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I wasn’t sure if I hoped the bit about the brain was true. I was halfway through my twenty-sixth year and not so sure that this was the finished product I wanted for my mind. I was doing my best to be normal. This was what normal people did, right? They went on terrible dates with ordinary humans. They didn’t see things that weren’t there. They didn’t cling to ghosts and maladaptive fantasies they’d conjured in the dark. They took their medications they went to therapy, and they learned how to distinguish what was real.
This was my curse.
My therapist had agreed that veering away from the lyrical tragedies of soulful ballads had done wonders for my mental health.
I let the coffee steep in its French press while I did the laziest form of my morning routine: skin care, messy bun, and a slouchy T-shirt. Having my own place meant no one could force me into the tyranny of pants.
It would be nice to love and be loved. It would be really goddamn pleasant to have someone else make the coffee while I slept in. I wanted to wake up with someone beside me, to watch Fire and Swords while cuddled on the couch and to have a built-in guardian to babysit a chinchilla if I needed to be away for a few days. But though I continued to put myself out there, my heart wasn’t open to falling in love.
For a few minutes, sometimes even for a few days, I could pretend that I was someone different. I could let go of the chains that shackled me to the earth and disappear into a marvelous something.
If I couldn’t step out of my own hyper-fantasia, I’d never move on. I just needed to learn to channel the cup of imagination, containing it to its glass within my novels, not allowing it to spill out and get on my dress,
I stayed on my side, staring out the bedroom window at the naked, winter trees. There was a crescent moon that night, a sharp, bright sliver too thin to cast any light onto the evidence of madness between my four walls.
“You’re not real,” I whispered, speaking to the hallucination that held and broke my heart in the same hand. Loving him was my most foolish mistake. I didn’t want to be in love anymore.
The moment his silken words washed over me, the carefree facade cracked. What followed were not pretty, lady-like tears but the heartbroken sobs of the lost.
Tonight, I knew that looking at him would mean seeing resolute strength in the set of his jaw, that disappointment would pinch his brows, that there would be no smirk, no cavalier joking, no playful moments that would plant seeds within me, growing into a garden that blossomed only for him.
“You should know by now, Love” came his soothing voice as his lips brushed against my ear. “Our word is bond. We’re very literal.”
“Five goddamn years without your face…but you didn’t stay away.”
“You told me you weren’t going to see me anymore. You said nothing about staying away. And with everything going on, you’re as much my escape as I am yours, Love. Neither of us wants this to end.”
Store-bought serotonin helped make the world a little more bearable, but only a little. I looked so put together on the outside. I paid my bills, I went to therapy, I brushed my hair, I didn’t scream at strangers on the sidewalk.
The only thing I hated more than having him here were the nights he stayed away. I felt so real. It always did. “I’m crazy,” I said, voice broken.
then slipped around my arm once more, holding me like a vice. “Then be crazy in my arms. What do you say, Love? Do we have a deal?”
“Well, it doesn’t look like you’re working right now. And if you wait for someone else to define your life, you’ll never go anywhere or do anything,” she said matter-of-factly.
People like to comfort themselves by believing the scary things are out in the world. It keeps them from living. It’s often the danger out your front door that blinds you.”
He knew when my mind was working. What a sensation to know someone well enough to hear the cadence of their silence.
It was the first-worldiest of problems, but I was tired, and tired people are grouchy no matter how spoiled they are.
I considered myself intelligent most of the time. I’d been a good student. I’d developed the social intelligence necessary to navigate complex situations, whether playing chameleon when on a client’s arm or trying to be cool at a hipster coffee shop. I was something of a wordsmith. But no amount of education or savvy had prevented me from barreling toward what would undoubtedly be a very poor choice.
“Go get yourself a new drink first. You’re unpleasant. I hope it’s just morning grumpies and caffeine deprivation. I’m going to be really bummed if I swooped in to save a wet blanket.”
I wanted to talk about mundane things and bury my nose in books and ground myself in literature.
“You are the Patron Saint of Frustrating Everyone Around You.”
“How long’s the drive to your parents’ house?” My stomach dropped. This was worse than summoning a demon. This was worse than stepping on Legos, burning your tongue on your morning coffee, or learning your favorite TV show had been canceled after a cliffhanger. This was worse than a man in a white coat with a clipboard telling me that this had all been a long, vivid delusion. She expected me to visit my mother.
