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lanashellrey-blog · 7 years ago

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Dumb decisions

I knew I shouldn’t be drinking, but I did it anyway.

I went to a party in an outfit that I shouldn’t have been wearing on a Wednesday night when I shouldn’t have been drinking and I did anyway.

It was a house party hosted by some boys in a fraternity that my sorority was partnered with for homecoming week. It was only some streets away from my own apartment, and I figured I needed some time to have fun. As I ducked into the dark basement and into the sea of girls and boys all drinking alcohol from a plastic tub. It was me and my blonde roommate and what felt like hundreds of our sisters and hundreds of strangers.

I drank several cups of the tangy juice, gagging, sometimes chugging when others demanded that I do so. Soon after, I felt my center of gravity float ten feet above my head. I climbed the back basement steps out to the backyard and saw my blonde roommate flirting with a boy on crutches. I stepped in to a game of beer pong and did a celeb shot, which I missed. Maybe I should have eaten today.

My mind wandered to him. I kept drinking. I missed him so much. I drank more. I wanted to leave, but the blonde roommate was over there and I didn’t want to be the friend that would interrupt and ruin everything. I danced alone. I screamed along to songs I only partially knew. When will I see him again? We left finally as soon as everything started to go black. I got back to my apartment and I lay down on my living room floor and called him. It was around midnight maybe. I don’t remember. In fact, I hardly remember what we talked about.

The conversation floated around his rehearsals. He was pulled in last-minute in a musical at his school to play one of the parts in the orchestra. I remember saying I’d try to come, I’d love to come, I want to come, I need to come. My roommates came downstairs and shushed me, but I didn’t care. Hearing his voice was the most wonderful part of the day.

When we hung up, I flung off my clothes and scraped off my heavy makeup. I peeled my contact lenses out of my eyes. I fell into bed, feeling loved, feeling hopeful for the future.

The next morning, I woke up disoriented. I sat up and my head spun, but I wasn’t hungover. I stood up and realized I was still drunk.

I went to my internship, drunk. I tried to eat a bagel sandwich, drunk. I headed to my first class and my head was still spinning and I could still taste the alcohol in the back of my throat. I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been to go drinking on a weeknight.

In the middle of my second class, I left class to violently vomit into the toilet. I was incredibly embarrassed. Where had my head been? I had work due today that I hadn’t bothered to finish. I had my internship that I had so stupidly shown up to still under the influence. This wasn’t like me at all.

So that night, I did it again.

Why not?

This time, it was in the backyard on the patio of an apartment closer to my own. I arrived with another tied t-shirt and an empty stomach. People from the fraternities immediately recognized me as the girl who had been chugging yesterday. They poured me more drinks. I inhaled them like I had been dying for them. I danced on the ledge of a fence. People took videos with me. I felt so happy again. I felt loved by my friends. They told me that they thought I was hysterical, I was so funny, they loved me. I loved myself.

I looked down to my phone after I was sufficiently drunk and saw a text from him and my heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. A different switch flipped in my brain. My mood dropped. I bit my lip to hold back tears. I told my friends I was going hold and staggered down the street by myself, more drunk than I had realized.

I put my phone to my ear and dialed his number.

I wanted to come, I need to come, I’m sorry, I know you hate me. I’ll be there. I wish you’d hate me. I want to kill myself. That’s not a joke. You ruined my favorite album. I can’t listen to it anymore. I love you. I miss you. I’m sorry. Please hate me. I love you. I love you. I love you.

I fell asleep with my makeup on and my contacts still in my eyes.

But perhaps the dumbest decision of all that I made that week wasn’t the decision to drink on Wednesday. Or even after I thought I’d learned my lesson and drank on Thursday.

No, my dumbest decision of all was made on Saturday, in the middle of the drizzly afternoon. I packed my backpack with some clothes, went to work the morning shift, then climbed into my friend’s car and handed her money for gas and the bag of pretzels I brought. We started on the long drive to Cincinnati. I was going to see him.

