There is something wrong with me now. I can't hold Judith. I can't sleep without waking up out of breath and thrashing from nightmares. I can't help but flinch if someone so much as raises their hand within my eyesight. God, I can't even touch myself anymore. Nothing I think or say or do happens without the constant rigid belief within myself that I am doing something wrong — something dirty. Mika will take my hand, just for a second to show me something, and I will burst into tears. Sometimes Tyreese will walk across a dim room and I'll become scared out of my mind, heart racing like I've just ran a marathon, and other times he will offer me something to eat or drink or wear and I will expect him to ask for something unspeakable from me in return. Other times, it's hard just to look at any of them in the eyes, especially Carol, because she knows why.
Sometimes I'm glad I told her, and other times, I regret it and hate myself so much that I yack uncontrollably, or lash out at her, yelling at her to leave me alone, or throwing things, like last night before bed.
She didn't hold it against me, like I expected her to.
She just told me the same thing as she told me before.
'Be gentle, and be kind. To others, and to yourself.'
I try, even if it makes me feel like a fraud.
Even if my thoughts now are violent as default.
By the next morning, I wake up disgusted over a dream that leaves me feeling like a damp towel that's been left on the floor for a week.
Judith begins to cry from the living room and I hold my ears and ignore her until Tyreese or Carol tends to her. I wait until I can hear Mika's voice before I get up, too. She and Tyreese are talking together about how they made it out of the prison, how, in Mika's words, "Everything works out the way it's supposed to. That's what my mom used to say."
Not liking this mantra at all, I almost turn around and go back inside the bedroom, but Mika must hear me in the hallway because she calls out my name. I go to the doorway, nod, and rub my head.
"Are you okay?" Tyreese asks me.
"Fine."
"How is your cut?"
I push my hand across my stomach. "Not so sore today."
"Good."
The fire was put out hours ago and the room is cold. I wrap myself in a blanket like a big cocoon, and using the wood and timber Carol and I brought in yesterday, I start a fire.
As the day goes on, I spend more time with Carol and the girls. Breakfast is more pecans and peaches. Carol teaches the girls how to change Judith's diaper and I guess she's teaching me too even though I sit far away on the couch and try to push away all the invasive pictures in my head of what those men would do if they were here.
Be gentle, and be kind.
To them, and to yourself.
By midday, Mika, Lizzie, Judith, and I go to the garden by the barn. It is overgrown and wild now, and since it's December, there is a fruiting clementine tree, a few beetroot bushes, a plum tree, a red currant bush, and a small orchard of dormant peach trees — I guess this is what all the cans of peaches are from. A grape vine is crawling along the barn wall, too, but I avoid it.
Judith, in Lizzie's arms, wants a clementine. I pick one and peel it and let her try it —be gentle, and be kind— and she chews, but eventually just spits the mashed-up pulp into my palm. Grimacing, I throw it aside.
Judith laughs all light and innocently, and I get this scared feeling like I want to cry.
"I'm gonna go back in," I say. "Wash the plums and currants."
YOU ARE READING
Sweet Tooth (Twd x Male Oc)
Fanfiction(NOT COMPLETE IDK WHY IT SAYS THAT!) After travelling during the first several months of the outbreak, Jasper de Luca is violently separated from his brother Patrick and found alone by a group of strangers. Unexpectedly, they are kind, and decide t...
