Last Place You Look

Chapter 28

"I think it's time, Charlie." My heart started to race. I knew this was coming. I knew this conversation was inevitable and I knew that I had just had several silent hours in the car to mentally prepare myself, but I thought he would let me talk when I was ready. That's what he always did.

I turned immediately and went to the bathroom and pressed my back against the door, needing a minute. I just needed a couple minutes. Just a few minutes to prepare myself. But he knocked on the door and wiped away the small amount of progress I'd made in the 45 second it had been since I closed the door.

"Please don't do this. Please don't shut me out again." Again. I'd almost forgotten that I'd done this before. It was different now though. I couldn't just ask him to leave this time. I knew he wouldn't go even if I did. We were together together. A relationship had been established and this was part of it.

"I'm not trying to, I just need a minute." My voice came out breathy and weird. It didn't sound like me. I slid down the door and I heard a sigh from the other side. It was silent for a few second as I waited for the outburst that never came. Instead, I felt the door move behind my back. He sat on the other side.

"Would it be easier like this? With a door between us? Like, is that something you'd be willing to try?" There was a small thud near where my head was. I'm assuming it was his head resting on the door, almost parallel with mine.

"Maybe. Doesn't mean I know where to start though." I've never had to have this conversation. My mental health was something I actively didn't talk about with people. I was secure within my mental illnesses because I'd lived with them for so long, but telling people about them, letting people in? That gave them the chance to have something against me. It gave them the chance to have something to hurt me or use as ammunition. It had happened before.

I knew it wasn't fair to assume that Harry would be like that, but that's what depression does. It holds your good thoughts hostage and plants a seed of the bad ones in the forefront of your brain. And then anxiety waters them until they flower, leaving the good thoughts buried in the dirt.

The people that knew were the only ones that needed to know and they didn't bring it up unless I did. And I never did. But now he was a person that should probably be privy to what was going on inside my head, even if I didn't want it yet. Leaving him in the dirt with my good thoughts wasn't fair anymore.

"I can try... Can you maybe ask specific things? Like you did last time?" I hear him push himself up a little more and his legs moved across the floor.

"Yeah, I can do that. When did it, um, when did it start? Everything, I mean."

"I was thirteen when the depression and anxiety set in. Seventeen when the dissociation started."

"I read something that said that people can have a predisposition for certain mental illnesses and that there's usually a trigger event that causes it to just sort of appear. Is that what happened to you?"

"I'm not really sure. I just woke up one day and everything changed. I didn't feel like myself anymore. I didn't know what it meant either so I didn't know how to communicate what I was feeling verbally for a while."

He was quiet for a moment, and anxiety watered my seeds yet again, telling me he had gotten up while I was talking and left, telling me he didn't want to deal with my issues after all. But his voice picked up after a moment, turning the seeds into weeds and tossing them aside. "You don't have to answer this one if you don't want to, but what does it feel like? I just... I've never... I don't know. I can't understand, but I want to try."

I'd been asked this before. Kira asked while I was in the hospital. She's been lucky enough to not have to deal with depression like I have and she's always said that her anxiety isn't comparable to mine. I hated when she said that but I've never said anything because I didn't want her to feel guilty for anything. But mental illnesses shouldn't be compared. Everyone's experience is different. Everyone's experience is valid.