To the Beat of My Heart

Fleeting

The following week I'm a literal mess. Everyone around me tries to act like everything's normal. It's not. I fucking hate it. I follow the tour. Like, I guess I just want to torture myself. The fans eat up the shows. If I search my name, anxiety opens a chasm in my stomach and I can't scroll down without going full-on panic attack. I don't even read any of it. I don't think I can. Just the idea it's there...

Clay hasn't said anything. I know they're asking if we've split. I know mum and dad want an answer to that question as well. Mum's already told me my room is my room always. If I had the bloody guts, I'd go get all my stuff from Clay's house and move it back here before he gets home. But then that would be the final nail in the coffin, right? Like, I know we're practically finished, but no one has said as much. Clay just told me to leave. Maybe...

No, fuck that, Fletch. Don't go down that road. God, but I miss him. I want this to be behind us. For him to call me and tell me he misses me. That's he's agonising as much as me and aching to be in my arms again. I wonder if he can ever truly love me again. Fuck.

Mum never prods. Sometimes I'll curl up on the sofa next to her and out of nowhere I'll start crying and she'll hold me close, rubbing her hand down my arm, nuzzling her head against mine. She doesn't say anything. I want to just spill everything to her, how fucking wretched I really am. Clay is gone and he'll find someone else who will love and appreciate him and not be a fucking mess without him, self-destructing and giving in to his darker impulses. Someone who has their shit together. I am so fucking envious of people sometimes. Like how? How are we not all sobbing wrecks?!

Dad sits down on the edge of my bed when I'm in one of my: 'I'll just lay here and do fuck all', moods. He says nothing for a godawful minute and then sighs, clamping his hand down on my ankle. Then he asks me how it would sound if he made an appointment with a psychiatrist for me. For once in my life, I don't grimace and shrivel up at the suggestion. I just nod dumbly and that's that. He leaves my room. Ten minutes later he knocks on my door and then tells me I have an appointment on Thursday. So close...

Right now it all feels so pointless. I'm an irredeemable piece of shit. Even so, something has to change. Whether that's them prescribing me antidepressants to get me out of my fucking bed, or this is like a priest kind of deal and I confess all my sins and somehow that burden lightens from my chest... I dunno. Mum hasn't said it. Dad wants to but hasn't yet. But I can't stay in this spot forever, avoiding everyone, avoiding life. So, Thursday it is.

***

The first meeting isn't so bad. I tell her a lot about my past. My mum's depression. How I've dealt with it in school. I mention the arseholes at school and the time Clay stood up for me and then finally getting that affirmation that he loved me back. I don't go too into detail about Clay's dance with drugs. That story is too fucking long for a fifty-minute session. I just say for all the pain, we came out the other end. It felt like the worst was behind us. Like we were eternal after that.

She's really interested in my Tourette's and how that's gone. Honestly, it feels like we need a couple more sessions to unpack that one as well. Surprisingly, I'm amiable to the idea. I guess I've shocked myself how much I'm sharing. Nothing is sacred. I tell her about the recent drama and she doesn't judge. She only asks what I'm doing now and what I plan to do. When I tell her I don't know and I'm kind of all over the place she asks if I want another session so we can discuss this further. The cynical part of me is like: you want your money, but yeah, I relent, fifty minutes is nothing.

I come out of the meeting and meet dad in his car. He drove me and told me a long boring-ass story about this work function and how the venue was moved twice and he and his workmates were lost in the city and it was a good laugh. It was mindless shit. But he was just trying to keep the mood light, I guess, get my brain focused on something else, even if that something else was the dull baritone of his voice.