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lanashellrey-blog · 7 years ago

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Crashing down

Last week was a week for healing. We were both happy. We talked on the phone, laughed together again. I still can’t eat normally, but it didn’t even matter. I felt happy. Things felt normal. We planned to see each other again in November when the weather would be cold and neither of us had to worry about prior plans. He expressed worry about my eating, but none of it mattered to me. I felt happy again. Sometimes gloom would creep in, but nothing out of the ordinary. My heart began to beat normally as it once had.

Friday, I spent some time with another male friend of mine. He expressed sadness that his ex-girlfriend was living a happier life than him. I told him about this. I don’t know why. I regretted sharing it immediately. But I told him. I could tell he was shocked and a bit confused. But he really cared. A sad song came on shuffle. We went back to my apartment, ate peanut butter toast with my roommates. Smoked weed for an unknown reason. I craved a cigarette. I slept hard.

Sunday, I played a game of kickball for another sorority. I felt happy. We talked about warm summer weather and vacations again, planning to go to Corpus Christi after I was done working in Texas over the summer. He would meet me there. We would be happy. He expressed how good his days were going. He seemed to be doing well. He was spending time with friends. He was going to costume parties and being adventurous again. He was having fun. He seemed happy.

This morning, I woke up to a dread in my chest, as if it were an instinct. I picked up my phone and checked his Reddit, and I felt the seven whole days of healing slip through my fingers.

He was sharing more. Not just commenting, but sharing. People were commenting and liking. Over a hundred of them. In another, he said his egg was cracked. I started hyperventilating.

I felt physically sick. I stood up to get dressed for my internship, began stumbling. Stood up straighter. Stumbled down the hallway. Halfway got ready. My mind was racing. I somehow managed to put an outfit on. I went downstairs, filled up my water bottle. I dry heaved into the sink. Clutched my stomach. Fingers slammed on cell phone keys, I hate myself. Nothing matters. I wish I weren’t alive. Sent too many. Floated out the door and down the street.

I don’t even remember what I did at my internship. I was in a daze. I floated back home afterwards, laid right back down. More fingers slamming on keys. I didn’t want to be alive, my life is meaningless. His heart was broken. He didn’t understand why I was lashing out, why my emotions spiked. He didn’t know where this was coming from. I begged him to hate me, to tell me to fuck off and die. He told me he could never. I wished he weren’t so nice, my life is pointless, he’d be better off with someone else. I fell into a restless nap. I skipped both of my classes. Nothing felt real.

Why was I succumbing to my emotions so quickly? I knew why, but I was still angry at myself for it. I felt cheated. This life already feels over and it’s just now beginning. I lay in bed as long as physically possible, before I peeled myself out of bed and down the street to work. I stopped at the student union on my way there, climbed the steps to the fifth floor and sat next to the ledge that opened up so you could watch the fourth floor. I stared down at people making their way up the elevators, into offices, out the doors. I felt like the Earth looked sepia toned and I was watching myself from across the room, a girl with the color drained from her face and hair, sun bleached, faded.

I knew I had to come back from this. I had to begin to heal again. I picked myself up, went to work. I talked it out with him. I apologized. I knew I was being unstable. I had to stabilize. Fix things for us. But I was done lying about my emotions, which is still new territory for me.

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lanashellrey-blog · 7 years ago

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Time bomb

Sunday I returned to school.

I held on to all of what I had gathered throughout the past five days and I realized that it all had to be stuffed in my pocket. I had learned about some of his newest clothes on Saturday and I went back to carrying my anxiety in my chest. On the way down, I cried as we pulled out of the driveway. I said I hated school. I couldn’t bear going back there. I wanted it to all be over. Then, Mom and Dad launched into a tirade about how it’s my fault and maybe if I didn’t act so negative and glum all the time maybe I would feel better. I bit down on my lip to prevent from crying harder. We stopped to eat at a restaurant and I managed to eat half of a sandwich. My nausea still hadn’t ceased. When we got back in the car, I switched off between reading a book and sleeping. I was back at my university before I knew it.

