One Time, Badly Page 15
For the past year, it seemed that she was always trying to remember or trying to forget or trying to remind him or distract him or confuse him. Nothing was straightforward or clear anymore. And, with eyes so glazed and dead, his world was even more blurred than hers.
He loved her, he craved her, three years had not dampened his infatuation with her. But, his body did not shake and turn on itself without her. He didn’t feel the slow, clammy descent of torture when she left for a few hours. But his little white pills could do that. So the choice was clear. To him it was love or life and he could live without her.
Cecelia's apartment was dark; she couldn't see a thing. She let her duffle fall to the floor at her feet and stood still, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She didn't remember picking the bag up off the floor. She didn't remember showering and pulling on her pajamas. She didn't realize her hands were shaking until she finally sat still.
She'd done it. She'd gotten the words out and they were clear. She sat on her bed and reached a trembling hand for the remote control. A distraction. The white noise from the TV became background music; she couldn't pull her eyes away from the sight of her hands in her lap. Gently out of control.
She intertwined her fingers, clasping her palms together and squeezing as hard as she could. She watched as patches of white spread over her knuckles. It made no difference. Still they shook.
She lay down on the bed, resting her head on the pillows, and slid her hands underneath the weight of her thighs. She pushed her legs into the bed, crushing her palms and fingers. Nothing.
Why wouldn't they just stop? She couldn't understand it. How frustrating, to have so little control over her own body.
They were hers, the hands. She should be able to stop them from moving. This shouldn't be happening. She wanted them to just stop. Why wouldn't they just stop? Couldn't she make them understand that this wasn't helping?
She needed help. She needed them to stop. Just stop.
The tears were warm as they crawled down her face, landing cold on the pillow below her.
She needed them to listen. She needed them to stop.
2018
September
As Cecelia had pulled on her silk dress, adjusting it so it hung just right, she began to feel small. She'd been wrong to think that all it would take was a pretty dress and her favorite shade of lipstick to get through this.
It was the difference between lying to strangers and lying to family, or to yourself. She could smile in a conference room and steady her voice and it would work. She could sell that, it was a façade that she could take to the bank on most days, but these weren't strangers she was trying to impress tonight. It was Max. It was only Max.
She thought about how well she still felt that she knew him, about the mannerisms she was sure she'd never forget. She remembered bouncing legs and fidgeting hands and hair that had been pushed back to the point of no return. She would see these things and know his energy was nervous.
Her tells remained the same. She'd told herself all day to avoid chewing her bottom lip and to keep from locking her hands together and ringing them as she spoke. But those were just the signs that she was aware. Who knew what Max might remember, if anything at all.
She gave herself a once over, backing away from the mirror to get as much of her outfit as possible in view. Her dress was sexy without being figure hugging or too short. The shoes gave her legs a long, lean look and her hair was somehow maintaining the subtle wave she'd worked it into last night. She couldn't have asked for more from her own damn self than to pull together this look and have it happen tonight, when she arguably needed it more than ever.
She met herself head on in the mirror, catching her own eye and holding her gaze. There was nothing left to fuss over or to use as a distraction. She'd be leaving in a moment and she just hoped the onslaught of nerves didn't do too much damage.
She could picture herself standing in that mirror now. She'd looked scared, and as the bar grew nearer and everything started to feel more inevitable than ever, she could admit that it was ok to be afraid. It was the most honest emotion coursing through her right now and there was no point in denying it. Fighting down these feelings was just going to make this night even more difficult. She needed to feel her way through it if she was ever going to get to the other side, wherever that might be.
2015
November
The fall into nothingness was supposed to be pleasurably numb. That was the point. Nothing. Not a thing. She wasn't supposed to feel anything. Instead, she felt everything amplified by ten thousand. The emotions were crowded and with no room to breathe they sat stagnant, stubbornly waiting for something to push them around. To either shoo them away or give them a chance to grow. Her mind and her stomach were weighed down with them. She became a zombie, and he became an ache in the pit of her stomach.
The only meal she pretended to eat was lunch and it was only because she didn't want her coworkers getting suspicious. She made sure that there was always a snack on her desk. A Tupperware of fresh fruit here, a bag of pretzels there. She'd pick it at every few hours; as if she'd gotten busy and forgotten it was even there.
She made herself a sandwich on white bread every morning, something easy to pull apart. Peanut butter and jelly, mostly. She'd take a bite or two, and slowly, absentmindedly break the rest into smaller pieces as she worked. She'd leave the sandwich in front of her for an hour or so, enough time for it to be noted.
She couldn't put into words the way her mind and her body were feeling. They were on fire; they were nearing implosion at a slowly frantic pace. She could describe it in a million ways, there seemed to be thousands of words for it, but none of them made sense. She was alone in this, as billions of people had been before her.
All she wanted was Max. He was the quick fix here. He was the key to her sanity. She knew that one call to him would set her world straight again. The pain would go away. Even more than that, she would feel happiness. She would feel relief.
