Dear Rabbit

Chapter 26

The first few days everything was quiet. We were planning for a funeral. I didn't go to school; Dori did. She wanted to, she wanted the normalcy. I thought it would just end with me crying in a bathroom toilet. I didn't want to speak, but Norman did, and while part of me felt bad for not talking to him for the first days, I just couldn't. I kept replaying the image of finding her over and over in my head and it was simply too much for me to talk about her with someone. To talk about anything. It was like my voice was gone and if I didn't talk it didn't hurt, if I didn't think about it, it was just a numb feeling in my chest not a stabbing pain. So I did everything to avoid that pain. But, I knew I had to talk to people. Friends. Family. I knew that I had to do this because I couldn't avoid it forever no matter how much I might have wanted to. It wouldn't help if I did.

Stiles knocked for me 3 days after it all had happened. I could hear him talking to Norman at the door. Apologies, condolences. I could hear Norman thanking him and opening the door for him to come in, offering him a drink. You know that anxious feeling when you're simply waiting for something to happen? The tension of waiting and knowing it will happen, but just when? That's what it felt like waiting for Stiles to reach my room because of part of me knew that he and Scott could get me to talk about anything and part of me knew that seeing him would bring the pain to the forefront, that an apology would only make me cry. It made it worse that he was there, that he had been there that whole night because he knew what state I had been in, a state I wish I could forget, but knew I couldn't.

The way Stiles knocked on my door was the way he always knocked, lightly rapping his knuckles against the wood and opening it slightly to poke his head in. I probably looked a sight. I hadn't really gotten dressed in days, I changed from one pair of pajamas to another, my hair I knew needed a brush and I was probably tired looking because I'd been struggling to sleep recently

"Can I come in?" I nodded at him. I didn't want to speak, I was scared what would come out if I did. I was scared i'd tell him how scared I was of everything now. More scared than I was before. Now a bird outside my window made me jump and footsteps on the stairs had me thinking the worst. It was like i'd been pushed back to some childhood stage in which everything is scary without your mother there. I was like a lost lamb. I hated feeling like that.

"Norman said you aren't talking...or sleeping...." He sat beside me on my bed, shoes kicked off onto the floor. Stiles always looked sad in a very specific way. It was his eyes mostly, when everyone else might frown, it was his eyes that conveyed what he felt most. Sometimes it was uncomfortable just how much you could see in those eyes if you really wanted to look.

I shook my head and took a deep breath. I could already feel that want to tell him everything rising in my chest, the feelings surfacing because Stiles was the first person to really talk to me in three day. Dori and Norman needed to grieve on their own and the others had steered clear to give me time...but time was just keeping me static. It was like all my feelings were frozen back to that day.

"Do you..do you want to talk?"

"I don't know how to, Stiles." How did I express what it was like to find my mother dead?

We were both silent for a few moments. Did...would it be good for me to say it? To just blurt it all out and get the feelings off my chest? Or would it make me feel worse. I supposed the answer was that I'd never know if I didn't try. Part of me felt the safer option was to stay quiet. If I never tried then it could never get worse? But part of me wanted to try, to see if i'd feel better after talking about it all. Maybe if I talked the pain wouldn't hurt so much, maybe the nightmares would go?