We stepped into my empty apartment. Dad put together my new desk chair. We put away some of my things that I had brought from home. Mom snooped around upstairs in my bedroom. She said she wanted to “test out my bed” but I know it was to sneak around in my personal space and see if I was living actually living a normal life like I said or if it were just a facade. Mom should know better than to expect me to channel all of my emotional baggage into my personal space. All she found was my unmade bed, unfolded clothes, and crates of random items in the middle of the floor.

They double checked to make sure I would be okay. I said yes, even though I think I was lying to myself as well as them. Then they left.

I met up with Big and Grandbig before our chapter meeting. Neither of them mentioned what was going on. They asked me how home was. How are you doing, with that specific tone in their voice that said they only semi-wanted to hear what I was feeling. The tone that is asking to be polite, not because they’re concerned. I didn’t hesitate to say bad. I was through lying about my feelings. Neither of them commented. I think they were afraid of what I would unload on them if I did.

I sat through my chapter meeting, feeling like a hollow shell of a person. I laughed on cue like I was supposed to. I sang when I was supposed to and then I sat quietly. I smiled when I was supposed to. Said my cordial hellos and goodbyes. I didn’t take notes. My one roommate saw me and gave me a hug. She asked how was home? but she didn’t ask any more. Nothing specific either. Big and Grandbig invited me to coffee at our favorite venue. The social worker said no coffee after noon, so I decided to head home instead. I said hello to my second roommate when she was dropped off her family. Then I laid in bed until sleep came.

It was my first day back on my regular routine. I woke up and headed off to my internship and told my mentor that I had just had the bad stomach flu. Her mouth dropped as if in disbelief. I wasn’t even sure anymore if that was a lie. I lie to myself all the time, but I never believe me. While we were racing around the hallways, I heard the echoes of music honking and clattering. My stomach turned. My head spin. My chest tied into the anxiety-knot. I tore skin off my thumbs for the rest of the time that I was there.

Later on in the library after my internship, I was trying my best to kick myself back into gear. Being home had sucked up what little was left of my motivation. Reading was hard. I felt my eyes glazing over every time I tried. I was getting frustrated. I felt myself breaking down. I scrawled some final notes before I shoved off for class, feeling defeated. I was suffering through college and I couldn’t even do college anymore. Last year I had been a well-oiled machine. My color-coded planner was my lifeline. I worked hard, got amazing grades, and still had enough time and money to go for drinks with my friends on the weekends.My parents were so proud of me, they almost completely ignored the fact that I wasn’t even old enough to drink yet. I remember how I had told the social worker that I didn’t drink anymore because of the concussion I got when I was drunk in the spring. Suddenly, that didn’t seem like the truth anymore.

I was laying in my bed that afternoon when my roommate, the one who’d gotten home late with her family, came in. We talked about her weekend white-water rafting. We talked about the boy she’s currently seeing, we laughed at silly videos. She didn’t ask me about my weekend.

In the evening, my roommate, the one who I’d seen at the chapter meeting, baked some cookies. We hung up new decorations in the living room. We laughed together and sang songs. We planned our Halloween costumes. Something came up, and I told her a story about him. She laughed. But she didn’t say anything.

To everyone around me, I must look like a ticking time bomb. Nobody wants to touch me. Nobody wants to set me off. Nobody wants to mention anything around me. Nobody wants to see me explode. How nice it would be to share their feelings of safety, wanting to look but not touch. I desperately want to go back to the times when I could follow them to safety, get behind the yellow line. I wish it weren’t me this time, playing the one who needed to be defused.

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lanashellrey-blog · 7 years ago

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Home

Being home is bad nostalgia. I hate driving by the places we’d go, the places we’d share laughs, the places we’d eat. I hate missing my friends. I hate feeling lonely in my own hometown.

On Thursday, I woke up to a message from him saying he was upset. He’d had a bad day. He cried in the dining hall. I called him immediately. He was laughing again. We were telling jokes. After that, he and I talked all day long. We talked on the phone. I felt happy. I didn’t eat a single thing. My stomach felt like it could explode all day. I laid in bed. I slept, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to keep talking.