She couldn't comprehend how his absence could do this to her. This had been her choice; she'd had time to mentally prepare for it and everything. Now, she couldn't even remember the girl who'd been strong enough to make any choice at all. She would focus on his arms or his hands or the line of his jaw, as if missing him in pieces would hurt less than feeling the loss of all of him all at once.
And of course there's no accounting for the end in the beginning. It protects itself in this way. She couldn't have known that it would be like this.
And someone could tell you exactly how it feels. The sick stomach, the no-eating, no-sleeping bloated feeling of what you're sure is near death. The spinning brain and the pounding memories and the questions and you wouldn't be prepared for it. There simply was no preparing for it.
She stopped listening to music and watching television. Everything became linked to Max. He was every thought in her mind.
Max would love this. Max would hate this. Max needs this. Max would want that.
Everything became something that Max needed to know. Everything became marked by the fact that she didn't know what Max would think about it; that she could never find out for sure.
It was unbearable. It was all she thought about and it was the heaviest thought she'd ever had. He was slowly becoming something more than a person; he was an experience, he was a tragedy that she couldn't make sense of.
And that was another thing. The tears were always there. She cried through her morning routine and all the way to work. She would do her best to turn it all off as she walked into the building. She would train her face to be neutral and, if people thought she was in a bad mood she figured it was better than having them know how messed up she really was. She'd started utilizing her full lunch hour to get some of the pent up tears out so that she could make it through the rest of the day. The tears would be streaming down her face again as soon as she climbed into her car at night.
She swapped her normal wardrobe for thin
gs she hadn't worn often, or in ages. She put her favorites aside in favor of these random articles that she'd never worn out to dinner or to the movies. That had never been pulled from her body or warmed by the mere proximity of Max, by the heat of skin reaching towards skin.
This went on for three weeks before her mom showed up with a suitcase in addition to the Tupperware full of soup she'd been forcing Cecelia to at least try to eat at night. When she'd called her mom the day after the break up, she hadn't meant to share each and every terrible detail of what had gone wrong between them, but she did. Conversations with moms were just like that sometimes.
"I didn't know you where going anywhere." She could feel the panic rising in her chest at the thought of being away from her mom, of getting through the day without having her to lean on at night.
"I'm not, Cee. I'm coming to stay with you." She was speaking softly, not to the woman in front of her, but to the child she'd learned to comfort all those years ago.
"Mom, you really don't have to do that. I'm going to be fine, I just need some more time." But her lips were trembling as she said it and, with that, her mom wrapped her up in her arms and held her close.
"I'm doing it as much for me as I am for you. You need me, but I need to know that you're all right. I've been worried sick about you and I think you need a little more help than I've been giving you."
"I'm sorry I'm such a mess all the time. I don't know why I can't handle this. I thought it would be bad for a little bit, but I've been crying for almost a month straight now."
"You're hurting and there's no time limit on that. Especially when you consider what you went through only to have it come to this. You fought so hard and now you just need to get some of that strength back."
“He’s all I can think about, I just want to call him. I made the wrong decision. I shouldn’t have left. You know? I should have stayed to help him. I’m too weak for this, I can’t keep living this way,” she was frantic. The words rushed out, tripping over one another in their intent.
“Cecelia you need to breathe. You’re going to talk yourself right into a panic attack,” her mom was speaking softly, rubbing gentle circles on her back.
“I’m supposed to be stronger than this, though. I’m weak, the weakest person. I can’t even stand up on my own two feet."
“These thoughts aren’t weakness, sweetie. These thoughts are just you processing of the pain. You poor thing, you’re heart is drowning in sadness. That’s not weakness,” and the pause in her mother’s speech made her eyes travel from the floor to meet her mom’s gaze.
“Weakness is following through with these thoughts. You left a dangerous situation, and three weeks and a lot of hurt definitely hasn’t made it any better. You are my child, and you are so strong. I’ve watched it. You had the strength to leave, and that means you have the strength to stay away. Do whatever you need to do to not pick up the phone.”
Cecelia realized in that moment that she too was going through withdrawals of her own. From then on his name became something to whisper, or not say at all.
There is a darkness deep enough that it doesn’t make you thankful for the light, it makes you forget the light. That’s what it was to delete his phone number and take all the pictures down.
Cecelia couldn't shake the feeling that she needed to talk to him again. She never expected the conversation in the car to be the last time they spoke. She needed it not to be. There was so much more to say.
Yes, she'd gotten her point across, but she couldn't possibly have known in that moment that she needed to convey everything she felt for him and always would. She didn't think to tell him about what it meant to her to have to let him go and how she could see her life veering off course now, without him.
She couldn't write. She said a silent prayer every workday that passed without an announcement. If she'd won the spot, if she was in charge of this entirely new venture based solely on the words inspired by her love and fear, how could she tell them that the words were dried up. Her mind was a spinning top; she could barely get a single thought out clearly, let alone construct an article full of them.
