HOUR ZERO
It’s four days after my twentieth birthday, and I’m angry. I’m angry because months prior, my partner promised to spend my birthday cuddled alongside me, but the drive proved to be too much for her. There wasn’t much of a conversation around the cancellation, just a mutual understanding that the plan was shot. Still, I am my mother’s child, and my expectations delude all forms of reality; in a world where I’m so clearly a Blair Waldorf, could you blame me for wanting a Chuck Bass level of extravagance? So there I lay, sprawled out across the couch, four days after my twentieth birthday, angry.
But I’ve not yet reached the cold-shoulder level of angry, so when my phone buzzes with a text from my partner, I don’t hesitate to sit up.
mom drove me to er and we r now waiting for admission
Shit.
HOUR ONE – TWENTY-FOUR
Did you know that The Seattle Times publishes each New York Times crossword puzzle, same-day, for free? Instead of paying one dollar every week for the rest of your life, you can support the Marxist, liberal machine that Seattle fronts while skyrocketing rent in the face of thousands of unhoused – for free!
Thirty-nine down, seven letters: A HOSPITAL HAS MANY SPECIALIZED PLACES WHERE PATIENTS RECOVER IN BRIGHT CHEERFUL SPACES. Obviously, it’s TOWARDS – my dad would call this one of the “cheeky” clues, the ones where you can practically hear the NYT intern kicking his feet while watching the boss write. “Oh, John, you’re too clever! Yes–yes, the youth will love this one.” Fucking bastards.
Can you tell I’m starting to go crazy?
HOUR TWENTY-FOUR – FORTY-EIGHT
I call in sick to my classes – leaving it at “I’m not feeling well,” because “I’m not feeling well, which I’m pretty sure is my own fault, because I learned about somatoform disorders in AbPsych last week, and the sickness only began after my partner’s first call from inpatient. Oh, my partner’s in inpatient, by the way. Thanks!” sounds like a poor excuse for a soap opera.
My day is spent writhing in bed, drinking red Gatorade and playing animal crossing. I order a humidifier on Amazon with some of my birthday money, and wait for the next phone call to hit. It feels like I’m living my life phone-call-to-phone-call; I try to hide the rasp in my voice in favor of soothing my partner’s cries.
Somebody dressed in my skin roams my house, collecting hugs from roommates. They stand in the backyard, staring into the path where bunnies usually race through to get to the neighbors’. The figure crouches down to feel the prickly grass, weaving their fingers through the blades like they were a head of hair freshly-buzzed, before lumbering onto the porch, away from view.
I have to watch myself back on the security camera just to prove I was there.
HOUR FORTY-EIGHT – SEVENTY-TWO
I can count on one hand the “I love you”s I’ve received today. I know it’s probably fucked up to even think of, but some Freudian part of me grapples with the idea that my partner may have no use for me anymore. They’re getting the help they need, isn’t that bigger than me? Bigger than any stupid insecurity about my worth, which is indescribably tied to my sex, and my ability to dispense care? I need to keep dispensing my care – but not my sex, though, because this isn’t the fucking time, and what is wrong with me to even think such thoughts right now, I don’t fucking deserve even these few “I love you”s, I should j–
Checking my IAmSober app, I see that I’m five-hundred and sixty-one days clean. I decline the pop-up to reflect on my sober journey, and open iMessages:
Hi angel, it’s me !! You sounded a lot more hopeful and determined and gentler with yourself today, and I am so crazy excited to be able to hug you soon. My love
I need to keep dispensing my care. My love.
HOUR SEVENTY-TWO – NINETY-SIX
The single blade runs over my skin in a hail-mary attempt to feel beautiful. I shaved my eyebrows off a few days ago, and the upkeep is proving to be more than I expected. Still, I find comfort in the menial task – the middle school romantic in me can still recite Gus’ metaphor perfectly. I slather the now-tender flesh in Vaseline and spray droplets from my water bottle onto my hand to get the residue off.
I take seventy-two selfies and delete seventy of them. The survivors are texted to my partner with a brief explanation of the re-shaving. I scroll up to our pre-hospital texts, filled with compliments and love and God and photographs that I can’t in good conscience describe to you here. I feel beautiful, if only for a moment.