Mom came home that night and she came directly to my bedroom. She found me laying on my side in the same position that I had been all day. She told me to eat. Told me that I needed to give this up. That it was bad for me. I was cheating myself of happiness. He was deceiving me. I shouldn’t trust him anymore. I couldn’t live my life in fear of the next time. I sobbed. She left my room without giving me a hug.

I felt numb. My eyes were swollen. He was having a good day. He had taught. Gone to class. Shaved himself. He told me he’d had a breakdown but he’d felt better. He asked about me and I didn’t lie. I told him I’d been in bed all day, that I couldn’t move. I started throwing questions at him. I asked if he was lying to me, if he’d had a decision. I asked if he’d lied at all. I asked him how I should trust that he won’t change his mind on me again. I asked him what he thought of me. I asked him what will happen to us.

He told me he wasn’t lying. He told me he was still unsure. He said he’d never lied outside of this. He said he wants to be sure of his decision so he never has to be unsure again. He said he thought I was strong, resilient. He wanted me to be happy and healthy. He said he loved me more than the whole world. He wanted to keep me forever. He said that we can fix this.

For the first time, I felt like I was being honest with him, truly, fully. I said I didn’t know what would happen to us. I want to support him until the day I die. He went to sleep before he could reply.

Dad told me that I needed to advocate for myself, to not let people walk all over me. I had to get what I needed, not let people just tell me what I was going to do. You’re tired, he had said, get some sleep. Sleep came to me late, it was fleeting, and it almost made me more tired.

In the morning, Mom took me to the doctor. I filled out paperwork in a waiting room that was too big and smelled too clean. I was the first person there. Mom sat two seats away from me, like she was afraid my depression was contagious and didn’t want to catch it from me.

When it was my turn, I followed a woman to the back room and answered general questions about myself. Mom gave me a hug and left for work. Then a different woman in a different back room told me about my finances and insurance and all the things I didn’t understand. Finally, a social worker took me into a different back room and I told her everything.

I told her about my sleep and how I wasn’t getting any. I told her about my appetite and how I didn’t have one. I told her about how I had been feeling this way for seven years. The feeling never stopped for more than a few days. I was restless, had no motivation, no concentration, little to no hobbies. No passions. No, I wasn’t addicted to alcohol, but we shared a laugh over the concussion I got while I was drunk spring semester. I told her about him. She complimented the sticker on my water bottle from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. She asked me about my friends and my schoolwork. In the strangest way, I felt connected to this woman. It was like she was already my friend and neither of us had known it until now.

The full consultation took over an hour, with me spending the most time in the social worker’s office answering general questions about myself. Sometimes crying. The social worker strongly recommended counseling as well as medication. Medication. The word rang in my ear like a fire alarm. I told her I would think about it. She took down my name to pair me with a counselor. Told me to seek counseling at my university. She gave me a folder and sent me on my way.

The walk home felt like it happened in an instant. My phone buzzed with more messages from him that I decided to ignore until I got home. I felt the cool breeze on my face, I squinted into the mid-morning sun kissing my face. There were no clouds. The weather felt different at home. I passed by Walmart, where my good friend Zach worked. I craned my neck and peered into the parking lot, looking for his bright blue car in its usual parking space. I remember how in summer, we’d go and visit him at work at night when it was busy. Harass him while he was stocking juices or wheeling around big carts with boxes. Help him push shopping carts in the parking lot. I wished that he were working right there, his face was always friendly, always happy to see you, always giving hugs and smiling. He could pick up my mood any day. But on this day, he wasn’t there.

When I got home, I opened up his messages to a multitude of different things. He said that he was hurt to hear me say that I wasn’t sure if our relationship would last. He wants to be there for me always. The future is scary. He’s angry at the universe for making him feel like this.

I tell him I’m angry, too. Neither of us deserve this. We deserved a normal life. I tell him I can’t live in uncertainty for my entire life, never knowing when we’ll do this again. I didn’t know what would happen to us if he went on. I wanted to trust him but I couldn’t. I tell him my heart is broken because I love him so much, more than anything in the world. I wanted to be with him forever. I’m angry. I’m guilty. I tell him I wish he would tell me he hates me and wants me to die.

