There’s a sun stuck in my head.
It’s bright and glaring. It hurts my eyes, my skull, my very bones.
I shove a pillow on my face, trying to shield myself from the rays. Obviously, it doesn’t help. Because the sun is inside my head.
Inside. My head.
There are some things people might not know about depression. Like, if you’re lucky, you’ll see the signs and you’ll know it’s coming – the episode. But other times, there’s no warning. You wake up and it’s just there, either sitting on your chest, or shoved inside your head, like a giant light bulb that won’t go off.
Depression is also a whore for attention. Just when you think you’re okay. Meds are great. There’s quiet and peace and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of happiness, it strikes. In a whiny voice, it says, you didn’t forget about me, did you?
And then it’s there. It’s real and everything else is fake.
Like the fact that it’s a rainy day. I can see the splatter on my window above my bed. And yet, it feels like sun is glaring down at me, leaching away my strength, drying me up, leaving me a mass of heavy bones.
I’m exhausted, and I haven’t even opened my eyes yet.
My body feels like it’s heavier than yesterday. I know it’s not. I know it’s impossible – I haven’t lost rational thought – but it still feels like it.
In most cases, mental illness is not the absence of rational thought, but the presence of irrational ones, despite all rationality. Well, until you really lose it. Then you don’t know the difference between anything anymore.
At exactly 6:45AM, the knock on my wall comes. Renn and I have a ritual of talking through our paper-thin wall every morning. But today, I groan and tell her that I can’t.
“Willow, you okay?” she asks, concerned.
But I ignore her. I can’t do it today. I want her to go away. I wanna sleep.
At exactly 7AM, the knock on my door comes as well, and a nurse tells me that breakfast is in thirty minutes.
“I know,” I snap at her from under the pillow.
At my answer, she goes away.
Good.
Of course I know breakfast is in thirty minutes. I’ve been living here for twenty-four days, haven’t I?
Damn it.
I’m not this grumpy, usually.
That’s another thing with my episodes. They make me snappy, irritated. Everything bothers me. The crowd, the daily chores, my mom, school, teachers. Everything. But I tried my best to hide it on the Outside so I don’t seem crazy to anyone.
I toss the pillow away and cover myself from head to toe with my dark blanket. Another knock comes at my door and this time, the nurse’s voice is louder. “Willow, get up. Come on. It’s way past time.”
“Go away,” I tell her through my blanket.
“Willow, come on. Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. Just please go away,” I repeat, hoping she will.
Hoping. Praying.
But when has that ever helped me?
She asks me to get up again, but this time her voice seems to be coming from closer, and I tighten my muscles under my covers.
Is she approaching me? Is she going to touch me?
Because if she does, I swear to God I’ll…
I’ll fucking scream. I’ll scream my heart out.
Because that’s what’s happening inside of me. Someone’s screaming and thrashing and blazing. And I don’t have to hide it. I don’t have to pretend or lie. Not on the Inside.
I’m already locked up. I’m free to be insane.
A second later, a fist is pulling down my blanket. “What the….”
The nurse is looking at me, both stern and concerned. We’ve never had a problem before today. In fact, we smile at each other whenever I see her in the hallways or at the nurses’ station.
“What’s going on?” she asks with suspicion in her voice.
And here I thought we were friends. Or sort of friends. But I guess I’m like any other patient for her. She’s nice to me but she can’t trust me.
Do it, Willow.
Do it. Do it. Do it.
Do. It.
Scream.
“Go. Away.” I grit my teeth.
I’m not sure who I am asking to go away right now, this voice in my head or the nurse. But I just want all of them to leave me alone.
“Willow, I’m asking you nicely. Get up and go to breakfast.” She raises a stern eyebrow.
“And I’m telling you I don’t wanna get up. Why’s that so hard to understand?” I jerk the blanket out of her grip and cover myself again.
“Willow, don’t make me call the techs. I don’t want to do it.”
“Fucking call them.” I close my eyes and a breath escapes me when I hear her retreating. It hurts my lungs and I curl up in a ball.
Maybe she’ll really bring in techs, security even. And maybe they’ll bring a needle. Maybe they’ll stick me with it, if I become difficult.
None of that’s scaring me. It should; I hate needles. But then, I see him behind my closed eyes.
Dr. Blackwood. The hero.
Maybe he’ll come and save me. Like he saved Annie. Yeah, I want him to save me. Just for today.
Please, God. Let him come save me.
I can hear the crowd gathering around my room. Murmurs and voices and footsteps. It’s agitating me further. I feel like they are laughing at me, pointing fingers. Don’t they get it?
I need to be left alone.
“Willow,” Renn calls; she must be in the hallway. “What’s going on? You okay?”
I hear Penny’s voice too, asking what’s going on. Even Violet’s talking in louder tones. If this were any other day, I would’ve talked to them or smiled.
I can’t move a muscle today.
Then I hear another set of footsteps and a voice that, despite everything, manages to make it through to me. “Willow.”
Dr. Blackwood.
He’s here, in my room.
Finally I lower the blanket, but only down to my nose, and take a peek at him.
