Antagonym

Chapter 37

I wasn't holding back tears anymore.

Some people think it's weird that there is this place in my mind I go to when I'm sad. A place where the only expression worn on my face is one of neutrality. It's emotionless. Like a calm in a chaos that never should have been. After so many years of battling with PTSD, I had learned how I reacted to things. In the moment, when my heart started pumping; that's when I cried. After, when I was physically calm but my mind was darkest; that's when I looked blank.

I remember the first time I was going to jump off the Q bridge. I wasn't crying. My tears had long dried and in that moment the only thing in my face was contemplation and the need for action. Both times when Seb found me I was just sitting there like a dead body, taking the occasional sip of vodka to forget.

That's the thing about me. I didn't drink to numb pain, I drank to forget. That's a key difference because you only want to forget when the pain gets too overwhelming. That mentality was shitty but it kept me alive for the last six years.

Maybe I should just end it right now. Who would care? I'm a leach of Finn and Sylvia's backs, I'm insignificant to the vitality of our team's success, my family doesn't want me, guys don't want me, I'm one less person for my therapist to worry about, and it would end this fucking roller coaster I have been stuck on. I could act like Elizabeth didn't effect me, but everyone knew she did. Parents are supposed to love their children but I was confused with her. It became some thin line of love motivated hate and it played with everything I thought I knew.

And you wonder why her contact is 'Do Not Answer'.

She ruined everything for me, always.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Beck's deep voice asked me from where he stood near the kitchen, snapping my attention away from the issue at hand.

I looked up at his sparkling blue eyes and shrugged me shoulders ever so slightly. "There's nothing to talk about," I answered blankly which clearly unsettled Beck as he shifted. "That's my mother. She's a bitch, she ruins everything, she thinks I'm a volatile whore and I'm nothing but a reminder of everything that went wrong in her perfect little world. There's nothing to talk about, Beck. She's right, and I live with that."

"She's not right," Beck said almost incredulously as he walked towards me, taking his hands out of his pocket and tilting my jaw up. "Please, look me in the eyes and honestly tell me if you actually believe a word she says."

My eyes flickered up, being intimidated by Beck's ocean eyes but that didn't stop my cool and calm gaze back to his. This was the point of apathy.

I only saw sky blue as I spoke more confidently that I ever had. "I run from her because I don't want to accept the truth, but she is right. I sleep around too much, my career path does nothing but hurt me, my entire family hates me, and I fucking hate the way I look because it ruined my life."

"That's not true, Danielle," Beck spoke firmly, almost like it hurt him hearing me speak the truth. "First of all, your career path is not a waste of time. Danny, you are the best goalie in the whole league, you're going to make so much money doing what you love, and you're sending a message to thousands of other young girls about doing just as much as men. Don't act like you aren't aware of the significance of your current position and potential position on a major sports team bigger than the entire sport of lacrosse."

"Second of all, your entire family does not hate you. Finn and his family adore you, even his dad and Sylvia's dad. So your mother's a borderline mentally abusive and manipulative bitch; isn't Seb family? Axel and I? We all love you for who you are. The only person who 'hates' you is that woman and the only reason she acts like that is because you wanted something better for yourself and didn't want to be controlled by her."