Everything is in a fog. I head upstairs. Lay down. Try not to cry. Instead, I sleep for three hours.

I woke up as I fell asleep, in a fog, dazed, disoriented.

Eight hours later, he replies. He says this makes him sad. He’s sorry that I’m so hurt. He says he likes who he is, but not who he is. He agrees that the universe played us in the wrong way. He urges me to trust him, to get all of my doubts out of my head and trust him. He is adamant that he will figure this out and that he will be sure and I should just trust him. He hopes he doesn’t have to change. He wishes he felt normal. He wishes that I didn’t feel like he should hate me.

I can tell he is pained by what I said. Blindly trusting him seems like the naive thing to do. I want to do it so, so badly. I’ve spent four whole years taking his hand and letting him show me the way to do whatever we would do. I know that ignoring feelings and misguided trust and going on our merry way is going to be the solution that makes me the happiest. But I know that it won’t be what makes him the happiest. And in the end, we’ll both suffer.

Dad takes me to eat. I get soup and bread. I eat it and feel like I ate a whole Thanksgiving dinner. I wish my eating habits could be normal again.

I tell him he needed to keep exploring his options. He agreed and said that other options put him at ease and took pressure off but he didn’t want to confuse people. I assured him that nobody needs an explanation. He agreed, and he agreed that he should do what he wants without owing anybody shit.

This seems like a good time to call him, so I do. We talk nothing of my day. We talk about him, how his day was. We don’t even get through talking about his whole day without getting sidetracked by other things. We’re laughing, talking about mutual friends, his roommate even jumps in to tell me a story that we both laugh about. He hangs up only when he’s outside of a concert that he has to go into.

For the first time in six whole days, the lump of anxiety and fear in my chest has gone away. I shower without crying. I talk to my mom and I feel emotion in my voice again. I breathe. Things seem like they’re looking up for some reason. I have no idea why.

He doesn’t answer me back for three and a half hours. When he does, I ask him more questions that I have. They’re about sex and his thoughts and feelings. His reply about sex isn’t surprising. His identity is. He thinks of his legs and nails, and his hair and clothes. I begin to feel dizzy again. I tell him to go to bed, but neither of us do.

He tells me he’s glad that he can talk about his feelings but he’s afraid of what I will think. I say I’m trying to be as honest with him as possible. This is hard, I say, because I’m trying to understand how he’s feeling and also reassure myself even though I know deep down that things will not be okay. He says they will be, they’ll just be hard for a while. I still can’t bring myself to blindly trust him.

I tell him what Mom said. I can tell he’s frustrated with me for telling her about our secret, and that I shouldn’t be sympathetic to her feelings, she doesn’t trust anybody. I’m torn. I tell him that I’ll try to trust him. Am I lying to him? I can’t tell.

His philosophy has always been to put feelings on the shelves, think later. Feel happy and forget your feelings. Blind optimism. I know that he is questioning if things will be okay between us too. But he will never say. He wants me to not question it too. He needs validation from me that things will be okay. But that validation is something that I can not give him right now. So he’s probably faking it.

I lift my head up from the pillow. I had been crying for a while. I know that I look absolutely terrible. My eyes are bloodshot. My face is blotchy and red. I look him dead in the face, my voice unwavering for the first time since this conversation began.

“So,” I say, my voice harsher than I intended. “Is this one of those times when it’s okay to lie to people to protect their feelings?”

His face doesn’t change. He swallows hard. “Yes.”

In the morning, I wake up and check his Reddit page for the millionth time. Today, there’s an update. Another comment on another post. That lump in my chest returns.

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lanashellrey-blog · 7 years ago

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Phone calls

Yesterday felt really really good.

I threw up two more times and I knew that I needed to go home. I skipped my evening class and laid in my bed for a long, long time. I fell into a silent, dreamless sleep.

I woke up disoriented. Light was still poking through the blinds. It was only 4:30. I still felt nauseous, but I sat up and didn't feel exhausted.

