She wanted to die.
He wanted to live.
•••
A hand grabbed onto my wrist, yanking me back just as the train rushed past, before I'd even had time to comprehend whether or not I'd carry out the action. I stumbled back into the person's chest, my hear...
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I didn't want to go to sleep tonight.
Sleep used to be an escape once. It used to be the only time I wasn't constantly reminded of my problems. I used to sleep not even because I was tired, but because I was too drained from being left alone inside of my head all day.
Sleeping was, in a morbid way, a temporary way to die. It was like a free holiday to heaven; a transient return ticket as to what a taste of peace could be like.
But then the dreams turned into nightmares, and sleep didn't help me feel peace like it used to. Sometimes, like tonight, sleeping was worse than being awake.
Instead, I walked deep into the night, numb to the bustling city life around me as I wandered endlessly. The bright lights from the numerous buildings only seemed to further dim my red eyes, groggy and aching from hours of restless attempts at sleeping. Like a gentle hum in the background, the tumultuous noise from vehicles and pedestrians wasn't enough to block out the noise in my head, managing to overpower the rumble of engines and idle chatter flurrying through the air
Paying no heed to my destination, I had embarked on another nighttime venture tonight; the first time since that night.
It didn't feel like two weeks had passed since Theo and I had cried together until the sun came up, stumbling our way back to his house with collapsing lungs and distraught tears. I had left the Harts' sometime in the evening, with teary goodbyes and undeserved compassion as I returned to the house where my mum and Him were waiting.
I should have known better than to go back to the building in which He resided.
School was an agonising week of hiding the blaring bruises seeping through the collar of my shirt and turning my head at the sight of every honey-eyed boy I saw, hoping it would be Theo. I shouldn't have been surprised when he wasn't present for the first day after, or even the first week - but when it hit the second week I didn't have the courage to send him another undelivered message.
Today marked two weeks – tomorrow was Romeo's funeral.
I couldn't bring myself to think about what had happened that night; I couldn't think about that weekend in general, from the aftermath of it all to the anger I received from Him. After the night of Romeo's death, when I had walked out of the house and returned nearly a whole day later, my dad taught me that whenever I felt like I had hit my lowest, there was always further for me to fall.
Subconsciously, I had been doing that a lot lately: switching off my reactions towards my thoughts, dissociating transiently only to regain consciousness of the moment I had been in several hours later.
Romeo had told me to hold onto the stars; to stop defining myself by my pain and realise that I was a separate entity to the things that had happened to me; to find stars that I could look out for in the darkness.
His words had sounded so easy to believe when he was there with me, assuring me every step of the way as I untied the rope from my hands. Now, with no Romeo and no Theo and no one who could remotely understand how I was feeling, I didn't see how I was possibly supposed to follow the steps I had learnt that fateful night.
