Deadweight on Velveteen

   Tonight, an unexpected phone call from a friend.  She's crying.  She hasn't gotten out of bed in a week.  She feels the constant need to throw up.  She hasn't been to work or class.  "I have completely shut down.  I've never shut down before.  I miss him so much.  I don't know what to do.  I miss him so much.  I miss him so much."


   For the first time in years, I remember this state vividly.  Slouching lifelessly through hallways, disheveled in unlaundered pajamas.  My hair straightener cold for weeks.  My makeup drawer unopened.  Thinking I'm dead.  If I'm dead why do I still feel like this?  Sitting through classes, dejected, without energy to hide the endless, though luckily usually silent, tears.  "Do you need to go to the Guidance Office?  I can give you the notes."  Barely bothering to shake my head in response.  Can't speak, can't even manage to mumble.  What could I say?  Words seem so meaningless.
   Passing him in the halls is unbearable.  He won't even look at me.  He eases by so gracefully.  I fall limp against lockers, struggling to breathe.  I feel so abandoned.  I am

   Kid A was a dream come true.  Long blonde hair, deep blue eyes and a guitar.  And such a mind!  Littering conversation with musical, literary and political references I couldn't yet wrap my head around, he was so clearly evolved beyond the rest of us.  I was awestruck.  And he was dangerous.
   Any sixteen year old boy enjoys attention, but a skinny, awkward, lonely, manic depressive musician cosumes it. And Kid A's appetite proved insatiable.

   We stayed up all night discussing music and psychology.  I was as hungry as he was, though I fed off approval rather than devotion.  We spun our desperation into superiority complexes, dismissing the people around us as oblivious, unoriginal and worthless.  We interspersed our spiteful reproach with bouts of suicidal self-loathing, belied our jealousy with scorn and bitter self-congratulation.  We were terrified.  We had the entire world at our feet and we were terrified.  

   I am dead and he smiles sweetly, welcoming the days with a sublime serenity I used to know.  Though he is far better at pretending than I.  I'm only convincing on camera or on a stage.  Retrospectively, this reflects a fundamental difference between us; I was an actress and he is a liar.  He is the only thing I think about.  Waking up in the morning, there's a moment where I don't remember.  My mind is blank.  This is the best I will feel all day.  It ends abruptly with clips of dreams crashing through my head.  In every single one he forgives me.  In every single one he acknowledges my despair and saves me from it.  Habit and my Mother's orders get me out of bed and to school.  Getting dressed is useless.  Food is horrifying.  I am dazed.  I am hopelessly alone.

   We go through this repeatedly in the three years he spent relentlessly exploiting my feelings.  Though I spend those three years relentlessly allowing him to.  I am engulfed in brutal misery each time it happens, though never quite so tormented as the wretched first.  I learn to numb, to disengage.  I truly believe I will never feel alive again.

   But I do.  And she will.  She will wallow languidly in anguish for what feels like decades, until the grief softens.  It happens so gradually that it's nearly impossible to pinpoint.  It just slowly gets less physically painful to get out of bed in the morning.  And somewhere along the line, less psychologically so.  Until it eventually feels okay.