“You won’t be going alone. I’ll be there with you the whole time. And I’m pretty hard to yell at, as I’m delightful.” My chest weighed a thousand pounds. I shook my head solemnly. “My mom will see through you.”
It was just as well. I was ready to stop seeing everything. The hot and cold desperation to please my parents, the unrelenting torment at school, the despair that no matter how I tried, I was always one imperfection, one sin, one shortcoming away from crossing through the Pearly Gates. I broke God’s heart time and time again, so my mother said, and He wasn’t the only one.
She was nearly as friendless as I was. Perhaps that’s why we clung to one another.
I knew enough of her drastic mood swings, her intense temperaments, her bouts with depression and her quickness to anger to immediately back off. I’d been born into a house on fire, but through cautious steps, I’d learned to manage the source of the flames.
“No one considers what’s spelled out there in the verse. If no other gods can come before him, he confirms the existence of other gods.
And yet here we are. Look at the fae through your religious lens and call them whatever you want. Make them your angels and demons. But at the end of the day, pierce the veil and you’re left with us.
“I…” I swallowed before being honest. “I don’t understand.” She frowned. “What do you understand?” “Truthfully? …Nothing.” That seemed to please her. She smiled as she said, “That’s a good place to start.”
I guess if you waste this lifetime, he loves you enough to try again in the next. And the next. And the next.”
Every rhythmic beat bled into the wound, exacerbating my injury. The idea of a love so deep, so patient, so…
I’ve been so in love with him for as long as I can remember. It’s consumed my thoughts and ruined my life for ten goddamn years. But it doesn’t have to be ruined. He’s real. We’re real. I’m not crazy. I can let myself fully love him back.
Sometimes there were shades of gray, and morality was more complicated than the world liked to believe.
I’d missed out on an entire experience of human existence. Waking up next to someone you loved, making them coffee, watching the sleepiness tumble from their eyes as they rubbed away their dreams with loose fists, it was an intimacy I didn’t even realize I was lacking.
“Oh, this will be undrinkable. I just like the smell. Let’s get ready and swing by the bakery before we commit crimes.” She pumped a sleepy first into the air. “Doughnuts and theft!”
I was desperate. He’d been my anchor in a life that had been nothing but storms. He’d kept me from losing my mind, even when I’d blamed him for my loose grip on sanity. He’d saved my life in more ways than one, and I needed him to do it again. I couldn’t face the future—especially not one knowing that angels and fae and gods and demons lurked in every shadow—without him.
She flashed me her most dazzling smile. “On a scale from one to ten, how breathtaking am I?” I gave her my most deadpan stare. “You’re unbelievable.” “Is that because I’m an eleven?” she asked. I wanted to fire back with something clever, but it was a night for transparency. “Honestly? You’re gorgeous.” She wiggled with delight. “But you’re also an enigma. You are equal parts king and clown.”
I shook my head. “It’s not like that. He understands me so well that it was easy for me to convince myself that he was a projection of my subconscious. He gets my sense of humor. He’s so fucking clever. But I thought he was the part of me that loved myself, you know? Like, my self-loathing was so palpable that I had to create an external figure that didn’t judge me, that helped me think through things without making me feel bad about myself. He was the part of me—well, what I believed was the part of me—that thought I was worth keeping alive. And he did.”
I kept my eyes on the bar top. “My sense of self-preservation has been…low.”
I bit my lip to keep in the emotions until the first wave passed. Then I said, “People have seen my value for what I can do for them. My parents saw me as an extension of them—a chance to do better where they’d failed.
And he never pushed me to change, you know? My journeys were mine to go through, and also mine to reflect on, with his support. And sometimes that support was just being held all night while I was convinced I was crazy. The only thing he wanted amid all of it was for me to be happy. And I just want him back. I want him back so much it hurts.”
“Who knew you were such a sap?” She squeezed my hand once more before releasing me. “Being sane is so boring. All the coolest people are crazy.”
“If someone adores you for your chaos, what’s the best way to honor that love? If they treasure your rootlessness, if they celebrate your anarchy, if they love you as you are, do you think they’d be dancing in the streets if you gave up the very essence at the core of your being that made them fall for you?”
I was Alice, twirling through the looking glass, and the world was mad.
He was history and culture and language. He was the Epic of Gilgamesh, the sands of time, the tectonic plates shifting as Pangea broke apart. He was deeply and terrifyingly eternal.
“The traps we lay for ourselves are the most difficult to escape.”
