Besides big exam weeks, the first week for students is the most dreaded thing in the academic year. It's when you notice your time as a free individual has come to an end and you now must at least pretend that you care about the classes you're in, or you will fail the said class and spiral down a hole of anxiety that will tell you that you have fucked up the rest of your life. There is no arguing with that side of your brain, at least not with my brain.
Monday is less than twelve hours away and it feels like a ticking time bomb. The summer has given me the liberty of pretending that my life is somewhat under control. Moving out of the house and getting my own apartment, with a very good-looking roommate that is. A roommate who spends most of the afternoons in his room reading, or burning things in the kitchen and swearing he does know how to cook, even though he has set off the fire alarm twice already.
In the week that I've lived with William, we've seldom spent time together, even while living in the same apartment. It's refreshing, honestly. It's not that I expected us to suddenly become best friends and hang out on the couch in deep conversation about our lives and fears, but I did wonder how it would be to have someone else to live with again. I mean, aside from my mother.
My sister is five years older than me, not a big gap but enough so that when I was in high school she was in college, and she moved away, as my father expected her to. So my teenage years were spent as the only child of the house and while I had my friends, I forgot what it was like having someone my age around. Including boys, since I don't have that many guy friends, none at least as close as the girls.
Aside from Ray, of course.
"Bro, your ice cream is melting," Ray points out with his bright red spoon.
"Oh—crap," I quickly lick the part of my cone that had been melting over my hand, fingers already sticking with the sugar as I look around for the napkins we had mere minutes ago.
"Damn it, Ray, I wanted to see how long it took her to figure it out," Michelle laughs, passing me a napkin from her side, "I love it when you space out it's like we're not even here, you just look at the window like you're waiting for your lover to come back from the ocean."
I shake my head, wiping away at my hand, I'll have to go wash them before we leave Dairy Queen. The day is uncomfortably warm and when I rolled over to Michelle's she hopped out of her place, with Ray trailing behind, asking if I wanted to go get ice cream because it's too damn hot outside to do anything else than looking for a cooling snackor drink. I had agreed, I never say no to ice cream that should be illegal in its own sense.
"I'm just thinking about school," I say.
"Oh God, don't do that." She seems visibly disgusted by the idea. "I already got all my books and my bank account will never recover."
"Actually your bank account will never recover because of the makeup subscription box you have," Ray interrupts, to what his girlfriend shoots him a dirty look.
"Don't come at me, Mr. Art-supplies-are-required-for-my-classes."
"They are though!" He scoops more ice cream into his spoon, looking as innocent as a politician. "The majority of them at least"
Ray is an art major, he's an incredibly good artist if I've ever seen one. Painted a giant mural back in Ashville that got him paid fairly well. He dabbles into different styles but he likes to think he is an urban artist, even though he's never lived in a large city or done graffiti art. From homes to schools, he wants to paint things that will be seen by the greater public rather than just some people at a gallery. Michelle and Ray met in art class in school, and while she is not pursuing a degree, she's still a good graphic designer on her own behalf and hopes to have a side business while she's in college.
"Lizzie, you hear this shit?"
"Oh, don't get me into your fights." I pull back on my chair.
"Ha-ha, I win, gorgeous," Ray nudges her.
"I hate you."
Ray simply sticks his tongue out at Michelle, to what she responds by pushing his shoulder away. They are joking, most of the time they are. I suppose that's the charm about young relationships, we get to kid around way more, though I can't imagine moving in with someone right out of high school. While I've always seen them happy together, I wonder how their real fights are, and how it must feel being so emotionally invested in an individual to feel like you're ready to move in with them right before college.
Then again I moved in with a complete stranger, who am I to talk?
"How you doing though, Liz?" Ray says after Michelle has rolled her eyes at him and focused once more on her blended latte.
"Good, trying to figure out where to apply for a job because those bills aren't going to pay for themselves." I see him want to ask the question, the question everyone who knew me back in high school wanted to ask after my parents separated. Isn't your family well off? Doesn't help that mom would drive me to school in a Mercedes, that although not the fanciest of cars does scream suburban mother. When I started driving my own car it just made it clearer that I was fine monetary-wise, even if my car is a piece of junk. Not everyone gets that privilege.
But Ray, like the girls, knows the story behind why I got my own car, and why my parents aren't paying for my college, so it's no surprise that his mouth closes as quickly as the unasked question comes into his mind.