With a single knock on my door, I straighten up and welcome in my roommate. She’s just checking in on me – I’m clearly not myself, and she just wishes she could make everything go away. Since the human race has yet to master the art of bending reality, the next best thing we could think of is boba. I stuff my feet into my shoes and spare a glance to the blade sitting on my desk; it stares right back.
“You put the thing that does the killing right between your teeth, but you never give it the power to kill you.”
HOUR NINETY-SIX – ONE-HUNDRED TWENTY
HOUSE RULES: you can stack identical cards, plus twos, and plus fours, but you can not stack plus twos on plus fours. You must say “uno” when you’re about to put down your second to last card – if someone beats you, then you must draw two. Left of the dealer starts.
I’m always the dealer.
We’re in one of those rare all-house games, and even though I don’t think I’ve won a single round, this may be the happiest I’ve felt in days (four to five days, if I had to make a guess). I tap out only once the flesh on my fingertips starts to break, making everyone indulge me in a group hug before I retreat to my quarters. Despite the groan of my bed frame, I swear I was floating–
TRANSCRIPTION (LOW CONFIDENCE)
“Hey it's me again I am ___ just ___ call that my mom never got a call from the hospital earlier ___ like aftercare plan so my doctor just never called and so he was never planning on discharging me today or probably tomorrow so normally they tell you like one day in advance but he said he was gonna call my mom and he just never did so that's really cool and then I was gonna go to bed and then the nurse knocked on my door and said my dad was on the phone and I took the phone and they said they didn’t wanna get my hopes up but like they never got the call and I ________ I ____ _______ __ know if you just _____ go home and then ___ for like the next like five minutes they just told me yeah lol that sucks basically I don't know like they they said that they _______ ______ __ __________ my feelings but it's only if they were like they were just like my mom just made it ____ stupid _____ ____ __ ____________ again so ______ super _______ _______ ________ like oh maybe they just forgot practice your perseverance like yeah sure mom like I'm really sure that's true I'm sure he's not like _________ keeping me here forever _______ so I'm guessing I'll be home on Friday or after that if this guy will even let me out anytime so tomorrow I'm just going to find him and say I need to be released today and I will leave today…… Parents just don't understand how hard it is to be here especially after I've done all this work you know and only ___________ __ __ ____ _____ ________ __ ____ I'm really frustrated and I was going to call my mom back but I just called you instead but you’re sleeping so it's OK um whatever I'll talk to her tomorrow and I'll talk to you tomorrow OK bye…”
Was this translation useful or not useful?
–What goes up must come down.
HOUR ONE-HUNDRED TWENTY – ONE-HUNDRED FORTY-FOUR
What kind of a person googles “churches near me?”
“A lost person, of course,” the churches respond.
In order to be lost, you must search and fail to find. Maybe I’ve been searching for love, for peace, home – much to the annoyance of my roommates, I’m sure – but I’ve found it. I found her. Found is the antonym of lost; lost and fucking found, I was lost within the darkness but then I found her/I found you, and infinitely more cheesy lyrics. I’m not fucking lost.
The closest church is three-tenths of a mile from me.
My closest love is nine-hundred and forty-three times that.
And she was supposed to get out today, she should’ve been out right now, resting in her own bed; bathing in her own shower; embracing her own siblings; the siblings whom I am texting right now, toggling between Google and iMessages, because I need a God or a Girl, whichever comes first–
“also dylan is coming home!”
We do not see our signs;
there is no longer any prophet,
and there is none among us who knows how long.
Psalm seventy-four nine.
H-HOUR
I haven’t heard a word my Developmental Psych professor has said in at least twenty minutes. This is what I imagine tinnitus feels like.
Dylan’s coming home today. Dylan’s coming home today.
It revamps like a wonky record, doomed to play the same verse over and over.
Dylan’s coming home today.
I feel angry. I feel crazy. I feel sick. I feel lost. I feel the happiest I’ve felt in days. I think I might cry. If I do cry, I wonder if my professor would say anything; if he’d question the eyebrowless kid on the back wall, sitting with their laptop always open, always typing and squinting and never managing to look up. Would he ask me to leave? Should I just leave on my own? I need to be home. I need my bed, my home, my love, my brain. I haven’t been myself in days – weeks, maybe. I can’t remember anymore. I don’t think it even matters. How long has it been since something has mattered?
“OKAY WYATT:” a reply to the two selfies from two lifetimes ago.
I feel beautiful, if only for a moment.
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