and then returned to my bed to rot. It had been two weeks since I'd turned on do not disturb, then eventually leaving the battery to die. It had been two weeks since my last attempt to fill the sinkhole in my chest with the shy blond I'd prayed was the answer to my heartache. Whatever magic had existed a few weeks ago had been fleeting, a perfect storm of reckless celebration and rabid teenage hormones, and as quickly as she'd woven her spell over me it had shattered. I was stupid to have thought a girl would be the answer, though. I'd been trying to drown out thoughts of Naomi in casual hook ups for the last two years, and each time my only success was realizing how much deeper the fantasy went than I'd previously thought. Growing up, I was taught that love is this glorious and beautiful feeling, that it became the filter you would view everything else through. No one had told me about the devastating emptiness when it was unattainable. No one had told me it was an incurable disease, infiltrating every part of your psyche until you are left eviscerated in agony.

I had spent endless hours analyzing what I felt, and if I actually felt it or if I was just mentally fucked. Did I grow up with enough affection from my own mother? Did I hate the idea of being vulnerable so much that I chose someone I knew I could never have to project those feelings onto? Was I trying to sabotage my longest and strongest platonic relationship by doing the unforgivable, just so that I was in control of when I lost him? Did I fear people's opinions, or just being abandoned by them? Did I just need an authority figure to tell me I was doing a good enough job? Every possible explanation felt like I was gaslighting myself into thinking I was the problem, I was the broken one, I was the one who deserved to be gutted for feeling something that everyone else got to experience untethered.

I pulled a pillow over my head, silently screaming until my lungs were empty and aching for air. Why did it have to be her? Why did I have to be the one to trip and fall into a shitstorm of emotion I couldn't begin to understand? My heart had been replaced by a bottomless pit, an ugly gaping wound in my chest, and yet it's phantom still beat for her. It beat in unspoken words, each more desperate and longing than the last, each carrying the sweet cadence of her voice.

A knock on my bedroom door caught my attention, a muffled but familiar voice following, "Five seconds 'til I kick the door down. This ghosting everyone thing is bullshit. Open. The. Damn. Door."

I sighed and tossed the pillow from my face before sitting up, "It's open. What do you want?"He cracked the door before peering around it, "Maybe to see my bestest bro? Maybe to ask where the fuck my thank you card is? I have options." He looked at me then around at my room with a twisted expression, somewhere between disappointment and anger. "Oh, so it's bad bad."

"That obvious?" I flopped back onto the bed and pulled the blanket over my face. If he was going to make me talk, I wasn't going to look at him while I did it.

"Finally convinced Mamma to let me in. She made excuses for you for a bit, I think me freaking out then freaked her out. You kinda have a lot of us fucked up at the moment, to be honest." His voice was closer, and then I heard the soft creak of my desk chair settling beneath him. "You talk to anyone yet?" My silence was answer enough for him to continue, "Are you going to?" And again, silence. "You want to come kick a ball around and sweat out this sad boy bullshit?"

"If I could sweat it out, I would have. I'm running 8 damn miles a day and can't even get a hint of runner's high. It's bullshit."

Ky spun the chair slowly, the wood creaking with each rotation. "Sounds like stage 4 sad boy-itis. You'll probably just die."