Lacey

31

I hate this.
This makeshift bed that feels like it's been stitched together with spite. This sterile, suffocating room where the air never moves. This plastic halo they keep locking around my head like I'm some fragile thing that might break if I breathe wrong.

I hate that I'm here.
That I'm not anywhere else.
That I'm not in my own bed, even though it barely was one.
That i'm not in my own space, under my own sheets, even if they were cold.

I know I'm going to throw up again.
I always do.
It's like my body is trying to reject every part of this treatment the same way my mind is rejecting everything else.

But the one thing I don't hate is how tired it makes me.

God, it's the kind of tired that lets me forget. That lets me sleep. And lately, sleep has been a stranger. Ever since I left Stefan's, I've been wide awake inside a nightmare. So I let this exhaustion cradle me. No pills, no whispers, no one checking on me every ten minutes like they think I'm going to vanish if they blink.

The quiet is a kind of mercy.
I can't imagine withdrawals without rest.
I'm sleeping most of the time and i'm still overwhelmed.
Always.

Like the volume on everything is cranked up too loud. My skin feels like a thousand needles. My clothes feel too heavy. My hair feels like it's strangling me and I can't breathe, not really. And the worst part is the people around me—their worry is thick and loud and vibrating like a second heartbeat in the room.

No one tells you depression feels like noise.
That sadness can scream, even in silence.

I'm sick.
Physically, sure, this treatment is hell. Fever, nausea, headaches that make me want to bang my head against the wall just to feel something else.

But it's the mental part that I don't know how to handle.
I've never handled it before.

The questions come like waves, and I let them drown me because I'm too tired to swim.

Why did Stefan treat me like that in the end? Why did he suddenly seem to care so much? Why did i enjoy it? Was that love? Was it pity? Was that all I get for what I did to Mama?

I feel myself falling into the same loop again when I hear Nisha's chair scrape back. I look up at her and realize that i had no idea she was here. I want to ask her how long she's been here, waiting for me to stop staring blankly at the wall, but no words come out. She doesn't say anything, either, just leaves. i hear her close the door softly as i stare at the spot she was just sitting in, a few beats later, there's Killian. His footsteps are always heavier when he's angry.

The door slams.
He doesn't bother softening the blow like Nisha.
I don't even flinch.

He sees me, my blank expression, my lack of fight, and I see it hit him like a punch to the gut. He strides over, grabs my arm, not rough, not gentle, just enough to make me look at him.

"Look at me, Lacey." His voice is steel wrapped in something gentle. "You can't keep shutting down like this. You have to deal with it, whatever it is. It's eating you alive and it's pitiful to watch"

His grip tightens just enough to let me feel his frustration. The helplessness underneath it.

I look at him and I think, maybe this is what drowning looks like from the outside. Maybe I'm already gone and he's just trying to find a pulse. Maybe that's why he's so desperate.

"I don't know how," I whisper. His grip loosens. His eyes shift. Something in him softens, and it makes me ache. Killian isn't supposed to be soft. It makes my breathing go ragged and my voice quiver.
"I don't know how to make it stop hurting."

His voice is quieter now. "Make what stop hurting?"

"All of it," I say.
And it comes out like a confession I never meant to speak.
The kind you whisper in church when you think God might finally be listening.

A tear falls. I don't wipe it. What's the point?

He sighs, sits down, and pulls me into his lap like I'm something precious. Like I haven't been breaking in plain sight. His hands cup my face like I'm a book he's halfway through and trying to memorize.

His thumb brushes my cheekbone.
"I don't know how to make it stop hurting, baby," he says. "i don't know..." he trails off. Like he's not used to not knowing what to do. He's not used to not having a solution.

I lean into him to tell him it's okay. He's not supposed to know how to take way pain. He's supposed to know how to inflict it. Our foreheads touch. His fingers tangle gently in my hair, and it's the only thing anchoring me to now. To here.

It's quiet, finally.
And in that silence, something blooms.

"Lacey," he says. "You can't do this anymore."

I nod, slow. Like my body agrees before my mind can catch up.

"You need to want to feel better," he tells me, eyes locked on mine. "I can't take away the pain if you won't help yourself. Yeah?"

I nod again. And something small flickers inside me. Hope, maybe. Or the ghost of it.

"I—" I pause, sniffle, bite the inside of my lip like it might ground me. "I don't remember what being happy feels like."

He brushes my hair behind my ear like he's trying to clear the path to something better.

And I think that maybe, I want to remember.

Hi guys!!
it was my birthday yesterday and i decided that it was finally time to see if im a better writer than i was half a year ago!

this book touches on some pretty dark things that maya faces in a own personal battle with depression and i think it's important to not gloss over those things but it's also been lowkey a rough time for me lately and im not sure what im gonna be able to write about without it being to much for me atm if that makes sense. chapters might be a bit less consistent than they were before my break <3