A Certain Sort Of Loneliness

Never

Tired, dry eyes stared mindlessly at the phone, the light that blared from it seeming all the more painful in the dark of his room, burning in to his retina in stab-like jolts.

After a series of seemingly endless taps on the screen, he turned it off, arm flopping to his side as the other rested on his forehead. He sat up abruptly, eyes flicking to the digital clock resting on his bedside table - 3:02am - well...probably time to sleep soo- wait. He looked closer at the date that flashed in small lettering beneath the time:

28 / 08

28th August.

Shit.

He reached for the calendar hanging above it, squinting in the blue-black darkness of the room to make out the date highlighted in neon colours: September 5th - the day school started all over again.

Hit with a wave of anxiety-fueled exhaustion, he lay back on to the bed, ragged breaths audible in the silence of early morning.

His last year...hadn't exactly been ideal - after concerns on his relationship with food and his body, from doctors and his therapist, as well as Lukas' worries about his mental health, he had been taken out a little less than two weeks in to the new year of a new school.

Of course, full homeschooling had been an option - Lukas would have been more than willing to invest in a private tutor, or even teach him himself - but Emil had refused, feeling suffocated by the idea of home becoming less of a safe space and nothing more than another place to survive within rather than "live".

Textbooks had been his saving grace then - that and his intelligence. In the least vain way, Emil was smart - he'd never had to study in the same way as others and it was honestly the only reason he'd managed to keep his grades up for so long despite his deteriorating mental state. This year however, had been different - amongst therapy sessions and doctors meetings Emil's life had become a haze. Sure he was "better" - with regular healthy meals as monitored by his family his hormones and blood sugar had balanced and being away from school reduced his stress greatly.

He was better. Sometimes he felt awake, slept better or even found the motivation to clean his room or even leave the house. He was better, but it made him feel sick - as if his body was no longer his own, as if it were being tainted by some outside force.

"You're just not used to it," they would say, "Unfamiliar thoughts are bound to feel bad." He hated that. Of course he hated change, he hated new and different because he didn't know it - he knew that. But that wasn't it. He didn't know how to explain it - how could he? It just...just felt like someone else had taken over, someone he didn't want there - he was better, but he was worse. It was like those stories, the ones you hear about people on things like antidepressants, they were "better" but they felt dead. Dazed and unaware, uncaring of the things going on around them with intrusive thoughts becoming less threatening than their own. Like cutting the weeds but not digging them up at the roots, or so he had described it to Berwald; they were no closer to hitting the root of the problem than before.

He didn't want to go to school. School meant he would have to leave the house and do work and stop hiding - it meant having to face everything that he had been avoiding since the start of the summer. Oh. It meant therapy too - there was no way for him to get to his school of his own accord which meant he had to be picked up. He'd have to go then.

He didn't want to. Didn't​ want to be stuck in that stifling room that was too warm and smelt weird and meant that he'd have to talk again. What if they made him go in again without Lukas? He couldn't do that. No. He wouldn't. If they did he'd scream again and shout and cry till they couldn't speak anymore and had to let him ago. Till Lukas felt too worried to leave him on his own again. He'd have to. He'd feel too guilty.

They wouldn't be able to make him talk anymore.

Ever.

____

Righhht that was the most recent chapter to date haha, will try to keep this updated at the same rate as in the other for once lol

Please leave any thoughts in the comments, thank you!