Ride the Waves | Chris Brown

23. Deceit

Chapter 23: Deceit

One week later.

Nodus Tollens. It's the realisation that the plot of your life doesn't make sense to you anymore—that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don't understand, that don't even seem to belong in the same genre—which requires you to go back and reread the chapters you had originally skimmed to get to the good parts, only to learn that all along you were supposed to be in this deep dark space, where the light and tranquility seems so far away.

It had been exactly one week since I sat in that car with Chris' father. One week since he had revealed to me all that I didn't know. It's taken me a whole seven days to build up enough courage to talk to Chris about it, all to no avail. I couldn't even bring myself to discuss it. How do I even bring the topic into conversation, more so did Chris ever want me to know about his mental state. My minds telling me no. Of course he didn't, otherwise he would have found a way to etch it into a conversation between the two of us himself, without me having to find out against his consent.

I don't want to look at Chris any different than I used to, but it's so hard now that I know what I know. I feel like I have to walk on eggshells around him, which I never wanted to be the case. What if I say something that upsets him? I don't want to be on the receiving end of his lashing out and like he's told me before, he has a bad habit of lashing out on the people he loves. He knows it's a poor excuse but I'm realising now that he just can't help it.

I stood by the window in the study of my favourite section of the library, leaning over the ledge to peer at the quiet and serene nature outside. I wouldn't say I was in here hiding from Chris but I was spending most of my lunch break coming into the library and failing to inform anyone on my whereabouts. Chris more than likely has noticed my distance from him as well as everyone else I associate myself with, but he's probably concluded it as me simply wanting alone time.

See the problem is, ever since Chris' father had let it be known to me that there was more to Chris than I ever realised, the thought of my own father ceased to leave my memory. I had spent so long forcing the thought of him to the back of my mind, and as of late I've been finding it extremely hard to do so.

My father was diagnosed with manic depression when I was just six years old.

At such a young age with my naive and innocent mindset, I couldn't comprehend why daddy was always yelling at mommy or why one day daddy would be fine but then the next he would bitch and moan at anyone or anything with a heartbeat. All my small mind knew was that dad always made mom cry and I hated him for it.

When I was twelve I figured out what my mom and dad would always argue about, but I played dumb. My defence mechanism to avoid getting upset and being depressed was to be denial. To just pretend that everything was all good and well even when I knew deep down that my family was slowly falling apart right before my eyes. At that age I also figured out that my dad was not mentally stable. It took some of the hate away because I knew he couldn't control his outbursts or his irritability, but it definitely was no excuse.

I had caught him swallowing pills when I got up to use the restroom one late evening. He didn't notice I was there, and the shock of seeing him downing dozens of pills froze me in my spot in the hallway. I don't think he ever figured out that I knew and saw what I had seen that night. I looked through his medicine cabinet after he had left and fumbled across the orange pill bottle; half empty.