I Guess They Never Disappear

Chapter 23

Trigger Warning: Unhealthy Medication Habits/Slight Suicidal Thoughts {This is mostly the whole chapter, I'm sorry everybody. Please don't read if this is a trigger, and please also stay safe.}

I pace up and down the hallway, the floor shifting slightly underneath my feet. Jared's using the bathroom before we go over to Heidi and Paul's. 

Which I don't want to do today. 

And I feel guilty for it, as I rightly should. They haven't done anything that means I need to hate them. Jared hasn't done anything. Fuck, nothing has actually happened today that makes at all valid that I don't want to go over to dinner. 

Not to mention that I've been hiding things from everybody. The least I can do is just go over to their house, right? 

My head starts to hurt, and my stomach begins to clench. I briskly walk over to the couch and sit down. No need to have Jared come out of the bathroom and see me standing there looking all dizzy. 

I'm pretty sure he doesn't know the symptoms of not taking Lexapro, but he could probably google them. 

And then I would be really fucking screwed. 

Besides, I'm being smart about it. Five milligrams less, every other day. In another week or two, I should be able to increase the time between taking those five milligrams. I know better than to just stop taking my meds completely. Plus, aside from the physical aspects of it, I'm doing fine. 

My anxiety hasn't gotten worse without me taking the amount prescribed. 

I think people are just too worried about me. 

First off, the only reason I was taking a greater amount than I used to in the first place was because Chris started to get all concerned, and requested to increase my dose (I could've said no, but that would raise questions, I'm sure of it). 

Some days I feel a little more light-headed, a little more nervous, but I can attribute that to skipping some of the pills. I know I'm not supposed to do this, and so I assume those feelings are guilt. If people find out and then Chris finds out because there's no chance that they wouldn't if others did then I'm very very much screwed. Lying about this sort of thing gets people worried about you, and I don't want that and I really really don't want to take more medication or go to an out-patient daytime treatment thing. 

So I'm just doing a slightly more difficult version of hiding. 

Jared is standing in front of me, waving his hand in front of my face shit shit shit shit shit. 

"Earth to Ev," he trills, carefree joy lacing his voice. "Ev, Evan, love, beau-"

I snap out of my internal monologue right then, fortunately. 

"What?"

"You were spacing out, I think. C'mon, we've got to go over to your parents'."

"Oh," I say, "Yeah, sorry Jared I was just thinking about stuff and I got a bit distracted I'm sorry if I wasted your time."

He's turned away from me by now, so he doesn't notice how I grip the back of the couch when I stand up. The dizzy spell has faded, and I realize this now, but there's no point in not being careful, in not worrying people. 

(Because worrying people is a vicious plague, that hurts everybody, because people are caring about you and they're wasting their time, and then often they're just patronizing you, they have to be, because that sort of caring isn't the kind you should be showing to a mentally functional adult.)

Maybe we just arrive extremely quickly, or maybe my mind just shorts out during the trip to Heidi and Paul's house. It could be either. 

The door opens, and both of them are there to greet us, which I was kind of hoping wouldn't happen because I wanted to have an excuse to go sit down quickly because fuck I don't feel like standing right now.