𝐔𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐋𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃

42 | black holes and revelations part II

I take one deep breath before saying, "Okay."

"My mother used to have manic episodes all the time when I was younger and at the time, I didn't understand what that meant until I started to experience them when I became older. Mania is when you basically experience emotions that are two sides of the same coin; one of them are abnormally elevated moods, where you feel extremely happy to the point that it seems peculiar. You suddenly have so much energy running through you and you somehow feel encouraged to do things you've never tried before that you normally wouldn't even think of doing because you're not usually in that headspace. At the same time, you would be very irritable or you'd get angry easily and engage into fights.

"On the other side of the coin, you have the lows and that's when this feeling of devastation strikes; I can't explain it, but it's as if in those moments everything suddenly feels pointless." She looks down at her hands when she turns to me, "It feels as though nothing is worth anything anymore and that fighting isn't going to lead me anywhere. During those low periods, I felt tired, exhausted and for no particular reason; I could be lying on my bed for long periods of time and I wouldn't find the will to get up, because simply enough I was tired. I was too tired to do anything. And everything around me was overwhelming me to the fullest, so I just felt like I needed to take a break from living."

When she says that, it suddenly all comes together now. There were times when Evelyn would feel completely and utterly discouraged to do anything. She would feel so incredibly depressed and at first, I thought that I had done something that might have upset her, but then she would suddenly become elevated out of nowhere and I would choose to ignore it afterwards.

"I started experiencing these types of feelings when I was sixteen, I think; or seventeen." She continues. "It got worse when the situation at my home was starting to get out of hand. My mom would bring in her boyfriends while I was home and sometimes, they would stay the night. I could hear them fucking from my room at the end of the hall." She now clenches the fabric of the hospital gown when she says, "Sometimes they would stay for days, weeks at a time and they would...touch me."

"Evelyn." My voice cracks when I say her name.

"And of course, I didn't want that." Her voice grows thicker, hoarser as she proceeds. "I never wanted that. But as long as my mom could string me along wherever she went; to her new boyfriend's houses and she could provide a roof for my head then I guess that I had to suck it up right? Because back then, my mom didn't want to stay with my dad and she didn't work, so this was the only way to provide for me. Whatever the hell that means.

"But when she broke up with them, we would always return to my uncle's house. In a way, I felt a little bit safer under his roof, because he never touched me. He never hit me. As long as I could be alone, then I was content with it."

"Did your mom know?" I ask her. "Didn't she do anything to protect you?"

"Yes, but she chose to ignore it." She replies curtly. "She was unstable too, so trust me living with her alone wasn't easy either. Anyway, fast forward my teachers at school noticed some behavioral changes in me, so they called Claudia in order to discuss. A week later, she took me to a shrink. It was okay, I guess, she was nice, but she asked too many questions. I wasn't feeling comfortable answering them, so she just gave me meds for anxiety. After a few more incidents she decided to take me to a psychiatrist and months later he finally diagnosed me with bipolar disorder. As if that wasn't obvious. It's hereditary and Claudia told him from the first day that she has it too.

"He prescribed me my Lithium along with a few other things, and that's when shit hits the fan." She says. "All those meetings were very expensive and my uncle paid for all of them. He decided to play the part of the good considerate uncle for as long as he deemed fit until he simply wanted me to repay him."

"How old were you?" I inquire.

"I was eighteen when I started going to therapy regularly." She answers. "But we agreed that when I went to college, I would pay him back bit by bit. And that's very fucking difficult especially when I have to pay for my tuition fees all alone. He's always been pressuring me about money, but things got worse when I would delay my payment and last week, he called me asking for more money than I originally owe him. Jared said that if I repaid my debt, he wouldn't change the name on my prescription back to my own."

My heart sinks down to my stomach. "That's why you came by."

"Yeah," she says gently.

"What do you mean about your name on the prescription?"

"You see when the psychiatrist gave my prescription my uncle suggested to put it under his name, so that my future employees wouldn't know of my mental illness." She explains. "He took advantage of the stigma that surrounds people with psychiatric illnesses and used it against me."

"Shit, what a fucking asshole." The words just leave my mouth and she laughs a little.

"So, yeah." She mutters. "I needed five grand and I came to you."

"I should have given you at least a part of my savings if not all of them." I was such a jerk at her that night.

"You were right to not give me anything." She tells me. "You didn't owe me a thing."

"But because of me, you-"

"Jimin Park, don't you dare blame yourself for my actions." Evelyn jumps to my defense and she's rather fierce about it too. "What I did tonight is completely my fault and you have no idea how shitty I feel about it. Yoongi is in here because of me and if something happens, I'll-"

"Shush," I hush her. "He will be okay."

"You don't know that." She mutters. "You can't know that."

"I know him well enough, to know that he doesn't surrender easily."

Yoongi's a fighter.

"I don't remember everything from before the accident because I was wasted," she says slowly "but I remember that he tried to take me home."

"Of course, he would."

Tears pool up in her eyes when she says, "He offered to drive me home when he told me he hated cars. If something happens to him, I am to blame for that."

"Everyone's responsible for their own actions Evelyn." I lean in closer to her on the hospital bed and wrap an arm around her as she buries her face in my chest. I plant a soft kiss on her forehead and she lets it all out in the form of tears. 

again, like I mentioned in the previous chapter, I am not by any means a professional (I'm not a psychologist neither a doctor). I wrote all the medical-psychology related stuff after conducting research and observing different situations, so if anyone who's facing any of the following issues notices something wrong please tell me, because I don't want to offend anyone.

I love you🖤