He’s on the threshold, filling the doorway with his massive shoulders, his wingtips half in and half out, staring down at me with a big frown.
Is he here because of the commotion? Or does he really want to see if I’m okay?
“What’s going on?”
The nurse fills him in, but he doesn’t move his eyes from me, nor I from him. The more I stare at him, the more I want him to come to me and the more I want to cry.
No idea why I want to do the latter. But I feel like I can.
I can cry in front of him and he’ll lend me his broad chest, so I can rest my head on it. He’ll even let me soak his shirt with my salty tears.
He enters the room, and comes to stand by my bed, towering over me, like he did the very first time I saw him. Shifting the air, making space for himself.
“Get up,” he orders.
His voice makes me lose the battle with my tears and they well up in my eyes. “Please make them go away,” I whisper thickly.
Again, I’m not sure if I’m talking about the people crowding the hallway or these shadows and thoughts inside my head.
He watches me for a few seconds, roaming his eyes all over my face, with a tic in his jaw. Then he twists his torso to look toward the door. “Can you clear out the hallway, please?” he says to someone behind him. “I’ve got this.”
Slowly, the noises and murmurs die down and the people are taken away. I close my eyes and a tear seeps out, getting into my loose hair.
When I open my grainy lids, Dr. Blackwood is facing me. His chest swells and falls inside the confines of his shirt. “Get up.”
I swallow. “Would it matter too much if I just stayed here for a little while?”
“Yes,” he clips. “Breakfast’s in about fifteen minutes and you need to be there for it.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“How does it work then?”
“There are rules, protocols. They need to be followed.”
I know about rules. I’ve followed them all my life. But then, what has that ever gotten me? This. This illness that never goes away.
Swallowing with difficulty, I take him in, his crisp pants and his polished shoes. I think of his charts. His pen, his glasses. The fact that he’s always working. The fact that he doesn’t have fun.
Lowering my blanket, I ask him, “Do you always follow the rules?”
He sighs. “Willow, get up.”
I would, if I could.
The thing is, I don’t think I can stand. And I’m not making this up. Sometimes my limbs don’t have the energy. I feel so exhausted and heavy that it seems like my legs won’t hold my weight. They shake, making me dizzy.
As always, I’ve tried to hide it, hide my episodes and bouts, as much as I can.
But in this moment when he’s here, I don’t want to.
I don’t want to hide from him.
Somehow, I move. I gather whatever energy I have in my body and raise my arm to him. Dr. Blackwood glances at it, then at me.
“Can you help me up?” I ask in a small voice.
Not in a million years would I have thought that I’d ask for help. I never have before. Not from anyone. Let alone a doctor. But he’s not a doctor, not to me.
And I don’t want to be a patient to him, either. I want to be more.
My breaths are choppy, and my hand starts to tremble with its own weight. Only then he comes to my rescue. He grabs hold of my wrist and pulls me up from the bed. Like I don’t weigh anything. Like all the heaviness is in my head.
It is.
But God, it’s so real.
As real as this gray-eyed man and his rainy smell. As real as this strong chest that I hold onto when I’m standing on my own two unsteady feet.
“Don’t go. I-I don’t think I can stand.” I swallow, my knees buckling.
His chest feels tighter than yesterday when he says, “I’m not going anywhere.”
I fist his shirt in gratitude. “Thank you.”
Yesterday I was hesitant about my touch. As much as I wanted it, it wasn’t necessary to my very survival. Today, it feels like he’s the only one who can bear this weight – my weight and the weight of my dark thoughts – with his large body and intense eyes.
So I lean over him, completely, bringing our chests flush together. Or rather, my chest to his ridged abdomen. He lets me, and the breath I take is the lightest one since this morning.
But there’s still that lingering heaviness. Something solid and bubbling, at the same time. Something that needs to be purged now that he’s here.
Why does he make me feel this way? That he’ll make everything better just by his presence.
After a pause, I say, “I went to a funeral once. It was for my mom’s friend. I think I was twelve or something. Do you know what I felt, when I looked at the body?”
“What?”
“My mom wouldn’t let me go near it, at first. But I snuck up to it when she wasn’t looking.” I look him in the eye, even though I want to hide my shame. “I was jealous. Of the dead body.”
I’m waiting for him to frown or throw me a condescending look even though I know he won’t. He’s not like that. And maybe that’s why I’m telling him.
When he waits for me to talk, staring at me with his calm face and beautiful eyes, I go on. “I thought she had what I wanted. I thought I wanted that. I wanted to be that, the dead body. It was something I was aspiring to. I wanted to achieve death. But I couldn’t let myself have it. I wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
I focus on the pulse of his neck, the triangle of his throat, as I tighten my fist in his shirt.
“Because of my mom. Because I just… I can’t bear the thought of leaving her behind.” He’s blurry through the lens of my tears. “The only reason I don’t do it is because I can’t take leaving something behind.”
