The Evermore Dissociate(Creek)

0042

Being kind and gentle.
To Tweek, they were words to live by.
Show the world the kindness of your heart. Touch the nature we're blessed to witness with gentle fingers.

His Grandmother was always one for words of wisdom, with her best and last one being something along the lines of,

'when you see a loved one crying, you listen. You take care of them, and you love them. So if you're ever in the position where your heart is crying, you listen to it, you take care of it and you love it, because nobody loves you more than your body. Your body serves to protect you, so in return - we must also protect it.'

He wondered why memories of his Grandmother were only now coming to mind, as he sat at the edge of his bed beside Craig. He wondered what relevance they had to his predicament with the sleeping boy, if there was any at all. Or maybe he was just missing her.

She'd know exactly what to say to help him get through this. He blinked away the tears as he imagined her sitting beside him. Her hands holding both of his in between her own as she knowingly smiled. He could faintly remember the scent of her perfume, like a lavender garden filled with roses. He could barely remember what it felt like to be in her embrace, as her soft voice graced his ears. He imagined she'd wipe away his tears with the pad of her dry thumb, gently tucking pieces of hair behind his ears before saying something like,

'every moon needs time to make it's orbit, and while it does, we can only be patient and wait for it to return'.

She was always cryptic when she spoke of her juju, yet he clung to every word, and as years passed since her death, he still found himself desperately wanting to add more to his memory. To hear her voice once again, because he could no longer remember the soft tone she spoke in. He could no longer recall the pitch of her voice, or the faint accent that seeped through her every word.

Sighing, he shrugged his backpack off his shoulder, allowing it to fall onto the bed beside him. He looked down to his scuffed shoes, kicking at the laundry crumbled on his floor. Inhale, Exhale. It seemed Tweek had been reminding himself of those two simple words rather a lot recently. To remember to breathe, or else he'd sit in silence, unknowingly running out of oxygen until his chest felt tight.

His chest always felt tight these days. Full of stress and worry, though he'd never tell his parents so. They seemed to think medication was the answer to everything, that every problem in the world could be tamed by a prescription of pills, to be swept under the rug and to never be heard of again. He'd never tell them about the tingling anxiety that ran through every vein in his body, or how tight his muscles tensed whenever there was a knock at the door. He'd never tell them of the heaviness of his tongue as he stands in a room crowded by the faces of people he sees everyday, or the nausea he'd feel when spoken to, because nobody cares about these things unless it directly affects them. Nobody wants to deal with someone else's reality when they have their own lives to live.

'It's not that bad, you'll get over it.' But how can you get over something that affects your ability to speak? How do you subside the trembling. or the itching dread that follows you around like a dark cloud above your head? 'Take some Zoloft, talk to a counsellor.' But what if they change you into someone you're not? Altering your personality into a person you no longer recognise. What if talking about it no longer helps? The rehearsed sentences they tell you are no longer of any use.

Thoughts aside, Tweek shuffled away as Craig began to stir awake, groaning tiredly as his eyes slid open, only to be attacked by the sunlight. Strands of black hair contrasted as a bright patch shone past the curtains, while admiring green eyes watched from the sidelines.