It wouldn't make sense. She could see herself sitting down, spewing out some kind of stream of consciousness, verbal doodles intertwining until nothing could be discerned from the twisting lines and darkened sheet.
"Do you want a cup of tea?" It was Louisiana, home from work an hour late. An hour that had seen Cecelia counting the minutes until she wasn't alone anymore. She hated being by herself, with no chance of distraction, with no one to reassure her that she could get through the few hours that remained in this day.
She'd have to start all over again tomorrow, but that was a concern for the morning. She couldn't stand to look that far ahead without panic rising in her stomach, without squeezing her nails into her palms until they left marks.
It was 7:30pm. She'd have to wait at least another hour before she could take an Advil PM and drift off to sleep.
"Do you think someone will tell me if Max dies?" she turned towards the kitchen to see Lou preparing two mugs on the counter. "Like will his family call me or will I have to wait until it's on Facebook or something like that?"
"Cee, I thought you deactivated your account," Lou shot her a weary look from across the island.
"I did, but you didn't, did you? You have to keep your eye out for things like this. I doubt his mom is checking on him while he's sleeping. That's when I worried the most."
"Yes, I will tell you if, God forbid, I see something," the kettle whistled and Lou promptly poured the boiling water into the waiting mugs.
She'd chosen an old Harry Potter mug for Cecelia, it was her favorite, adorned with a lightning bolt and glasses, worn from years of use. Cecelia wished she could give Louisiana a smile for the small gesture.
"Thanks, Lou. I know I'm acting crazy. I'm still acting crazy, but this is the stuff that keeps me up at night," she settled back on the couch with her steaming cup. Lou took the seat next to her.
"Cecelia, you're allowed to grieve for as long as you want. You're getting yourself to work every day, you're eating at least one meal per day, these are the things we need to focus on. Remember what I told you when this all happened?"
Louisiana never referred to the break up for what it really was. She always just vaguely alluded to it. She might as well have come up with a code name at this point, but there really was nothing else that Cee spoke about so that was probably unnecessary.
"The thing about using WebMD?"
"No, we're past the point of you dying from self-induced starvation, but what a fun memory to reflect on over tea," Lou shot her look to let her know she was joking. "I'm talking about the deserted island thing."
"Sorry, Lou, not ringing a bell."
"Understandable. You looked like a zombie when I was saying it. Scary, really. But you did nod along so I thought maybe I was getting through."
"I'm sorry, I don't remember."
"Ok, so I was explaining to you that when you go through something like this, when you really have your heart broken, time becomes irrelevant and you start to think of what you stand to lose as the zombie that you are as opposed to the human that you were. And you choose maybe three. Three things that you have to have. That you want to be there when zombie you becomes you you. There has to be some life left for you. Make sure of it," she squeezed Cee's hand at this, a silent acknowledgment of the tears running down her best friend's cheeks.
"These things shouldn't relate to your survival, they aren't necessarily the things you'd take to a deserted island, they're the things you'd hope to have waiting for you at home when you're rescued. And, Cee, you're going to be rescued. We're going to help you and you won't feel like this anymore, I promise."
"I can't, Lou. I can't feel like this anymore, it's too much."
"I know, but you're getting better each day, we all see it," this was another vague reference.
Ever since her mom went back home after two weeks at the apartm
ent Louisiana had been in contact with her every day just checking in and giving updates. At first, she'd wondered how her mom just seemed to sense when she was having a particularly bad day, but it was Lou feeding her information. Cecelia couldn't be anything but grateful for the love that was symbolized in those quick notes from her mom to her friend. She hoped someone was monitoring Max as closely.
"I just can't feel anything right now. But I'm trusting you on that one. Better every day, I'll take it."
"I love you, Cee. You're going through hell, but I hope you realize the strength that it's taking for you to choose this path every day. You're fighting for yourself and I admire you so much for it."
"I'm trying, Lou. I know that I have to do this, for me and for him. He needed a wake up call. I just wish that I could check in on him without blurring the lines."
"I know, Cee. But maybe you're better off not knowing for now. It's only been a few weeks. As much time as it's going to take you to start feeling better, Max is in for a longer road. We're just going to focus on you for now, that's all we can do."
"Thanks, Louisiana. I can't say it enough. Thank you."
"You don't have to say it at all. That's what I'm here for."
That night, buoyed by Louisiana's words and the rare moment of clarity that she felt following their conversation, Cecelia began typing a letter. It was all she could think to do with the words that she needed to say. She couldn't see Max, she couldn't call him, because she couldn't guarantee that she'd be able to walk away again.
So she wrote him. She wrote him as if she'd never see him again for as long as she lived. She wrote him as if she'd never post the letter.
Max,
I believe you to be the love of my life, my soul mate. I thought this before I left and I feel it even more clearly now that we're apart. You are a missing piece of me; you are the missing piece of me.
In leaving, I could never have accounted for an emptiness like this, or for the panic that I feel when I look at my life and you're not in it.