180 Seconds

by Jessica Park

Every day is a reminder of how completely different I am from my peers, a constant sense of my inability to be social and happy and emotionally unchained. It can be a challenge to isolate myself here, but I do what I can.

“And I’m sorry . . .” I can’t find the words. “I’m just sorry. I think you made a mistake. A mistake with me.”

He knows that connection is not my thing. People are not my thing. Trust is not my thing.

“Hold on to your one. Remember? I have you, and you have me. And when you’re lucky enough to find one—just one—person in this unforgiving life who makes everything worth it, who you love and trust and would kill for, then you hold on damn tight, because that’s probably all you get. We got this,” Steffi says with conviction.

They have no idea how naive it is to believe, to trust.

I wish he didn’t smell like cookies and love.

I just exist. Barely.

You want to play? I dare him. You want to use me for some kind of class project or whatever this is? You want inside my head? Fine. You have no idea how messed up I am. Go ahead. Drown like I do. I step out from behind my walls.

Despite the horrific energy I am hurling at him, Esben is holding us together emotionally, giving me an unspoken promise that he will not drop me. The traumas that bind me every day, every hour, every minute soften until I barely feel their presence.

But I cannot stop the tears. “I don’t want to live like this,” I say out loud over and over through my sobbing. I cry for who I have been, who I am, and who I could be. However, I also cry with an iota of relief, because a change is about to happen. I know this. A change that has the possibility of lifting me from the wreckage. What it will look like is very unclear, but I have to take a chance.