I called him. We talked on the phone for thirty-five minutes. I was so happy, I think I was smiling the whole time. He sounded good. He said he had had a good day. I didn't tell him about my week. He had to hang up to go to a concert, but he would call me later.

When he called me later, we talked for two hours and forty-two minutes.

At one point, I heard him gritting his teeth and mumbling "ouch" to himself. Nail polish remover. He said he wanted to try new colors, but clear was his only option. Every time he began to talk to me about these things, his voice trailed off into the air.

I asked him what he was afraid of. He said the future for our relationship. He said fear of classmates. Of his parents, especially his father. I gritted my teeth. He said "um" about twelve times.

Otherwise, he said he felt good. The concert made him feel happy. He was dressed well and that made him feel happy. He sent me a photo in his concert clothes, black dress shirt and black dress pants. He looked cute, sexy, slightly unshaven, his hair slightly messy. I saved the photo for myself.

I so desperately wanted to crawl inside his head because I couldn't trust his word. I felt like he was lying to me. I wanted to unscrew his hairline and listen to his thoughts through noise canceling headphones. I wondered if he was a liar, like me. I wanted to believe that he wasn't, that life was headed back to normal, that we could go back to our July life and holding hands. A tightness in my chest, my quivering stomach, my scorching-hot, feverish face suggested that I shouldn't believe him.

I laid on my stomach and blabbed into the phone at him. We exchanged silly pictures back and forth. For the first time in days, I laughed. I was so enthralled in talking to him, it was almost enough to ignore the clenching of my chest whenever I remembered.

I smiled. I didn't want to hang up. I kept stalling. I wanted to grip on to these two hours and forty-two minutes as tight as possible. It felt like normal. When we hung up, the sound of the happiness in his voice rang in my ears. It sounded like summertime.

I felt comfortable for the first time in days, so I picked up my phone and spilled to him that I was going home and going to the doctor and I had received a consultation for counseling. I thought that he deserved to know and I felt immediately better once I sent the messages.

I went to bed happy.

I woke up anxious. I felt the weight in my chest, as I usually do. The nausea had made its way back into my belly, and I slouched down the hallway to the bathroom and threw up again in the toilet.

I opened my phone and immediately regretted telling him about home and the doctor and therapy. He was concerned and worried for me. That isn't what I wanted at all. I put my face in my hands and breathed deeply.

The worst part about anxiety is the chest tightness. Anxiety plagued my brain all day. I was dizzy and still couldn't eat. I chewed on a rock hard bagel during my shift and it made me even more dizzy and nauseous. My throat felt hot and my tongue was swollen, probably from the throwing up all week.

I told him I was doing well. That I was feeling better.

On the long bus ride, I rolled through the little mountains--cut up by electric lines, highways, cell phone towers, carving a path all the way back home.

We were taking the Dark Core Personality Test. Saturday afternoon, in his car. I was reading him the statements and he was giving the answers. We were tallying it up to see what negative traits we both had.

"I believe that it's okay to lie in some circumstances," I read, looking over at him. His eyes were locked on the road but I could see him in thought about the question.

"Strongly agree." He replied.

I gaped open my eyes. "Really? Why? What makes you say that?"

He shrugged. "Sometimes, you know that you have to lie to protect someone's feelings."

"I guess that's understandable."

We tallied up the results.

Him, 63% psychopathy, 53% egoism, 67% spitefulness.

Me, 63% narcissism.

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lanashellrey-blog · 7 years ago

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I regret every single time I thought bad things about him.

Every time I thought he was annoying or embarrassing or shy.

I regret every single time I said “oh my god shut UP” under my breath.

I regret every single time I thought we weren’t working and wanted to leave.

Every time when I thought we wouldn’t make it through and we did.

I regret every single time I didn’t hold him harder, kiss him back, hold his hand longer, hug him tighter.

I regret every single time I put others before him.

I regret every single time I didn’t listen to a piece he told me to.

Every time I turned off the jazz music that was playing when we stepped into the car.

I regret every single time I thought he wasn’t trying hard enough.

I miss him already and he’s not even gone.

