The Orion Star

Hitting Rock Bottom

**CONTENT WARNING AND MULTIPLE TRIGGER WARNINGS!**

Depiction of a suicide attempt via overdose made. Vivid depictions of insomnia-induced paranoia as well as a mild psychotic break described. READER DISCRETION IS HEAVILY ADVISED.

Lady death has come to dance

Her kiss sweet and caustic

Her hands preened meticulous

I wish it were ridiculous

But she's really here

Come to collect what's hers

--From the song Slip

Lyrics by Orion Bauwens

I didn't sleep that night. Nor did I get sleep the night after that. Or the one after that. After that, everything starts to blurring together.

I'm still avoiding everyone. I never listened to any of Jake's voicemails. Jake hasn't tried to calling anymore. No one has.

For a while I kept up a relationship with Olivia. We were having sex every day, sometimes more than once in a day. But the more tired I became the more effort it took, so I just stopped. I stopped everything with her, but it wasn't just her. I stopped everything with everyone, period.

My words are all garbage, tripping over one another. I can't think. My body feels like I'm outside of it sometimes. It's getting hard to tell if I'm sleeping or awake.

I can't tell the amount of times I've just stared off into space, then wondered how long I've been sitting there for. Or where the last thing I remember is being in my bedroom, and then suddenly I'm in the basement or some shit with zero recollection how I got there.

It's not like I'm not sleeping due to lack of trying. I swear to God I spent the entire day in my bed once--whatever day that was. But every time I drift off to sleep the weirdest shit happens.

Sometimes I feel like an electric jolt traveled through my body and it makes me jump awake. Sometimes I feel like someone is lying next to me and I startle awake only to find an empty bed. Or I have nightmares. Really, fucking, horrible nightmares.

Nightmares where I'm locked in a room at my adoptive parent's trailer and Tristan has the key but won't let me out, so I beat the door until my hand is bloody. Dreams about killing myself. Dreams about my stalker walking a dog but it's missing its head. Dreams about my biological mother carrying a baby in a blue blanket down an alley, and when she throws it in a dumpster I run over, only to find it was a doll and not a real baby.

Some wouldn't even qualify as nightmares, but they haunt me just the same. Dreams about being on stage and performing. Sleeping with Jake, back before the fame really caught up to any of us. Making love with Tristan, because every time we had sex that's what it was--it was sweet, it was gentle, it was caring.

It's that last one that really, really gets to me. When I'm with women, positions don't matter. Top, bottom, sideways, whatever, couldn't care less so long as my dick is in a hole. But with men?

I like to be in control. I know it's stupid, and petty, and it says a lot about my self-confidence, and toxic gender roles, and blah blah blah...But I don't like bottoming for men. It makes me feel like less of a man. Which--I know--that's stupid.

But with Tristan? I willingly gave that to him. He's the only one I let do that to me. He's the only one I think I'm ever going to let do that to me. Because if it's not him doing it, I don't want it.