boys & flowers

purple hyacinth (i am sorry, please forgive me)

I woke up at 3 am, screaming.

Clyde, stop! Don't!

The nightmare came back, and I felt it all over again. Face: shattered. Windshield: shattered. Clyde...

Cartman rushed in, flipped on the lights, and sat on my bed. I was sitting up, heaving. My throat burned so much. He held onto my wrists.

"Hey, hey, you're okay. You're home, Kyle. It was ten years ago, okay? You're not in that car anymore. You're home and you're safe."

I ripped away from him and grabbed my garbage can so I could vomit.

Kenny, still smelling of syrup and sweat, was at my side with a glass of water when I was done.

After drinking and back to breathing evenly, Cartman asked: "Do you want to sit outside for a while?"

I nodded. He put his arm under mine and lifted me out of bed. Kenny opened the door for us when we reached downstairs. He always stayed silent during my episodes. I think I was scary to him.

We stepped out into blackness. It was a sweet, summer mugginess drenched with the sound of cicadas. A few light raindrops trickled on the top of our heads. We sat down on the swinging bench by my garden until my personality came back.

Cartman eventually went back to bed. I stayed outside for a few hours.

When I went back inside to get ready for work, either Kenny or Cartman (or both) had taken away my bag of vomit and changed out my sweaty sheets. I might be a bad roommate.

...

Trauma is such a dangerous, formless thing, and it's different for everyone. I've been told that I'm very lucky, despite the horrors I've seen, but there are times where it gets so bad that I wish I was dead and done with it all.

We kept a fish tank in my room when I was growing up, and inside it was always two: an iridescent shark and a catfish - Fred and Catatafish, respectively.

Fred was always out and swimming around. Catatafish stayed inside a hollowed log and almost never came out except to eat. So many times we were concerned he died, but coming around to the side of the tank, we could see his eyes moving, his gills expanding. My episodes are like watching him. It hides for several weeks, sometimes months, and I start to think that maybe I'm better, or even cured, then something coos it out, whether it be stress, a certain sound, a certain smell, and I'm dead in the water, faces all around me checking to see if my eyes are still moving, my chest still rising and falling.

...

I must have looked like absolute shit when I walked in that morning (felt like it too) because Dr. Vince noticed right away.

"Oh no, are you sick?"

"Nah, just didn't sleep well," I answered, holding up a latte from South Perk (Tweek jammed in so many questions while he made it). "Hence the coffee."

"I feel you."

Right after we let ourselves in, Craig walked in, also looking sleepless and shitty. Which made me feel great. He passed in front of the sink, looked me over. I prepared myself for whatever snarky thing he might say: "Too much partying last night?"

But no.

"Are you okay?"

Okay? OK. OK, sure.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just didn't sleep well."

"Oh. Me neither," he said, then moved on.

After that, he started asking me questions. Nothing chummy, strictly work-related. I thought he was easing up on me with his scattered "Hey, I would use another pair of eyes on this water sample," "Do you think I should mess with the variable in this solution?" "Does the viscosity of this oil seem a little off to you?"