Maybe Then...

Chapter 26: when I have control of something

When I have control of something

Maybe then, I will start to feel better

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Thursday evening, Cooper and I sat at the small table eating some sort of healthy crackers, The Office playing on the TV. Well, he ate, but I mostly stayed on my phone. I was too intent on getting Dan to come back to eat. I was the one who'd left in the first place, yet he was the one who was gone now.

Dan: why are you complaining? you're the one who wanted to leave. you never really cared about it anyway. not as much as me.

Me: I'm sorry, okay? but I broke up with Zeke, so I don't have that distraction in the way now. So can we please put the past in the past?

"Who are you talking to?" Cooper asked.

"Dan,"I said stiffly.

"Millie , I told--"

"Did I ever say you could call me Millie?" I cut in.

He blinked at me in shock.

Guilt filled my chest when I realized how rude I was, even though he had let me hang out since I quit. "I'm sorry," I mumbled.

"It's okay," he offered a small smile.

I tried to shake the guilt off, but my efforts went in vain. Silence filled the room for a moment except for Cooper's chewing. 

"Amelia," he said, his tone hushed.

"You can call me Millie," I said quietly. "I don't mind, really. I don't know why I snapped at you like that." 

"Amelia," he repeated. I looked up at him. "Is something wrong?" 

For a moment, I really wanted to just start crying. I wanted to say everything that happened last week. I wanted to spill out all that was on my heart, and tell him what I just wanted to forget. I really did. But I wanted to forget what happened. I needed to just move on, I didn't have to go through some sob story panhandling for sympathy. I wasn't one of those girls who would let a thing like that get to them. I was the kind of girl who could just move on. So instead, I just forced a confused expression, acting like I was oblivious to whatever he was talking about. "What do you mean?" 

"You just seem kinda...different. You look like you haven't slept, and your face looks a little sunken. Is this thing with Dan bothering you that much?" 

I swallowed a lump in my throat, "No."

"Are upset about Zeke?" 

I froze for a moment, then remembered that he was talking about our breakup. "Not really. I mean, it was a mistake for me to date him anyway." 

Silence filled the room again for a moment. 

"Why did you guys break up? If you don't mind me asking."

I hesitated, then went with the first thing that came to mind. "We just thought that it wasn't working out. We kinda had different goal, and stuff." 

"Oh." I didn't know what answer he was expecting, but it seemed like that wasn't it. 

It was the answer I wanted to be true, though. 

"How much sleep did you get last night?" 

I popped my lip out in thought. "I don't know, maybe five hours, or something. Why?" 

"You just looked really tired. I guess that makes sense now." 

Yeah, I can't get to sleep because I'm thinking about how out of control my life feels.

"What do you do when you can't sleep?" 

"I listen to music or write. They say that some of the best ideas come to you at night, but sometimes the lack of sleep makes you delusional to the point that you get crazy ideas that seem good at the time. Fun fact, the same happens with pot; it doesn't give you good ideas, it just make dumb ideas seem brilliant for the time being." 

"So you never get that aha! moment late at night?"

He tilted his head from one side to the other. "Sometimes, I guess."

So much for finding benefits to being an insomniac. 

"Why?" 

"Just wondering," I shrugged. "Just hoping there was an upside to staying up so late." 

"There is." 

I looked at him. 

"The silence," he smiled ever so slightly. 

You know those thing that you like, yet don't? Those things that bother you, yet you're so intrigued by it. That's was silence was for me at that point. It was something I needed, yet felt uncomfortable with. I needed time away from the chaos and the noise to sort through my thoughts, but my thoughts were never ending. How could I use time in solitude to clear my head when I couldn't clear my head?

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I lay my back on my bed, the sheets up to my armpits, and my head turned sideways on the pillow as I stared at my phone on the nightstand. I kept having to remind myself that getting on my phone wouldn't help me get to sleep any faster, and would have the opposite effect. I shifted a little to get a better view of the digital clock. 2:16 a.m. My stomach growled, demanding I feed it. There was very little that I have control over. That's what I realized after last weekend. But now, it felt like nothing was in my control. I couldn't control when people hurt me. I couldn't control when people ignored me in times of need. I couldn't even control whether or not my stomach growled! 

But I wanted to feel in control. I wanted control over something in my life. Sure, I had control over whether or not I punched somebody in the face. I had control over some of the decisions I made, there was no doubt about that, but I had no control over the outcomes of those decisions. I didn't just want control over something, I wanted to feel in control of something. My stomach growled again, reminding me that I should eat. But what If I didn't? I knew the likely outcomes of that decision, and I could control whether or not I ate. So I ignored my stomach, smiling a little at the fact that I did have control over something in my life, even if it was something as small as eating. 

I guess that you can get aha! moments past midnight.

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Hey! Oh my, more than 450 views, and over 100 votes! Thank you so much! 

So what do you think of this chapter?

What do you think about these desperate measure that she's taking to feel in control when everything feels out of control?

P.S. the girl in the song, Linsley, opened up for the second concert I went to. I met her, and as it turns out, she's a lot like me. Gives me hope that I'll become as great of a person as her.