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lanashellrey-blog · 7 years ago

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Tally

I’m sick of losing sleep. I went to sleep around 10 at night. I woke up at 11, 1 in the morning, and 4 in the morning. At 4, I decided there was no use in going back to sleep. I went to the bathroom and immediately threw up several times. The nausea hasn’t gone down. In fact, it’s gotten worse.

I sat awake, scrolling through Reddit as if seeing other success stories could fix my heart, crying, holding back more vomit, writhing in pain from nausea, my head spinning and dizzy. I began typing a post on Reddit explaining my entire situation. From start to finish. It took me 20 minutes. I submitted it without reading over it. It wasn’t poetry, but it was enough to get my point across. I messaged my mother, asking her if I could come home this weekend to go to the doctor.

I went to my internship after I finished. I had packed snacks, but I knew I couldn’t eat them. As soon as I walked in, my mentor asked me what was going on yesterday. I lied, told her that I was having intense stomach pains and I cried from the pain. Not entirely a lie. But she understood, and frankly understanding was really the best I could get from other people at this point, so I took it. She excused me from coming in on Thursday and Friday. And I didn’t have to explain myself and start crying again. I excused myself to go to the bathroom about thirty minutes in. On my way there, I heard the school band practicing in the room down the hallway. I stepped into the bathroom and threw up the gummy vitamins I had taken that morning. I came back and my mentor told me about her colleague’s son who had some type of colon inflammation and suggested that I might just need a change in diet. I nodded and agreed, “fingers crossed that that’s all it is!” I said, showing my teeth like a well-behaved college educated woman, but seeing it from my point of view, I knew believing that leafy greens could fix everything was naive. I drank water. Even water made me nauseous.

On my way to class, my mother had replied. She had called me on Sunday after I told her that I was starting counseling and I spilled my guts, cried ugly tears, blew my nose ten trillion times. Once again, she had no answers for me. Nobody did. But she agreed that a doctor visit might be necessary. She would look into general care physicians at home and find one.

Reddit had answered me, too. One reply. To sum it up: go to therapy. Sometimes it works out. Talk. Understand. You’re young, you’ll figure it out. I took a deep breath, pretended to be interested in the cracks of the sidewalk.

I headed to class, headed down the big hill and into the icebox building where my class was held. Women and health communications, it was called. I started a tally in my planner of how many times I cried per day and how many times I threw up per day, appropriately titled the Cry Count and the Puke Count. Monday’s Cry Count had seven, and Puke Count was only at three. I should probably keep tabs on what I eat each day too, but truth be told it’s not that hard to remember everything each day.

During class, he messaged me about teaching kids to read. He told me how he didn’t want to let the kids down. He just wanted to make them happy. He sent me pictures of him in a shirt and tie.

I stepped out of class and threw up again. He’s helping kids learn to read. He’s making kids happy. He even looks good doing it. I can’t imagine how he’s feeling being dressed like that. I spilled my stomach into the toilet bowl, gasping for air, vomit coming out of my nose, coughing. Who am I? I’m stepping out every hour to throw up stomach bile. I can’t even look kids at my internship in the eye. I’m losing energy and motivation. I’m dizzy always. I keep lying to him, saying I’m doing fine, saying I’m eating, I’m just tired, just feeling out of it. I wish he would look me in the eyes, glare me down, tell me that he hates me, tell me that he wishes I would die. Truth be told, nothing would come of it. Nobody hates me as much as I hate myself.

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lanashellrey-blog · 7 years ago

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I found his reddit and I feel sick to my stomach

For the record, I already feel bad for searching. During work, I was looking for it as a way to find more clues about what was doing on in his life but I found nothing. So I figured I just wouldn’t find it. I continued with work. Clocked out. Went home and ordered delivery Chinese food with my roommate but I wasn’t hungry. I ate less than half.

Big and Grandbig invited me out for coffee as part of our usual routine when some bomb like this dropped. We met at the coffee shop, the same one we always go to. It’s our safe haven. These walls have seen our tears, heard the hollow echo of our laughter. Our pain has seeped through the cracks of the wooden wall. I felt safe to share my story here. I normally feared crying in public, but I knew that here, it didn’t matter.

