WHEN BEAUTY NO LONGER EXISTS

7

a/n: please understand that im so sad that it feels like my stomach is going to fall the fuck out, every goddamn minute, and im so upset that it aches like a major bitch every single time i breathe, and i can't go a day without hallucinating or freaking out or crying tears that are not sad but are just angry and finished, and i can completely feel myself being molded into something rough and unapproachable again, and im starting to get so upset that i feel like i can go back to the way i used to be. and it's starting to really scare me.

anyways, you didn't come here for my sob story, but for tyler's. even though they're the exact same thing. enjoy.

***

"You've got to stand up, baby. You've got to help me here."

Josh's voice was patient and worried where it came across in my ear, his face tucked near my neck while he worked to throw my arms around his shoulders. I offered little to no assistance in the matter at all, save for a blank look piercing down behind his shoulder, as if something was standing back there and entertaining me, as opposed to giving me a blank canvas for my mind to paint things I never wanted to see again. Making me feel like my lungs refused to take in any more oxygen.

It had been a solid, sad, lonely week since that dinner Josh and I had with my oblivious parents, and despair coursed through me like a heavy heat wave. Insufferable and stifling. Much too close, surrounding, and closing in, on the fragile light of my ribs and caking my soft lungs and grabbing at my slow, poorly beating heart, constantly making sure I knew who I belonged to. Constantly making sure I knew that I wasn't mine anymore.

Josh was trying to get me up and onto my weak legs, off our bed and into the shower, but the feeling of helplessness took it upon itself to rise like a surging ocean in my stomach. It was scorching water threatening to move up past my nose. I didn't want to move. I didn't want to speak. Blink, think, be awake, be alive. I wanted to lay where I was, stare at the wall as if it was the prettiest picture I'd ever damn seen, and rot away. Let the mattress take me with hands just as strong and demanding as before.

And nothing seemed to make it feel all that better, or seemed to heal anything. I was one big open wound.

The the cat didn't help, or Josh. Not the small visit my parents gave, either. Nothing. I saw the world as something that didn't want me, anymore, and I wanted to convince myself that I truly didn't want it.

"Tyler, honey, please." He said, moving backwards to look at me, his hands held in front of him, like he was waiting for me to grab onto them and tell him all the secrets of the world I knew, that he didn't seem to know at all. "You have to shower. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna let you sit here."

The problem was packed into the fact that I lacked all energy for the shit everyone else seemed to be able to do so easily. They made it look effortless, taking their time to remind me how trapped I was. Whenever Josh went to work, and I was allowed time to unravel away from a worried audience, I would sit near the window and watch everything move along without me. People were walking and moving and eating outside and talking on the phone, and being human beings, and I could hardly do any of that. Just because of something I should've been able to help. To stop. Just because I couldn't remember how to call anyone, and just because panic gripped at my lungs like they belonged to it, and just because the thought to run away, or do anything besides stand there as if I'd forgotten exactly how to use my feet and my legs and my will, vanished like I'd snapped it away.

My throat felt dry enough to crack by the time I'd actually tried to give him a response. "Just let me sit here."

My face had healed a bit, with the bruises turning more to the color of my skin, melting down against my cheekbones and working to blend in to what was there before the entire incident. Josh looked at me like I wasn't someone he could hardly glance at, and I watched his hand move up towards me, thinking I was prepared for it. But, I wasn't, and my body jerked when his fingers came into contact with my skin. His entire face shattered like it was his reflection, and not him.