Sinking

detachment

//warning- there is mention of abuse, mention of drug abuse, and mention of attempted s*icide during phil's story, so ill put those marks "//" at the beginning of any paragraph where that's mentioned, and anyone who needs to can skip to the next paragraph :) here you go:

Two weeks later was when it made sense.

Halloween had been nice. It wasn't worth any amazing memories in my book but it was still a nice time I spent mostly with Phil and Chris. 'Mischief' wasn't really anything but a joke. We gave out candy and watched crappy halloween movies.

Phil was still living with me. The only details I knew about his life at home was that there was now a car parked in the driveway every day.

He'd taken the job at the bookstore. We both had the exact same hours, courtesy of PJ. I knew by then that my jealousy had died down.

The realization that I had feelings had done some damage. For two weeks long, I couldn't shake the feeling of a strong detachment from myself and the world and people around me. I'd fade out during conversations, I'd stare off into the distance, I'd feel completely numb.

I suffered from depersonalization disorder years ago, still do, the result of the trauma thrown at me, and it's taken years for me to try and get past it. It was still hard sometimes, and since I was beginning to feel strong emotions towards someone, I made an assumption that my brain wasn't used to handling it, and caused me to experience a sense of unfeeling towards any situation holding the possibility for my feelings to become evident.

I'd been painting a lot within those two weeks, the result of me being completely away from myself being that it was easy to paint when I had nothing to focus on except for the brush between my fingers and the paint strokes on the canvas. Phil would sit on my bed like he knew what sensitivities I was experiencing, not saying a word, either scrolling on his computer or watching me silently. But I normally didn't notice. not when I was trapped senseless in only a state of numb feelings, the only live nerves seeming to be those in my hands and those in my eyelids when they began to droop after hours and hours of a deafening silence.

He held me when I slept like I would slip away any moment.

I never did know, and I still don't, how two damaged people could fit together so well, as if the cracked edges of our glass exteriors could line up in a seemingly impossible match of fate.

"I can explain everything to you," Phil told me on that Sunday morning, appearing out of nowhere beside me while I stood next to the counter in the kitchen sipping some coffee.

"What?" I asked quietly, the word being the first I'd said in a while.

"I," He repeated, leaning against the counter directly beside me, "can explain everything to you." If I was any good at reading people I could tell he was tired. He was defeated. He was done keeping secrets from me when all it did was cause the both of us pain.

I nodded lightly, moving to sit on one of the stools across from him, leaving the counter space between us. He grabbed a mug of coffee and I held mine, both of us stiff while dressed in our pajama pants and plain shirts, as if we hadn't been cuddling only an hour before. This would take a while, I knew it would; it's never easy to explain big things to people.

Explain everything to me is exactly what he did.

"It all started years ago. I've told you before that my brother and I were in an accident when we were little. That accident killed our mom."

He paused for a long time. So long that I wondered if he would continue. He did, after taking a deep breath.

"It took years to get over her, and I'm still not fully, you know, over it. I don't think you ever really can. I was young. I was three.