If I Stay✔️

93

I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't see. I couldn't speak. I couldn't scream.

I was sure my eyes were open but my world was entrapped in unexplained darkness. I could hear the water rustle as it moulded around me, invading my lungs as if I was a dry tree dying of thirst and it's soul purpose was to bring me back to life.

There was this strange pressure against my shoulder, a restraint making it harder for me to move — to escape.

For a split moment, I thought, hoped, I was dreaming; trapped in one of the many nightmares that have become a frequency for me. Until I heard it. A scream. A scream that sent a chill down my spine, I could feel my skin erupt in small goosebumps.

"Wake up! Wake up!"

Was it all just a dream? I was trying to wake up, desperately, but everything felt so real. The darkness, the smells, the sounds, the water.

"We're going to die! I need you to wake up or were never getting out of here!"

At those words, I felt like I'd had an epiphany as realisation hit and the memories of what (or who) got us into the mess resurfaced.

Marco.

— T E N  D A Y S  E A R L I E R —

L E O

I stared at my reflection in the small, circular bathroom mirror. My eyes were glued to my fingers, specifically; the trembling of said fingers as I looped the silver and navy tie under the collar of my white polyester shirt.

Three minutes past and I couldn't get the tie to tie.

"Fuck." I dropped my eyes from the mirror and hands from my neck and gripped the ceramic edges of the sink tightly, so tight that my knuckles paled to a weird shade of almost white.

I took a breath, and another, and another. My lips trembling with each one.

It felt like my fingers were betraying me, siding with my heart as it plead for me to stay home, allowing every anxiety to overtake my strength. My heart, my mind, and now my limbs wanted me to hide behind the security blanket this house and the people in it provided. But I couldn't do that.

Oliver needed me.

He needed me, and I needed this. I needed to be comfortable in society again. I needed to feel the fresh air on my skin without an escort. I needed to be around people again, all kinds of people, not just the ones I related to the most. I needed to find my inner strength and battle each dreaded day as it came, or I'd succumb to the darkness and crumble.

Oliver may have needed me. And whilst part of me was doing this for him, the other part, the larger part, had to do this for myself.

After ten minutes of self pitying or self loathing, both seemed to fit, I gave up on trying to tie the tie, leaving a messed up navy knot hanging on the centre of my chest. It could've been a metaphor for how my insides felt; like a man made noose had been wrapped around my heart, cutting off its circulation as every intrusive thought clung to my mind. I was in knots; stuck in the centre of a fear I had to somehow face and, more importantly, try to break.

My siblings had proved I could rely on them, but now I had something deeper to prove. Something that meant more than any words could ever describe.