My 30 Day Challenge

Chapter 20

Day 7: List 10 activities that help you calm down. cont’d

1.       Reading

2.       Walking

3.       Talking to Vic

4.       Listening to a clock

5.       Music

6.       Puppies

7.       Watching the sky

8.       The sound of rain

9.        

10.    

The warm water of the shower was washing away the tiny red spots on my legs. It felt good – really good – to do this again. God, I’d missed this so fucking much. I wanted to do more. I felt so proud, but at the same time like a failure, and that just made it worse. I wanted to do more, but I looked down, counted the 20 lines on my legs – 10 on each – and stopped myself. 20 was enough.

I realised I’d been in the shower for a long time, so I quickly scrubbed myself and got out. I’d gone a bit too deep, though, and the cuts wouldn’t stop bleeding. With fumbling wet fingers, I searched each drawer in the bathroom, but found myself unlucky, in that there were zero band-aids or anything I could use to stop the bleeding. There was a bit of sports tape, some makeup removing wipes, and tissues, but nothing I could use. Eventually I settled for putting two tissues, folded in half, over them then sticking it down with sports tape.

When I got out the bathroom I went downstairs and started making myself a cup of tea. As I sat waiting for the water to heat up, there was some thudding down the stairs, and Mike appeared in the kitchen, yawning and looking tired but happy.

“Hey,” he greeted me. “Where’s Vic?”

“Don’t know, I just got out the shower.” My tea was ready and I’d poured too much water into the cup, and it was taking all of my attention not to spill it as I brought it to the table. “Hey, um, I was thinking, did you want to do something today?”

“Yeah, sounds awesome. I just got a new videogame, want me to destroy you at it?” he asked.

“Sweet,” I said, smiling falsely. It sounded like fun, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty still about what I’d just done.

He started pulling out boxes of cereal, looking at each one and shaking his head at each one, unimpressed.

“Screw this, I’m ordering pizza,” he gave up, grabbing the phone. “You want?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Pizza? For breakfast?”

“Breakfast is the best time to have pizza,” he responded, dialling. “Do you want or not?”

“Sure,” I gave in. “Vegetarian.”

He gave a look of disgust, then started ordering. I went back upstairs to get my phone, which had two messages from Jack, yesterday asking what I was up to and today asking if I was okay. I responded saying I was spending the day with Mike, but could talk. He called.

“Hey, man, what’s up? You were really quiet on Friday night and you text me back.”

“Yeah, I’m fine, just don’t really check my phone that often.”

“Well start, dude, I don’t really call people unless I need to.”

“You called me just now.”