Anxiety II

When the dust settles; when the overhead lights are no longer trying to blind me; when my stomach stops quaking like I both haven’t eaten and have eaten too much; when the tears dry and my teeth stop stuttering, it’s like coming off of a long, dragging nap at the wrong time of day.  My eyes itch, there’s grog attempting to pull me back under, my clothes don’t feel quite right on my body, and her eyes are on me. Waiting on baited breath - confused, a little angry, concerned.

I have to keep standing, because I’ve done enough already.  Sinking to the floor would only make it worse. I lock my legs so that they’re stiff and in no danger of collapsing as long as I stand completely still.

“Why are you crying?” she asks, face twisted in uncomprehending indignance. “What do you want me to do?”

I can’t say hold me, because I don’t even say that when I’m completely with it.  I can’t say leave the room, because that sounds disrespectful in the worst of ways.  I can’t say you don’t get it, leave me alone because if it sounds like a line from a film adaptationof a particularly angsty novel to my ears, it’ll sound even worse to hers.

And anyway, when I try to speak, only little gasps come out.  So there’s no use trying to say anything, really.

Silly me, I still make an attempt: “I-- ”

“You? What?”

“I-- please-- ”

Please, what? 

Please somehow get that this isn’t you, that this isn’t about anything that you said or did or subconsciously projected? 

It is, by the way.  It always is. And that’s not anyone’s fault - it’s always seemed so needy to me to expect everyone to know exactly what to say at exactly the right time and the same for things that don’t need to be said.  Or yelled.  Or acted upon.  

That’s too much to ask of anybody, because we’re all the center of our own universes, and everyone only feels what they feel and has the right to express that however they want.  Even if it hurts someone else. Even if it isn’t intentional, but they do anyway.

She turns away from me finally, fed up with waiting for an intelligible answer, and goes back to tapping away at her phone in that slow, one-fingered way thatadults do, her face still tense above her eyebrows and around the corners of her mouth.  The tension is still palpable, but we’re no longer looking at each other and we’re on opposite sides of the room so it’s okay. It’s fine. I look at the hotdog on the counter in front of me and even though I’m not hungry anymore, I snatch up the plate with shaking hands and shove it in the microwave before I can drop it.

I only dress it with mustard when it comes out (eons later, because every second of the twenty that it revolves stretches out as if time wants me to stay in herpresence as long as possible), and I scarf it down without tasting anything before darting back upstairs on cold feet.  

We don’t speak again for the rest of the day.

Or the next day.

But that’s not because of what happened; sometimes, I go days without speaking to anyone simply because of the lack of opportunity to do so.  It’s only an added bonus at this point, because if one such opportunity did come up, I have no idea what I’d say.

Everything else would seem so insignificant compared to what she’d witnessed, and every word passed between us would be purposeless and filler-like until the incident comes out into the open air, a distant thing now that I was no longer attached to it.

I live through the long weekend and return to school, the same as I was when I left the Friday last.