Grandbig was sipping on some tea when I arrived, and Big had brought coffee from home. It took me a few minutes, but finally I spilled. I showed Grandbig the messages that I had sent Big while it was all unfolding. She looked at me, earnestly, in that way that only she could. My Grandbig wasn’t usually a serious person, but I watched her face turn to complete stone in that moment.

You need time to take a breath, she said. Worry about supporting yourself.

I explained that I felt like no situation was good. There was no way to support myself. Any way I chose, I feel like I’m losing. Every single time. My chest tightened. I started to think real hard and choked up.

She held my hand. I wiped more tears. I finished my coffee and left in an hour. On my walk home, I threw up in the street.

Once I arrived back home, I almost immediately excused myself to bed. I continued my search for his Reddit page, and this time, I used a Google method to find him. This time, it worked. I felt my heart hit the floor of my stomach at what I was reading. My hands began shaking and wouldn’t stop. I feared more throwing up was in store. Instead, more tears.

I am feeling so lost and misguided. I wish I could turn back time forever. I have so many regrets. I feel like I have wasted time. I feel like I’m trapped in an hourglass, pounding on glass, sand filling up my throat.

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lanashellrey-blog · 7 years ago

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Work

I am reading these old text posts and I am thinking about a life I used to live back before truth unfolded. For four straight years we were the month of July--warm on your skin, tasting salt in the air, your hair in your mouth, breeze stagnant. Saturday, we hit November. It’s cold enough to be uncomfortable, the weather that makes you put a jacket on and then take it off. Uneasy. Wavering. I used to think about pregnancy, survival, making it to age eighteen. Survival.

Click, scan, type, click, stick.

I am forgetting all of the sorrow. This is where I belong. Scanning mail, putting a sticker on it, next package please. I can forget the pain of this past weekend. A therapy session that pays a little over minimum wage.

Click, scan, type, click, stick.

I forget what it feels like to cry for thirty six straight hours. I hold my head when I stand up, feeling the nonexistent pressure in the room change. I can forget all my troubles with a stack of packages.

Click, scan, type, click, stick.

I think about how I went to therapy for the first time in over a year. It was just a consultation but it was cathartic to cry in the face of someone who doesn’t know me. I must have seemed out of it enough, because she admitted that she thought I’d be hearing from them sometime this week to set up permanent biweekly therapy. I think about how I knew I had to go when this morning my mentor teacher walked in on me crying for no reason. I’ll bet it scared the hell out of her because it scared the hell out of me.

Click, scan, type, click, stick. Time to put them away. I wheel the big cart over to the shelves. My head is throbbing. More scanning, I mostly put the mail on the middle shelves to be considerate. Amazon boxes. Big care packages from grandmas. I am losing the one I love the most but not right now, because now it’s mail room time. I don’t get off until six in the evening. I plan to go straight to bed.

If I weren’t putting big boxes into a new home, I’d be thinking about his arms and how he used to hold me. I think about the text I would have sent him before work. The weekend we could have had if I hadn’t spent the majority of it crying into what is now a pile of tissues.

Instead, I told him to each a vegetable and take an hour to watch a show. He told me about his consultation with a therapist. He doesn’t know about mine. I worry for his safety. His mental health. Mine. Us together.

I haven’t prayed since I was about nine and thought I could die in my sleep at any day. I pray every hour now, praying that things can go back to normal. Before, on that day that we were crying in my bed at five in the evening, we were driving two hours to get breakfast food. Singing together in the car. Holding hands. Kissing. I feel a dark cloud. I haven’t taken a breath. I cried in both classes twice and got blood on my shirt.

Work is the first time all day I’ve felt physically and mentally present. On autopilot, no doubt, but at least no longer feeling like I left my whole heart in a stick-shift Honda Accord, ripped out, cut open, bleeding everywhere, now parked in an empty lot in Cincinnati. I’m empty and I’m numb, but I smile, grab your mail, scan it out, wish you well, sit back down, and think.

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