Solace (completed)

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Alex Solace

I've been on autopilot for the past week.

The days come and the days go... and I'm not lying when I say I can't remember the majority of what I've done.

I've just been going through the days blindly, not taking a moment to think. Which in hindsight, is a good thing. The more time I have to think the more I freak out and I cannot afford to freak out right now.

I barely slept, barely eaten... barely done much of anything really.

I'm hanging on by a thread. A thread that's getting thinner and thinner the more time passes.

This? This wasn't how it was supposed to go. This was suppose to be on my own schedule, on my own time. I shouldn't be forced to do all of this in 90 days or else everything gets taken away from me.

My two week vacation from school is almost over and it makes me feel like I can't breathe. School, work, this fucking will. Court, relator, new apartment...

Keeping my relationship together.

I can't do all of it. I just can't. It's gotten so bad that I've considered dropping out of school, but I can't do that. It wouldn't look good to the courts. Dropping things as soon as it gets hard. If I can't handle school, how can I expect to take care of a child?

So I'm pushing through it.

It's been a week since Officer Walsh contacted me. A week spent being in complete anxiety. I've been working nonstop, constantly feeling like shit for leaving Mateo with Carmen for so many hours. But every time I go to pick him up, she always wears a smile on her face and says he was an angel.

I'm gonna fix this though. When he goes back to school I'll ask around and hopefully find a babysitter so she doesn't have to watch him for much longer.

I've been working and working and working. Loosing myself and it's only been a week. I haven't slept; my body won't let me. I can feel everything piling up but I shove it all away.

The pain, the anxiety, the exhaustion. Its all eating away at me and it's one been one fucking week.

Think of me as a watermelon, okay? I'm a watermelon, and each thing I have going on in my life is a rubber band. Every time something new gets added onto my plate, a rubber band is added to the watermelon. Until eventually there's so many rubber bands on the watermelon that the watermelon can't take it anymore and has no choice but to snap.

That's me. I'm the watermelon.

The more I think about everything the more anxious I get. And the more anxious I get the closer I get to breaking down and I just can't do that.

There's only a two things holding me together at the moment. Mateo and Elias.

Mateo for obvious reasons. And Elias? I don't even know where to start.

I feel like such an asshole. Every time I look at him my chest squeezes in pain. Every time I look at him my blood pressure rises with anxiety and guilt. And every time he comes home with me, that guilt only amplifies.

He's ruining me, adding to my stress and it's not even his fault. It's mine. It's mine for getting anxious every time I see him. It's mine for not knowing... not knowing what I'm feeling or thinking or doing.

He's ruining me. But he's also one of the only things holding me together.

He comes home with us every night. And he holds me. Every night. And every night when his limbs go lax around my waist and his grip from putting me in a comforting choke hold loosens- as I feel his chest rise and fall evenly against my back- I cry.