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Miss you too.
I set my phone down and press the heels of my hands against my eyes.
I replay every conversation, trying to find where the shift actually started, and it always points to right after Christmas, right after whatever happened with his family that he still hasn’t told me about.
He won’t answer the phone, he hasn’t been reaching out, and I feel a persistent sadness under every message he does send. I don’t know how to fix it. He carries his grief and shame and hurt so deeply, and whatever happened at that house is making him disappear into himself. He’s carrying it alone instead of allowing himself to lean on me and let me carry some of it.
I don’t know how much longer I’m supposed to wait for him to come back up for air before I stop waiting and go get him myself.
CHAPTER 25
Marcus
Every day it’s getting harder and harder to respond to Evan and pretend things are okay when they’re not. Nothing is okay. It hasn’t been since Christmas Eve, since I stood in that kitchen and watched my mother decide her image is more important than her own son. I keep waiting for it to stop hurting, but every day the pain morphs a little more into something flatter, grayer, more numbing.
I don’t know which is worse, honestly. The hurting felt awful, but at least it felt like something. Today, I feel like I’ve been slowly hollowed out from the inside and now there’s nothing left.
And it’s still only the beginning.
Dr. Patel would have a name for this, if I were still showing up to hear it. I missed my session, and when she followed up by email asking if I was okay, I didn’t answer that either. I don’t know how to explain to the one person whose entire job is helping me with exactly this, that I can’t even manage the bare minimum of logging on. It feels like proof I’m too far gone, even for the person who’s supposed to be trained for this. Pathetic doesn’t cover it. There isn’t a word that covers it.
Besides, I have a feeling I know what she’d say.
It’s not like this is the first time I’ve felt like this in my life. I recognize the feeling and know it well. I haven’t showered since sometime earlier this week. I’ve been eating cereal straight out of the box, and when I accidentally caught my reflection in the mirror this morning, I didn’t recognize the eyes looking back at me. They were the same sunken ones I had in my yearbook photo during my depressive episode in high school. It’s like an old ghost is back to haunt me, even if that ghost never really left.
Dr. Patel would want to talk about my feelings and what happened, but what’s the point when I know? She’d probably say I’m grieving. Maybe I am. But grief is supposed to move, and this feeling doesn’t. I think depression is just where I live now. It’s not a stage I’m passing through.
It’s a part of me. A dark, ugly part that numbs me.
But it’s fine. I’m fine. It’s not like I haven’t been here before, my whole life is practically lived in the letdowns.
My own mother letting me walk out just happens to be a big one. She didn’t even try to stop me. I’ve replayed it so many times, and still, it cuts deep every time. I don’t know why I care. I shouldn’t. The silence after I walked out the door told me everything I already knew, but had spent twenty-five years hoping wasn’t.
I bury my face further into the pillow that Evan slept on. The sheets haven’t been changed since he left, which is gross, but I don’t care. His pillow still smells faintly like him if I bury my face in it at the right angle. I’m not ready to wash that away yet.
I haven’t even hung the record on the wall yet. Going to the store to buy what I need to hang it feels like too much effort. I told him I’d do it after Christmas, and now it’s just another promise I couldn’t keep.
I wish I could just ask Evan for help. I think about it some nights. About typing out, I need you, please, but I can’t. It’s not that I don’t trust him. I do, more than I’ve ever trusted anyone, and while he’s told me he’s there for me, I’m too scared to test it. Asking for something this substantial means finding out if his care for me has a limit. Dr. Patel argued against it, but I’ve learned that needing too much eventually costs you everything, and I can’t risk that. Not when Evan’s the last good thing I have left. I don’t trust myself not to break it the same way I break everything else, though what I’m currently doing doesn’t seem to have a better outcome.
I can feel the shift. I know he does too, all because I’m doing exactly what I promised him I wouldn’t, but I don’t know how to do better. All I know how to do is protect myself. And the only proof I have is that the people who are supposed to care about me don’t. Not when it really comes down to it.
It’s not fair to him. I know that too. But it doesn’t change anything about what I’m capable of doing right now.
It’s why my phone stays in Do Not Disturb now permanently. It’s easier to ignore his calls when I don’t have to watch his name light up. It eases the guilt ever so slightly. Some nights I even convince myself it’s doing him a favor. He’ll figure out eventually how much better off he is without this, without me, the same conclusion everyone in my life seems to reach given enough time.
Fuck, that’s enough for today.
I don’t bother getting up and eating dry cereal. Instead I stay buried in bed hoping to fall asleep soon because it’s the only reliable break I get from the gray anymore.
I don’t tell myself I’ll do better tomorrow. I’ve stopped believing that particular lie too.
CHAPTER 26
Evan
I’m freaking out. Marcus has stopped answering me completely.
It’s been eleven days now. Eleven days of texts that just sit there, delivered but never answered. I’ve called countless times, and they all keep going straight to voicemail. I leave them too, pleading and begging for him to call me back, to lean on me, but they’ve all gone unacknowledged.
