Roofers.

31. My Shadow.

Scarlett POV.

(TRIGGER WARNING: this chapter deals with depression. Skip ahead if you aren't in the right state of mind to read it.)

The last few days of my life had been terrible ones. Aside from the obvious. I was finding it difficult getting out my bed. For some inexplicable reason, everything felt a hundred times harder than I remembered them. Simple things, like getting up, making breakfast, cleaning my bedroom felt like a mockery of time; a slew of pointless activities. Because regardless of whether I woke up, made breakfast, cleaned my room or not, the result would always be up the same. At some point I would have to do it all again, fill my day up with mundane tasks to remind myself that I am a human being. I am functional. And alive. So why do it at all in the first place? The result never changes. And I think I'd prefer to be dead. Or simply to stop existing, have the people I love forget I was ever real.

I was too tired to move anyway, so I'd been lying in bed all day. One day had turned into two, two days into three, suddenly a week had gone by and I'd hardly noticed a thing. It all felt exactly the same. I'd noticed a pattern in how the days dawdled by; how day and night had become one in the same. I'd noticed how they ceased to differentiate themselves and that if they did, the differences were barely visible.

For example, today, I woke up on the left side instead of the right. I watched 2 seasons of family guy, but yesterday I watched the Simpsons. I still haven't left my bed, not even for food, but sometimes I go to the bathroom and I watch in the mirror as I start to disappear in my clothing.

And now every breath I take, every mundane movement I make feels weighed down by a much stronger kind of gravity. So, I lie in my bed. And I stare at the ceiling. And the longer I stare, the more I realise how similar it is to my mind. Empty. Blank. Painfully, sadistically... plain. My thoughts wander through the thick, hazy fog, searching and searching and searching for some kind of answer, but I find none.

I couldn't seem to get up, I wanted to, but every fibre of my being told me it wasn't worth it. So I stayed. My bed reminded me of warmth, of comfort and all things that used to make me feel happy. I thought of Jules, and how the mere thought of him used to make me feel — and now I cannot remember when I last smiled or cried. I cannot put my finger on the exact moment when my smile left me, all I know is that it's gone — it's been gone for days and I don't know how to get her back. I don't know why basic emotion feels like this distant memory that's never belonged to me in the first place.

I wished my bed would swallow me whole. Bury me so deep in Egyptian cotton that I could barely see. I wished I could fall. Fall and fall and fall — into nothing. Just fall forever. Feel the wind billow around me in uncontrollable gusts of tired exhales. I wanna feel weightless, falling so long in the pitch black that I forget weight. That I forget the laws of gravity.

I wished I could say I'd never felt like this before, but the truth is, it's like my shadow in a dark room. And even though I cannot see it, I know that it's there. I can't file for a restraining order against her. I can't run and barricade myself behind a locked door, nailed down with panels of wood. I cannot converse with her, convince her to leave. She'd never leave, anyway.

So I'd found ways of keeping her restrained. I surrounded myself with people I cared about. I read. I went to parties. Smoked weed sometimes. But she doesn't go away. I stopped taking my meds long ago, because for one, they didn't work for shit and they made me feel like a stranger in my own body. I didn't feel like me and I hated that. I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's just how it is. When the lights turn on my shadow becomes me again, and she makes my smile her own. She wraps her arms around me and tells that she is all that I have now and I believe her because it's true. Sometimes I forget that she's there but, she's in everything I touch. In everything I do or say or look at.

I hadn't seen Ginger in days and I was starting to think she'd run away. It made sense. And if I were her, I would've done the same.

I wanted to stop thinking about my dad and about Rico and about my mom or fucking Darnell, or how my presence has the potential to make my loved ones suicidal. How everything seems to collapse at the mention of my name.

I just wanted to stop thinking that this was all my fault. But it was my fault. Because Rico was gone because of me. And Candy and Dante were always too busy. And my mom was always too busy. And I'd pushed my dad away. And Ronan chose this fucking shit-hole of a city over me.

All the people I love would leave me behind, love me one moment and forget me the next.

I wanted my mind to stop conjuring up the persistent idea that all the people I know only pretend to like me, when I know I'm fucking annoying. I know I'm not the best person to be around and I know my sarcasm gets on their nerves. And I know I pick too many fights and cuss more than I should. And it's only a matter of time before everyone leaves me. I knew already. I fucking knew.

I knew that Jules would leave me too someday. That he was gonna find another reverse domme, and he was gonna leave as soon as he could. Because I was the piece of shit they all leave behind. And he was the fucking universe and things so different never last that long.

My mind is stubborn, and she belongs to my shadow now. She has no regard for anyone but herself, so she makes me think of all these things. She rips me from the inside out. Breaks me like my bones are made of glass. And I let her destroy me because, for some fucked up reason, I find my self-destruction amusing. I let her do her worst because I deserve it for what I did to Rico. He was only six feet under because I was selfish. I couldn't fight back if wanted. I couldn't fight back if I tried.

And if I can't beat 'em, then fuck it, I might as well become their bestie.

And I am mad. I'm mad because here I am, drowning in my fucking tears, but everyone else is still breathing, and no one cares for the people like me. The people with extra weight in their lungs that makes it harder to breathe and harder to swim to the top. I don't know how depression can be both my shadow and the water gushing into my lungs. No one spares me a second glance, even though it's clear that I'm drowning. That my insides have been ravaged. That I don't think I'll make it out of this one in one piece.

And how do I ask for help when I could scream for it right now and no one would hear it but me? There's no one in this house but me and I can't help but feel trapped and alone and the need to remember how to breathe. And how to be normal again.

Still, here I am. Not asleep and not awake. Not happy or sad. Unable to think about all the times I was ever happy because my mind is this sadistic freak of nature that sits on my chest and sucks out all the laughter - including the memory of it - from my dry, cracking lips. I am paralysed to her advances. And I know that I've been happy once. I know I have, but I can't seem to remember what it feels like right now. Because perhaps things have always been this way. And perhaps they always will, and I'd be damned to believe for one second that it would change.

So I'm stuck in my bed. I have already sunk into the quicksand of my dampened pillows. And getting up feels impossible. 

I reached for my phone as a final attempt at survival and speed-dialled the first person who came to mind.

Candy's phone rings too many times before she answers.

"Candy" Even my voice is barely there anymore. "Candy, I don't know what's wrong with me right now, I just can't — I can't get out of my bed and I—"

"What? Scar, I can't hear you — No, not that one! Sorry, Scar, I'mma have to call you back. Dante and I are collar shopping; I'll tell you everything when we're done. Okay? We'll talk later, love you, k bye!"

The phone cut. 

And I fall apart alone.