Should I?

Becoming

POV: Ally

*three more weeks later*

"For fucks sakes Ally, I said I didn't want to do it." Catie snapped at me.

"Okay okay, I'm sorry for trying to help." I put my hands up in surrender. Catie has been getting aggressive when she gets frustrated. Her muscle mass and memory had improved, but not much else. When she gets frustrated she lashes out, and usually on me. Whether it be at practice and she misses at bat or she doesn't run fast enough, she gets pissed. Maggie is at her wits end with her oncoming anger issues. The doctors say it should go away, or at least get better with time, but they don't know how much.

I have been keeping my promises by working with her, but we've been taking it super slow. I haven't even kissed her yet, and it's been six weeks since she got out of rehab.

"I'm going to go home." I grabbed my armored vest, slid it on, and zipped it up.

"Wait, I apologizing. Don't go please." Catie tried to stop me. The grammar hasn't improved much. Now it makes sense, but the sentence structure is nonexistent.

"Catie, I have to go home and do homework. I told you I would only come over if that was what we were doing and you agreed to it. Now you don't want to do homework and only want to watch movies and sleep. I don't have time for that right now." I grabbed my book bag that I had already put my laptop back in and swung it over my shoulders and clipped it in the front.

"Oh, okay." She looked at her feet. "See you later?"

"Of course." I gave her a small smile and then a side hug because it's challenging to hug someone with an armored vest on.

I grabbed my helmet on the way out and pulled my keys out of my pocket. It's been getting warmer, so I use my vest more than I use my full long sleeve now.

"What am I even doing? Babysitting?" I talked to myself as I swung my leg over my bike after fastening my helmet. "I'm babysitting an eighteen year old that I'm supposedly dating, and she hasn't helped me any despite her promising to over and over again. All I do is give and all she does is take, and she doesn't even realize it." Tears started to fall as I started my bike up and pulled out of the apartment building parking lot.

I sped the whole way home, and I really just want to get my homework done and go to bed. It's how I escape the stress now.

It isn't healthy for me. I know it isn't. It isn't fair to me, and it isn't fair to Catie, because I'm questioning her every move and she doesn't even register that I'm there to get back with her and not just take care of her like everyone else that she sees daily.

I feel guilty whenever I want to take care of myself. I should be taking care of Catie and not myself. That's why I'm in the situation I'm in. She's gone back to being the amazing catcher she was which is good considering the fact that the post season starts in two days, but she's a completely different person now. I want to give her time. I want to give her a chance. I want her to go back to being the Catie I once knew, but no matter how much therapy she has and the meds she takes she isn't any closer to being the girl I fell in love with when I was almost eighteen. I turn twenty soon. Around the end of the post season is my birthday, and around then Catie will more than likely still be the same, and I probably will be too.

Guilt is such a strong emotion. It can control your life. It controls mine.

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"Ally, you're losing yourself." Maggie stopped working and turned to me on the beanbag chair.

"What do you mean?" I played stupid. I know what she meant.

"You know what I mean." She gave me a look that told me to not be stupid, so I stopped the act. "I know you feel guilt, but you just got healthy and you're going back to losing yourself."

I didn't have any words to say. I know she's right, but it's just hard to leave the person you love in the dust. But the truth is is that the person I love isn't present in the body it was in. I try to love the new person, but I can't. That person doesn't match my personality and it isn't what I need. It only takes what I have to give.

"It's not my choice to make. I just don't want to watch my best friend deteriorate like you did before." Maggie sighed and went back to work.

No words came to mind. What can I say? She's still the Catie I fell for? That's a lie. She's healthy and helps me? Also a lie.

A few tears escaped my eyes no matter how hard I tried to stop them. She almost hit me the other day, and all I seem to do is cry over that girl. That girl who is now a shadow of the one I love, but is it time to fall out of love with that girl?

I saw her briefly before the hospital and during the hospital, but the day I knew she was gone again was when she took the bracelet off that I made. I handmade that bracelet with the leather strip from her glove. I poked holes with a sewing needle to engrave our initials and used the strength I had to push the metal clasps through the thick leather for what? For her to wear it for two weeks and then have it disappear. That's what happened with it. She had no idea where it went, and didn't care to look for it.

Everything I do for her isn't appreciated. Nothing I do is enough. It never is.

This 'relationship' is draining every bit of me I have left, and I need to find a way to put a stop to it, even if that means leaving Catie entirely and only knowing her as a girl who forgot all of my secrets and now is only a classmate and a teammate.

But the thing is... that's who she has already become.

I know what needs to be done, and what I need in life. It's executing the process.