Counting Up The Days (Camren)

Before (Down and Up)

By the time it got to the 8th of December, my nerves were at an all time high and I could hardly sleep with the knowledge that soon Camila wouldn't be in a bunk across from mine ever again. All I could do was wait helplessly as the days counted themselves down.

Ten days left and I sang my goodbye. I really was loving her like I was going to lose her, because unlike for Meghan this was not a dream I could wake up from, I was truly going to lose the love of my life. We all cried that day after the performance; we cried without Camila but we could hear her in the bathroom all the same. She had really started to separate herself from us by now, she was already trying to prepare us for the inevitable. That performance was both our best and worse to date. Worst because we could barely keep ourselves together, the lyrics hit us like a bullet on that stage. Best because we have never felt a song be echoed in our souls as much as we did that day, our voices were raw and vulnerable and full of sorrow. Our vocal coach was proud.

Nine days left and I developed pains in my chest that would not go away however many times I reminded myself to breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Maybe it was the fact that every time Camila was mentioned all the air would vanish from my lungs, as if it had never been there to start with.

Eight days left and I could not speak. The pain in my chest had spread like a virus up to my throat, grabbing twisting and tying my vocal chords into a helplessly useless mess. There was so much I wanted to say to Camila, so much I wanted to share with her. Things that had seemed fickle before were now gnawing at my mouth, desperately convincing me that they were matters that had to be discussed with her in minute detail. There was so much I wanted to say to her, yet no words came out at all. In any case, words would not have sufficed to describe how vital she was for the flowing of my blood and the cognition of my brain. They would not have quenched my thirst over how beautiful she is, over how vehement and unblemished her personality is. Words would have rendered an erudite an imbecile after trying to delineate Camila. But what I'm really trying to say is that mere words are only a sea's poor reflection of everything the woman I love truly is.

Seven days left and Washington was cold but my heart was colder.

Six days left and I lay in my bunk pretending to be asleep for the entire day. I acutely discovered the pain you experience seeping into every organelle of your body when you feel like you are deeply aching for something you have not yet even lost. I knew with such certainty that day, staring up at the fraying mattress above mine, that Camila was going to be my phantom limb.

Five days left and I heard Dinah sobbing in the bathroom. I tried to go in to comfort her but the door was locked. It remained locked for four hours.

Four days left and I decided that Camila would leave me with phantom limbs, in the plural. It would be out of spite, a selfishness of hers so that she would be constantly on my mind and haunt me forever, reminding me of everything that could have been taunting me about everything I am not. The girl who used to look at me with eyes so wide the moon's reflection would catch on them, would soon be the girl whose past materialises my future.

Three days left and Camila suddenly hugged me, for what I did not know was going to be the last time, just before going up on stage. I don't know how my legs carried me through that whole performance without giving in.

Two days left and my tears had turned into shards of ice, cutting through everyone who tried to approach me, cutting through my own skin as I brought a fist to a wall with all the strength I could muster and felt nothing. I was an Ice Queen and no one could get through my defenses. They could not get through them as I had none left, I had lost them all to exposed feelings and fragmented memories. I was an Ice Queen and now I was melting in the blindingly scorching sun that could get through my maze of cracks unperturbed. I was trapped and alone and my body was no longer my own, I had given it up for failed love. I had a moment of weakness that night: my sleep deprived body, desperate to find a way to get my mind to rest, found itself crawling into Camila's bunk just as the nacre-coloured air started to seep through the shutters. I didn't find a body, just blankets that smelt of old memories and stuffed animals that felt like home almost more than the four walls that had housed me since birth. Camila must have not been able to fall into oblivion either, but I was not the person she would instinctively go to for comfort any more.

One day left. Our last show together. Dinah cried, Normani cried, Ally cried, I sat alone in a corner and Camila pretended not to notice any of it. I kept reminding myself that she was trying not to care to make the future easier, but it's hard to hang onto reason when your entire world is crumbling around you, and her façade made the present impossible. We tried to make that last show special, but how could we give a proper goodbye when we shared the stage that night with a dozen other artists? How could we make it a show to remember if half of the audience was chanting stranger's names? And how could we love the moment when at least four of us were loathing what was to come?

Day zero and the war began.

War inside of me, a great tempest stirs in the base of my feet and grows rapidly filling up my entire body with a coal coloured conniption that encompasses my entire being. I discover that there is a repetitiveness to the cycle: the bloodshed is reborn every few hours, and after each one there's a period of silence where I am numb to everything except the incessant pounding in my head and the juxtaposition of the everyday bustle in the distance.

War between fans who like to think they know everything but know nothing. I love them, I really do, but sometimes I have to repeat, like a mantra over and over in my head, that I would be nothing without them. Any other way and I would not be able to get past those obnoxious, gullible voices found in flocks on social media that swallow up everything they are fed and metabolise it into monsters that public relations could only dream of concocting up by themselves. They are my wings, but also the viscous tar covering them, shackling me to liability.

War blazing into the darkness of my peripheral vision. We knew this was coming, we had feared the worse and that was what had become, so then why was this still like a bullet to the head? Why did the monumentality of the consequences only rise up like the tide and drag me into the depths of the underworld now?

No days left and the time was up. It was only after the hurricane hit that I realised the gaping flaw in my plan: instead of counting the days down like a life sentence, I should have been counting them up like the petals of a blooming flower. I should have been counting them up because then they would have gone on infinitely. It was I all along who forced both parties into different kind of exiles, it was I who had run out of days, it was I who had handed us all our prison sentence. Have I never been to church? Have I never listened to Ally? Heaven is above, Hell is below, and it seemed like I'd just counted our days down for a one way ticket to an earthly Inferno.