novaнd | one-sнoтs

✧ Depression ✧

Warnings: sad AU. controlling!James, and mentions of attempted suicide.

I got this story from this awesome poem from Slam Poetry. It breaks my heart to write a sad AU.
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Aleks' POV:

Every Thursday, I go to couples therapy with my James. He whispers in my ear to stay in bed for another day, presses his palm to my chest, afraid I'm going to escape the covers. As if I'd ever have the guts to actually leave him.

After I scrape myself out of the shower, I still smell like him. Like midnight panic attacks, like first name basis with the CVS pharmacists, like I'm not hungry I already had a rice krispies treat today. I smell of his cologne.

Our sessions with our therapists are fifty minutes. We spend that time restating the same issues to her. We've been on again off again, since high school, but this time it's been a solid year, that's gotta mean it's getting serious. I'm too afraid to leave him, I'm too afraid that I'll come crawling back to his command. He's all I have.

She asks about my appetite, well no I haven't been eating but he likes me skinny. Makes it easier for him to be big spoon, it's like I disappear in him, like his body swallows mine. So he can be all me, and I can be him. His property that he can toy around with and have authority over.

She asks if I've done anything with my friends lately. Not in a while we usually stay in. My friends are the third wheel, if we're out together. That's what happens when you've been with someone so long. Something about how they get tired of the towering he does?

((Zoloft is a depression helper pill.))

She asks if anything has changed since I started with the Zoloft, he digs his nails in the chair grits his teeth. She asks me again, he gets jealous but Zoloft treats me well, takes me to breakfast in the morning, feeds me french toast. He got mad though, something like cheating on him. Threatened to take out the scissors, so I threatened to take Zoloft even more, all of them, all at once.I almost did. I had them all in my hand, counted. There was 17 in hand.

She asks if that was the night my friend to me to the health center. Well yeah, but it was just one time and the nurse said no visitors, took Zoloft away from me. So we got to spend some quality time as a couple again. I couldn't stand it. I didn't say so though, I didn't want to upset him more than he already was.

Our therapist thinks I'm only with him because my father called my mother a whore, or because I still sometimes wish I were straight or because I've "never had a serious love life". She doesn't understand this is the most serious relationship I've ever had. One of the only relationships I've had. He never let me leave after that one time I tried.

I promise it's not controlling. He says he promises it'll get better. He says he will never leave me, and I will never leave him. He says it's because of the love.

She says times up come back next week, he mutters fine under his breath, slams the door on our way out.

Our therapist said that there have been improvements over the past few weeks. That he and I will probably always be together but that I'll be more independent soon. Lately, I've started thinking more about that. Mornings, when I wake up hungry, my body remembers how to leave the mattress on its own.

Feels his arms shrink from my waist for a few hours so I can; finish a poem, watch some TV, eat a sandwich, make the bed without crawling back in even when he says that without him I would be a gutted house scraped clean creaking and caving in.

Sometimes I still think he's right. But last week I stepped on the scale and gained three pounds. It's only three pounds but its all me. It's all me. Not him.

He promises me we will never part.
He never breaks his promises.