The Citrus Syndrome

21 ; bed

Bed

Natalie

Every emotion inside me is bursting painfully against my heart, trying to worm their way up to my brain. My chest aches with them, my heart burning as they flare against my ribs.

Isaiah looks over every few minutes and asks, "You alright?" or "You need anything?" even though I never respond.

We're driving, now. It's night, the velvety expanse of the starlit sky covering us like a bowl over a trapped spider. Even though I understand that the paranoia is a byproduct of the disease, I can't seem to escape the persistent fear pulsing in the back of my head. There are so many things to worry about on the road: sick people driving, healthy but tired people driving (like Isaiah), sleeping drivers, animals crossing the street, power outages. What if the streetlamps spontaneously clicked off, leaving them in an invisible tableau of panic and inevitable death?

I hate knowing that I'm going insane. I can't be sure if anything is real. What if this is all one extended delusion, set to end with some horrible accident? Worse, what if Isaiah isn't real, what if he is a figment of my imagination? What if I am only imagining him driving and I am really in front of the wheel?

"Nattie, you're hyperventilating again," Isaiah says. He looks over, his eyebrows knit together with concern. "Take a deep breath, Babe. We're going to get help."

I don't know exactly where we're going. I think Zay might have told me, but I forgot.

I feel his hand settle over my back, momentarily calming the demons waging war inside me. I groan in relief, letting my head loll to the side as though I could catch a little sleep in between the moments of pain.

Isaiah glances at me, tracing small circles through my shirt. "That feel good?" he asks.

I do my best to nod. He looks back to the road, slipping his hand under my shirt. I shiver, wondering when the last time anyone touched the bare skin of my back like this. Zay was probably the last one before he moved. I close my eyes, savoring his touch.

But then, the hand on my back becomes bonier, clammier, rougher. My eyes snap open, revealing that I am no longer in the car; I am in bed.

I'm not in bed with Zay, though. I don't realize right away who is beside me. Then I realize that I recognize the knobby hand, the unconcerned teeth raking over my neck. I am in bed with Bryan, my ex-boyfriend.

His hand doesn't stay on my back. It strays upward, unlatching my bra. I feel his other hand on my stomach, pulling my shirt over my head.

I try to scream, but no sound comes out. I am silenced by his tongue intruding into my mouth, prying my lips apart to trespass on the back of my throat. I feel like I could vomit. His hands are all over me, his fingernails digging painfully into my skin.

My body aches with dread. The worst thing is, this is all familiar: the pain, the nausea, the resentment. But now it is accompanied by something new, which is pure panic. This can't happen. It can't. I can't let it.

His hands find their way past the waistband of my pants. I shiver, trying to push him away but to no avail. His mouth moves down over my jaw, then my neck, then my chest. I feel tears starting in my eyes, angry tears, tired tears. There's nothing I can do. I'm helpless.

The year I spent with Bryan was one of the worst of my life. We met in April and moved in together in May. At first, it wasn't so bad. He had his flaws: wouldn't answer my texts until hours or days later, drank a little too much at parties, refused to take my studies seriously. Still, I was desperate and when he asked to move in, I said yes without hesitation. I was afraid he would leave me if I said no.

When he moved in, though, another of our problems came to the surface. I could no longer ignore the way he disregarded my limits, my wants and needs, the way he would keep going if I told him to stop. It didn't matter what it was. I could ask him to stop drinking and he would open another beer. I could ask him to turn off the TV so I could concentrate on my homework, and he would turn it up another notch. I could tell him to stop touching me, to get his drunk hands out of my pants, but he didn't listen.

He started hitting me around July. I told myself it was the liquor; nothing personal. But it happened more and more often. Soon, I became afraid to talk to him. Anything could make him angry. I never seriously entertained the notion of kicking him out or going to the police -- I was too scared for that. At the moment, I was alive and managing. I came to know my way around his anger and I could predict it. I didn't want to put myself in a situation where he was angry to such a degree that I wasn't prepared for the pain.

It only got worse as that awful year progressed. Soon, I could no longer tell myself it wasn't personal. He started abusing me verbally, too. He yelled at me, cursed at me, called me ugly and fat and every other insult he could think of. When he was mad, I was "bitch". When he was drunk, I was "pig". When he wanted sex, I was "babe", and if I dared to refuse I was "you stupid whore".

My life began its plummet to rock bottom around August. I was purging regularly and barely eating anything to begin with. I had begun cutting myself again, but only on the bottom of my calf; he didn't like my scars in places he would see them often like my arms. He said they made him sick. I started smoking around then, too, just to calm my nerves and quell the hunger eating away at my insides night and day. I cried my guts out every morning in the shower, but never anywhere that he might hear. My crying angered him.

I sought comfort where I could find it. On Fridays when Bryan went out with his friends, I always breathed a sigh of relief and made myself some tea which I would enjoy sip by sip, savoring the feeling of taking my time. Sometimes I would call Violet, one of the only friends I had left by that time, and she would come over to talk like we were still in highschool or just curl up on the couch and watch a movie.

But soon, that ended too. We had less and less in common with each passing day. She would propose a topic for conversation and I would only look pensively out the window, barely noticing her annoyed chant of, "Natalie! Nat? Natalie. Hello?" We couldn't watch movies after September because Bryan broke our TV in a drunken rage.

Vi asked me to come to her apartment where she and her boyfriend lived. "Come see the baby!" she would say. But I couldn't. I couldn't leave the apartment. I couldn't go anywhere but class (sometimes) and to the store (when I remembered). I was trapped.

Again, I am jolted away from the scene by a change in the hand on my back. It becomes warm and dry again, undoubtedly Isaiah's hand. I open my eyes to find darkness, then splotches of color, then black again. If anything, it looks like the scene is glitching out.

Suddenly, I understand. I can get away from this, from Bryan, from my past, from these awful hands on my body. If only I can pull away from this daydream, realize that it isn't real.

I close my eyes again, concentrating with every atom in my body on Isaiah. I think about the distinct leathery dryness of his palm, the vanilla-y musk of his scent, the deep, soft tone of his voice.

"Shh . . . It's not real, Nattie."

I open my eyes, endlessly relieved to find myself back in the car with Zay beside me, his warm hand caressing my cheek as the other grips the steering wheel. He glances away from the road to look at me, his eyes glazed with pity.

His hand slides down my neck and over my arm, landing in mine. He wraps his fingers around my palm. "Are you awake?" he asks. "We're almost there."

I can't answer, but I squeeze his hand as hard as I can. He feels like sureness, like sanity, like safety.