A salty drop slides down my cheek before I can stop it. They are like my words today. I can’t stop them from slipping out. “Why’s it so hard? Why’s everything so hard for me? It’s not supposed to be this hard, is it? Getting up from the bed. Freshening up. Going to get breakfast. Eating. Saying hi to people. Smiling. Laughing. It shouldn’t be this hard. It can’t be. It’s me. I’ve got it all wrong somehow. I’ve got everything wrong.”
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
That’s what I am. I was born wrong. With the wrong kind of blood. In the wrong family.
“If I wasn’t born, then my mom wouldn’t be so disappointed, you know. She’d have a different daughter. A perfect daughter. She’d throw parties for her. She’d dress her up. And that daughter, she’d appreciate it. I’m not… I don’t… appreciate things… I can’t…”
My thoughts are breaking up, getting chaotic, but everything screeches to a halt when he puts his hand on me. Or rather just one finger. Thumb on my cheek.
My gaze skitters to his face and the look he gives me is penetrating.
So penetrating that all the glaring brightness inside my head seems to be dimming under the shine of his eyes.
“It’s intimidating. It’s terrifying to fight every second of every day. To wake up, tired and exhausted, knowing that you have to do it all again. It’s easy to give up, isn’t it?” he rasps, his thumb sliding along the single stream of tear.
His touch, bare minimum as it is, is dimming every other feeling inside me. My lips part and my heart flutters inside my chest.
The sign that I’m alive. The sign that I can feel his touch.
I nod, brimming with life and yet, so pliable and submissive. “Yes.”
“Yeah. It would be so easy to just give up. Not fight.” His voice is hypnotizing, so hypnotizing that I want to sleep wrapped around with it. “You know why we don’t? At least, mostly? Because we’re born fighters. We come into this life, kicking and screaming, bursting with all the energy. There’s no shame in having to fight. There’s no shame in having to kick and scream. There’s no shame in being a warrior. It’s the most honorable thing you can do for yourself. Pick up a sword and fight. Just reach out, Willow, and pick it up. That’s all you have to do. And if someone makes you feel ashamed just for the fact that you’re a fighter, then...” He licks his lips. “Then fuck them.”
His words are soft, just as his mouth is, but the intensity in them, the vibration, jolts something inside me. It shifts something.
It’s the sun. Maybe it’s going behind the clouds.
“You think I’m a warrior?” I whisper, in awe.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
And now, I won’t hurt anymore. I won’t have to hide anymore.
I can come out.
Maybe I can really come out.
I’m safe. He saved me.
“I must be your dream come true,” I whisper to this gray-eyed hero, the fixer. “All broken and cracked.”
His thumb flexes over my cheek and I stay still. Still like I’m dead. But the heart inside my chest is beating with probably ten lives.
“I don’t dream.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have trouble falling asleep, too.”
I imagine him in his bed, trying to fall asleep at night. Tossing and turning. What kind of a bed does he have? What color sheets? Does the sleep mess up his hair, thicken his stubble?
My insomnia is medicine-induced. I wonder what his is.
“What keeps you up?”
“Recently, the never-ending repairs.”
I shake my head at him, and his eyes shift to my hair. It’s loose around my shoulders. Since it’s my only asset, I have it long and thick and going down to my waist.
Does he like it? My silvery strands?
“I count sheep,” I say instead. “When I couldn’t sleep.”
But then you fixed it, too.
He looks into my eyes. “Maybe I should try that.”
Despite everything, a small smile blooms on my lips. “Did I just cure you? The medicine man?”
He’s still tracing his thumb along the apple of my cheek. I don’t know if he realizes that. If he realizes that he’s still touching me and I’m still fisting his shirt and our chests are moving in sync. When he breathes out, I breathe in. I’m filling my tired lungs with his air.
Does he realize that?
He’s in me, now.
He studies my smile. “Maybe you did.”
“I –”
“Simon?”
Someone speaks over me and suddenly, all the coziness leaves my body.
Beth’s standing at the door, taking us in. Me almost wrapped around Dr. Blackwood. Him tracing his thumb on my cheek.
I’m frozen. Unable to think, unable to do anything.
But he doesn’t have that problem, because he steps back from me. The click of his wingtips hitting the floor as he moves away makes me jerk.
“Beth,” he says with a polite nod.
He’s all calm and composed, when I’m standing here like a frightened animal on shaky, wobbling legs.
Beth moves her eyes from him to me. “Are you feeling okay, Willow?”
“Yes…”
I want to say more but I trail off. What should I even say? I mean, we were a little too close, but it wasn’t as if we were doing anything.
Does it look bad? Standing intimately close to your psychiatrist, while he wipes your tears off? Is there no one in this whole wide world who’s ever done that?
“Good. Breakfast’s under way. You should go join the others.” She smiles, albeit with strain. “Simon, can I speak to you for a second?”
“Of course,” he murmurs.
With that, they both walk out of the room and I drop down on my bed. I want to sag and dissolve in my sheets but then I realize something.
In my unusual bout of talking, which seems to happen only around him, I basically admitted to another human being… that I’ve been thinking about killing myself since I was twelve.
The only reason I don’t do it is because I can’t take leaving something behind.