Into the Dark

by Dana Isaly

I’m the girl you see bringing a book with her to social events because I would rather be reading, and because I need something to distract myself from my social anxiety.

Every time she compares me to the societal norm, I get inexplicably angry. I know she is just trying to show me that I’m not alone, but it makes me feel more alone than ever. I’m out in the fucking ocean with a life preserver while everyone else is on a yacht. I’m sinking while they’re floating.

I can’t help but let the hope bloom in my heart that maybe, just maybe, he could be the one to handle my obsession. I’m suddenly that houseplant from years ago. And I’ve just been watered after a drought.

Even though I don’t believe in fate or gods or divine intervention, it doesn’t mean I can’t believe in her.

“You live in Downton Abbey.” He scoffs. “This is nowhere near as big. Don’t be so dramatic.” “How do you even know what Downton Abbey is, No Name?” I tease. I can see a little blush blot across his cheeks. “Is there a hopeless romantic hiding in there?” I ask as I poke his chest. “I watch a lot of TV,” he grumbles and walks up his front steps.

“Your screams,” he murmurs as I come down from the high. “Those fucking screams are spiritual, Lyra.”

I would crawl inside of him if I could. I would drape his skin around me like a blanket, bathe in his sweat, and wear his scent like perfume. I am utterly and wholly his.

I will give her whatever she wants. If she loves my monster, I can love her angel.

I devour her. I consume her light, her heart, her soul. It is cataclysmic, this thing between us. We are a riot of immorality, feeding off each other’s sins like wild animals over a kill. The need I feel for her is all-encompassing. I will eat, sleep, and breathe this woman. I will keep her until I am the death of her.

“But I want someone that will smother me and make it impossible to breathe unless I’m breathing their air. And I want them to feel the exact same way about me. You can’t say that about love,” I continue. “Love is the most fickle emotion there is. It’s toxic. It infects you and makes you feel safe and secure, and then it fucks off and decides it would rather connect to someone else. Love ends in disaster. It leaves a trail of heartbreak and destruction and poison in its wake. Love is a tsunami. You don’t survive it.”

I don’t know what home feels like. I never have. But if I am Lyra’s home, then she is mine. No one is going to take her from me. She may want to follow me into the dark, but that doesn’t mean I have to let her.

“I can’t give you love, Lyra. But I can give you myself. You can have all of me. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t belong to myself anymore. I belong to you.”

“I think we all love in our own way. I think you perceive love as something that fails because you’ve only ever seen it fail. What if you find someone someday that can handle how hard you fall for them, and it lasts and you’re happy for the rest of your life. Who’s to say that isn’t love, just in a form that works for you?”

“Who’s to say,” he continues, “that how you feel for people, when you obsess over them, isn’t love? Who ever told you that? Who told you that your feelings are so invalid that you are incapable of feeling love just because they’re different from the norm?” “I told myself that, I think.” It comes out as a little more than a whisper, but he hears me all the same. He nods, closes his notebook, and crosses his legs, reclining back in his chair a bit. “As I’m sure you know, we are always our biggest critics. We can tell ourselves how fat we are, how ugly we are, and how unlovable we are. We like to point out our flaws, and most times we make up these flaws that aren’t real, they aren’t there. And I think that’s what you’re doing here. Love is such an abstract concept, right? It’s not something tangible that you can hold in your hand and say, ‘oh, that’s love.’ Love is a feeling.” “But I don’t just feel it. It consumes me,” I volley back. “Have you never read Shakespeare?” He laughs softly. “Think Romeo and Juliet. They were so madly in love with each other that they both decided they couldn’t live without one another. Each one killed themselves for the other. Everyone calls that love, and it was all-consuming for them. Why is what you feel any different?” “That’s fiction.” “You’re splitting hairs here, Lyra.” I sigh. “Everything is a story in the end.”

What a way to go—being in the arms of the only person that could make me feel. I smile up at her and take her in one last time. I think, maybe, I love her. I give her arm one last squeeze. “Mine,” I whisper.