"Why don't you try Starbucks again?" He leans back, placing an arm behind Michelle on their booth. Michelle leans into him as she continues her drink, nodding along to his comment.
"I heard from a shift it might be harder to get rehired once I quit, besides I want to see if I can apply to a café owned by the school itself. I don't know what benefits that might come with but they might be more flexible with my schedule for being a student." I had spent the last couple of days looking at the University hiring website to see if there were any faculty jobs I could do, some clerical things that would boost up my salary more than the food industry pay, but there was nothing I could apply to without at least three years of similar experience.
Gotta love the job market.
"You should, for sure." While Michelle had financial aid, she had also applied for a job at Ulta and Sephora and was hoping one of them would call back. Ray, on the other hand, was a freelancer, had his own website and all, and would do designs for notebooks, bedsheets, anything you could think could be sold online for his abstract and yet modern artworks. It paid him well enough to cover rent while Michelle looked for a job herself.
"Yeah, I thought for a second maybe I didn't need to go back to the foodservice industry, but it's hard." They look at each other and back at me.
It's not pity, but it still makes me feel oddly seen, like they know why I'm struggling and are well aware they can't do anything about it. I don't want help, though, I want to figure this out on my own and be able to come up better on the other side. So, if I have to go back to pouring espresso and being screamed at by angry customers I will do that over talking to my father any day of the year. Again, a privilege many don't get, but one I will refuse to use after all that he's done.
ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ
The nightmares aren't the worst thing for me, it's the insomnia, because having nightmares means I'm sleeping. The smallest things keep me awake at night, how cold or hot the room is, the feel of my blanket over my legs, the blinking light on my phone, and having to turn it over. The way the light outside casts stripes against my wall no matter if I pull down the shutters. I can hear the sound of the AC being on, and how the vents spill cold air into my room.
My hands feel clammy, like I'm going to give a speech in front of hundreds of people and no one has told me what the speech is on. Throat is dry, never quite feels comfortable, breathing feels like it makes too much noise, and sometimes it physically hurts me. I can't find the right spot to be able to close my eyes and rest.
Turn to the side, flip my phone again. It's just past three in the morning.
I want to scream.
Pushing myself up, I let my head rest back against the headboard. My heart feels like it's beating too hard, and all I can wonder is if she's also struggling, or how hard she is struggling right now if she is.
I want to call mom or Holly. The earlier one to ask her how exactly she's doing, to ask about her medication and if she's following the doctor's instructions. It doesn't matter that I sent her a message earlier to remind her which ones to drink and how many to drink of each. To please be careful. To remember that I love her.
I want to call Holley because I still have questions and I do not dare ask dad about them. I want to scream at her for leaving us, leaving me. But all of my calls go to voicemail and none of my many messages have gone answered. The connection we once had having been snipped by silver scissors, the phone line ending with the same message over and over again.
"Hey this is Holly, please leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as possible."
Makes me wonder how soon six months is.
Threading my fingers through my hair only makes me wish the pain of pulling it wouldn't just wake me up even more. So, as usual, I end up kicking my legs out of my blanket and with a huff getting up and out of my bed. The world sways a little in its darkness as I fumble my way to the wall and feel for the doorknob.
The night in the house is silent. Considering we live fairly close to campus, it wouldn't surprise me if this doesn't last long, but for the first day of school, there are no partying neighbors or loud lo-fi coming from the apartment below as someone tries to cram for their exam. It's peaceful, and in a sense cathartic, walking into the silent loneliness of the night. The stress of my sleeplessness falling off my shoulders like silk.
I reach for the light in the kitchen and when the world comes into its luminescence, seeing William right in front of me scares me half to death.
We both gasp at the same time, and I only see him drop something as I take a step back, hand on my chest at the sudden jumpscare paired with the sudden blinding light. My heart is beating fast against my ribcage and my brain races to tell me this is normal, my roommate can be in the kitchen if he wants to be at this strange time of the morning like I am.
"You scared the crap out of me." He says, leaning down and beginning to pick up something that fell on the floor, my eyes lose focus as I try to see what, tiredness making me strain my sight until I realize he's picking up pills from the floor.
They're purple, the pills, little capsules scattered across our kitchen floor. My blood feels like it has suddenly gone cold, memories of the last time I saw a large number of pills scattered on the floor coming like a wave hitting my body at the beach, suddenly, from the back as I didn't expect it, and now I'm submerged in the salty water and can't find where the surface is, or know how deep I've been dragged down.
