Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
chapter three ☁︎ -', two ghosts ꒱ ↷💚 OCTOBER, 2017
tw/cw: descriptions of depression and ptsd.
° ｡♡꙼̈࿐"OKAY, I'LL BE BACK."
It's only noon but Ryan is packing up her things, sorting files and turning the computer monitor off. The early days of October have gone by in an almost fleeting way - chilly weather and orange sunsets that have disappeared in a flash. As much as she wants to savor the crunching of leaves beneath her boots and the way the air feels as it brushes by her sweater covered skin, Ryan finds solace in letting the days fly by in hopes that something more interesting will come after Halloween.
"I didn't even realize it was Wednesday," Chelsea says, sitting back in her desk chair with a smile. "Feels like it always rolls by kind of fast."
"Yeah," Ryan chuckles, picking up her water bottle and car keys. They jingle under her fingers as she looks around her desk, checking for anything she missed. "Okay, see you in a bit."
She takes the elevator down and passes the office on the floor below, peeking out of the door and into the cubicles as more people pile in. It's the same as everything is. And before she knows it, she's walking towards her car and unlocking the door, pulling out of the lot while being on autopilot.
The feeling of being on autopilot has long since become the normal for Ryan - even before everything that happened she often felt herself falling into routine too quietly. She supposes it's easy to fall into monotony when everything around you seems to stay the same, and that's the reason why the days pass by like hours and the hours pass by like minutes. Time stands still but never stops going at the same time; she's paralyzed in the same spot while moving at a hundred miles per hour, never blinking but always with her eyes closed.
And the autopilot is okay most of the time. She doesn't dwell on things, she moves through life as a ghost. Her job isn't boring because most days she doesn't realize she's there in the first place. However, it becomes dangerous when you take an hour drive and don't even realize you got in the car in the first place - countless times where Ryan's parked her car before she's even put the key in the ignition. The numbness, it swallows you whole sometimes. All the time, mostly.
So the roads out of Dupont Circle are almost as familiar as the back of her hand - they twist and turn like the hallways of her apartment building, the same curves and potholes, and the same stoplights she takes every Wednesday. Once upon a time Ryan was scared of being too comfortable, but even now, seeing the same roads and counting the seconds from one speed limit sign to the next, it still scares her in a way she won't admit to anyone. It's hard to allow yourself to go through the motions but it's even harder to admit to yourself that your life is mundane, that you lost a part of yourself.
