Cat & Drew's Whirlwind Adventure

36. Wars End

Almost an entire year has led to today; every nuanced bit of misery and hope and pain and joy has been another step in my recovery. I didn't end up going to therapy yesterday, which might seem odd given the wildly unordinary content of the day, but my parents put faith in the decision that my efforts were best spent elsewhere. When school started again after last summer I came crawling back a hollow husk, and while I won't act like I've found all the answers since then, I've experienced enough to learn that no amount of trauma can totally strip away who I am. Even through the worst of it, waking in feverish nightmares or hours spent at the back of my closet, I'm still me. I just forgot that for a while.

I study the careful look I've put together again, making sure the clothes I've picked out and the way I've styled my hair are fitting for the day. My look should be surefooted, unaffected, confident. Or, that's what it should portray, anyway. Satisfied, I eye my closet, going to it and grabbing hold of the doorknob as I have before, racked with every familiar emotion that has beset me at the mere thought of entering with any purpose. I tell myself I can do it, for my parents, for Troy, for Cat. For me. With gritted teeth I turn the handle and go inside, flicking on the dangling bulb over my head.

Then I let my eyes adjust, and I remember. Even when I stored Troy's backpack in here, it was nothing short of me tossing it in blind at record speed. Taking it all in now, though, I feel as though I might cry. It's not so much the effect it has, so far down the line, that gets me, it's the memory of exactly how it felt when I'd spend those countless hours in here. I stare hard at the corner where I'd sit, head against the back wall while I cried and looked off into the pitch black dark. All alone it's no wonder my mind would go to such dark places, this is where I first dreamed up the idea of killing myself.

Otherwise it's an ordinary closet, lined with boxes and shoes and clothes I haven't laid eyes on in months. Troy's backpack rests slumped over on the floor, not too far off from a plastic bag tied into a dozen knots. I recognize it, it's the bag I brought home my piss-soaked pants in after Chad pinned me up against the wall at school. With each passing day it seems more and more silly that I couldn't just throw them away, but this is the day for it all to change, so I pass over the backpack to grab it up.

With the bag firmly in hand I'm finally ready to face what I've kept hidden at the back of my closet, forcing my eyes over as my stomach clenches into the same kind of knots in the plastic bag. There, at rest in a sloppy pile, are the clothes I had been wearing that night last summer. I sink to my knees and touch them, overwhelmed with emotion to remember it—sitting with Lisa and Gunther around the bonfire, walking by the lake with Chad, scooping these exact clothes up in a hurried rush to chase after him. It may be burned into my memory, but that doesn't mean I have to let it eat me up from the inside, so I grab them too and put them with the bag.

They're not the real test anyway.

After the clothes are removed I confront the shoe box they had been concealing, wrestling with the full-force resistance I had known would come. Luckily I'm stronger than that now, so no matter the difficulty I make myself remove the lid to reveal the one and only thing it contains. I know I shouldn't have held onto it for so long—this or the trauma—but for whatever reason I couldn't let it go, and even the thought of beginning the process to give it up makes me pause. It's scary not knowing what comes after. Yet it can't be any worse than what it's been, so like a burden lifted off of tired shoulders, I remove it from the box.

With what I need collected I leave the closet and trudge down the stairs, opting to skip breakfast so we can head straight to school. Mom is being so accommodating about all this, I'll admit I'm impressed. There are moments where her natural tendency to worry and overthink show through, but she really is trying. She has to fulfill her obligation to ask at least once if going to school today is really the best idea, but since she has no clue of what I'm about to do her concerns are easy to satisfy. On the way to the car I stop by the garbage can and toss the plastic bag in, along with the clothes from last summer. I don't need them anymore.