I look up at him, he's still trying to pick one up that rolled under one of the countertops, and then at the top of that said countertop where a bottle of sleeping aid pills is resting. Those are not mine, I haven't taken them since I bowed not to do so, since I started doing some alternative measures for sleeping. Against my own will, I'm taken back to my mother's room, to the ambulance, to the hospital. Memories that are too hard to go back to because they are too fresh in my mind still.
I'm drowning.
"Lizzie?"
"Were you drinking all of those?" I squeak, breath coming in pants and I have to remind myself to act natural, to breathe like a person who is not on the edge of having a breakdown in front of her new roommate.
He hesitates, then shakes his head. "What no—of course not that'd be."
"Dangerous," I finish for him, my knees hurt when I straighten up, his hand holds at least five capsules, the bottle on the counter taunts me, knows that I would also benefit from them, "I just—it must sound so stupid, but I can't..."
"What?" His eyebrows furrow, as he puts the pills on the bin we got for the kitchen. "I'm sorry I just have a lot of trouble sleeping and sometimes need a little help."
"Five pills help?"
He seems uncomfortable, closing the lid of the trash can. The air around us is thick, awkward as we look at each other while the clock strikes seventeen past three. I wonder how prying it is, to accuse your roommate of casually overdosing on sleeping pills without really doing so. I don't have any way of proving he was in fact overdosing, but the way his eyes are holding mine, how he hadn't really denied it, makes me swallow hard.
"It's not what it looks like." He finally says. Though there's hardly any other way to look at it other than him trying to take one or two out of his stack or them actually being drug tablets meant to look like sleeping aids.
"It's none of my business really I just –" I glance at the bottle then at him then at the bottle again. "You're not doing drugs, right?"
He laughs, a sudden chest heaving quick laugh that is more of a sigh than anything. "No, I'm not doing drugs, Lizzie, they for sure are sleeping pills."
I try to smile, it's hard.
"I thought so." I move past him into the sink, washing my hands out of wanting to do something with them rather than wanting to clean them. Then, I reach for the kettle and begin filling it with some water to make myself a cup of chamomile for the night. William doesn't move, doesn't even say a word as I'm doing so. "I've had some bad experiences in the past, and I myself can't sleep well, Will. Can't say I blame you for trying to do that, just know you're starting to play a dangerous game if you keep going up on the count."
"I wasn't trying to kill myself Liz, I know that might look weird—"
"I didn't say you were," He gives me a single look, "It looks shady, okay, and I really don't want to be the person who finds your body, I've had... look, if you need help with sleep I can make you a cup of tea or you could just drink the right amount of sleeping aids. Just don't do something that could endanger you."
The kettle clicks, the steam rises above the spout in little trails of smoke as I pull out a cup from the cabinet and my trusty box of teabags.
"I'm sorry for freaking out, I didn't mean to. I know how hard it is when you have insomnia, believe me, I know because I have it too. That's why I liked Lancelot." A dollop of honey falls into the cup before I go ahead and pour some of the piping hot water into the cup.
"Lancelot?"
Right.
"The teddy bear you donated—I used it as a form of comfort. I have tried to stay away from medical forms of sleeping help for a while they do me no good and I get attached to them far too easily, so I've gone without them for about two months now." Maybe I'm talking too much, oversharing my problems with him, but it is the middle of the night and we both shouldn't be here and yet we are, right before I have to start classes.
"Right about that, I'm still sorry. I –" I shake my head, cutting him off as I put the honey back in its regular spot.
"Don't be, I'll be fine and get over it. Pillows will do, believe me. It's not easy to sleep Will, I don't know what it does to you but if you're like me, I know what it's like to be scared of your own dreams." His eyes widen, and at his sides, his hands ball up, makes me wonder what he is really holding within. "Please be careful, though, wanting to slumber might mean that you keep on looking for it and then ..."
"I'm not dying Liz." He riffles through his hair, "can we please talk about this tomorrow?
"Just be careful, that's all I'm saying. A temporary relief might hurt those around you more than you think." He nods but looks like I've just punched him in the stomach, and as I pass by him I wonder whether or not he'll just go back to taking the aids as soon as I back inside of my room. Internally, I chide myself, because this is really none of my business, no matter how close to home it was or how much it triggered me to see those pills scattered over the white linoleum floor. I am not his parent, or in my case, his child, and I shouldn't be casting judgment on him for it.
I close my bedroom door behind me, the warm cup of tea between my hands grounding me to the moment.
If I was hoping to avoid nightmares for tonight, that is out of the question now.
ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