“You’re leaving me.” The words sound foreign coming out of my mouth. They sound wrong. He’s not my real husband and I don’t want anything to do with him…
But he’s all I have.
Without him, without anything of my own, I’m at the mercy of my mother. I picture myself packing up a suitcase and being hauled over to my old house (I don’t imagine I’ll be allowed to keep my car). Trudging up the steps of my old home, pushing open the squeaky door of my old bedroom, and being stuck there. Helpless. Even more helpless than I am here, and surrounded by everything that makes me feel sick.
I hear a wheezing noise, and it takes a minute to realize it’s coming from me. I can’t breathe. My chest feels thick, closing in more by the second, and I’m sick to my stomach. I try to breathe but I’ve waited too late and I’m panicking.
Paul mutters a curse and sits on the edge of the bed, but he doesn’t know what to do.
“I can’t,” I gasp out, desperation clawing at my insides and seeping out of my goddamn eyeballs. Years of concealing my fear and
this, this is the moment I lose control. When the motherfucker kicks me out.
Unsure whether I’m saying I can’t, as in I can’t breathe, or objecting to moving back in with my awful mother and the suffocating feelings my childhood home stirs in me, Paul stands, paces, grabs his cell phone like he’s going to call someone, but then looks to me for direction.
Goddammit, he’s never been good in a crisis.
I claw at my chest, my fucking aching chest, and it hurts to be trapped inside my brain. I just want out.
I start rocking. I don’t try to steady my breathing. My vision is starting to waver on account of no oxygen coming in and lots of desperate, explosive attempts to breathe, and I’m so. Fucking. Helpless.
Tears spring to my eyes but they don’t fall. I think. I’m not sure.
Everything gets far away, everything feels so strange, and then everything goes black.
I guess I didn’t really pass out.
I don’t know, but nobody mentioned it.
I have no memory of what happened after that.
I only have now, sitting on the ugly floral couch at my mother’s, running my hands across the coarse fabric, using my index finger to trace the pink rose.
Pretty. It’s so pretty.
Wait, it’s pretty? I thought it was ugly. I’ve always hated this couch, haven’t I?
Who cares.
I feel light and floaty and only dimly aware of my problems. They’re there, somewhere, in the shadows, but I’m so fine, and I need to be fine, so I accept it and don’t complain.
I feel myself smile—literally. I bring my fingers to my face and feel my skin stretching. Then I laugh, because… I’m not sure, actually.
Suddenly, my mother is there. I lean back, looking up at her, and my head falls back against the couch, because wow, my head is heavy!
I feel like I’m supposed to say something to her. Ask her something. What was it?
Oh!
“Paul,” I say, holding an unsteady hand up. “Where’s Paul?”
My mother’s face turns sympathetic and she perches on the edge of the couch. Leaning in, she places a hand on my leg and rubs it, as if to comfort me. “Oh, honey.”
Oh honey? I don’t know, I don’t care. I dip forward with my big, heavy head and look at the floor. Pink carpet. Peachy pink. Not the same color as the pink rose I was tracing, but man, it looks so soft I just want to bury my face in it.
So I do.
I fall to my knees on the floor and flatten myself down in one coily movement. I run my fingers across the carpet the same way I did the couch, and everything is so lovely.