Plus One

37: Dots of awareness

Yeah, it's been way too long. I don't think I can apologize enough to those of you still alive. <3

37: Dots of awareness                 

Time flies when you’re having fun, but it doesn’t necessarily slow down when you’re plagued by feelings of discontent. My life, following the earthquake of trauma that had carved a crevice in my stability, passed by much like the days of a flower dying in a rainstorm. I was wilting, losing the fresh, green vivacity that kept thoughts flowing and heart beating. Endless spears of water—of tragedy—beat down mercilessly, destroying any chance I had at picking myself up. The brief flashes of sunshine, of happiness, were neither frequent nor long enough to do much more than keep me breathing. I was alive and I was fighting to recover, but the elements were all against me. I wasn’t sad anymore; I was merely exhausted. 

My memory of the recent days, looking back, wasn’t a stretch of continuous hours and days. It was dots of awareness: a cluster of minutes here and there, separated by stretches of grey. I felt as if someone were watching my life through a movie, skipping ahead to their favorite scenes and blurring the moments in between. The gaps in my memory were disconcerting, but I didn’t have the energy to force myself to pay attention. Every ounce of strength I’d preserved was the bare minimum needed to prevent me from crawling into bed and never coming out.

I was tired. I was falling asleep in the middle of my own life. Were it not for those sporadic flashes of consciousness, I would have convinced myself I’d somehow slipped and fallen out of existence. But I had those, and so I clung to them, replaying them over and over, hoping that one day the imprint of their energy would wake me up for good. 

*** 

It was the first day Taylor had been home from the hospital. To combat his lingering pain, he’d been dosed with substantially heavy medication, leaving him sleepy and somewhat delirious for hours. He and Dominic were lying on the couch: Taylor was draped across his boyfriend’s chest, his arms loosely around Dom’s neck and his head resting on his shoulder. 

I’d recently gotten home from lunch with Charlotte: she’d made it her personal mission to keep me too busy to reflect on much of anything, but it was growing slowly clear that the weight of the past days was getting to her. Halfway through the meal, I looked up from my food to realize that it had been twenty minutes since either of us had said anything. Charlotte caught my gaze and sucked in a frantic breath, coming to terms with what I’d discovered. Quickly, she launched into another mindless conversation, but the trouble in her eyes remained. 

And so, already a little disheartened by my friend’s unraveling, I shuffled into the apartment to find the described scene. The television’s volume was enough to mask my arrival, and for the sake of keeping the peace, I kept my footsteps quiet as I tiptoed toward my room. I don’t know exactly what I’d expected to see. The sight of Taylor in Dominic’s lap was neither strange nor unfamiliar, and the fact that he was clearly asleep was endearing. But Dom wasn’t focusing on the TV program, and he wasn’t dozing off with his lover in his arms. He had pulled Taylor dangerously close, one hand clinging around his waist and the other tightly clutching his hair. 

This wasn’t sweet; it was desperate. It was Dominic taking advantage of his boyfriend’s unconsciousness to shed his composed façade. The warm-hearted bartender had locked his best friend against him, terrified and falling apart at the notion that he’d almost lost his entire world. His fists were white with tension, conflicted with wanting to hold on for dear life, but trying not to cause Taylor pain. 

When I was almost out of the living room, Dominic caught my eye. I shivered.

 “I’m fine,” he murmured, holding Taylor tighter. “I’m fine.”