She wanted to die.
He wanted to live.
•••
A hand grabbed onto my wrist, yanking me back just as the train rushed past, before I'd even had time to comprehend whether or not I'd carry out the action. I stumbled back into the person's chest, my hear...
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I used to love sleeping.
Obsessively and compulsively, I craved any spare moment I had to close my eyes and escape the world for a while, spending more and more time asleep to avoid the feeling of being alive.
Sleeping was an easy alternative to suicide: I could transiently end my life when I wanted, then choose to rejoin the rest of the world when I felt capable of living again. Whenever life felt like it was too much to deal with, or the thought of smiling was enough to make me feel nauseous, I could disappear to my bed and just sleep. There was too much time to pretend like nothing was wrong, so sleeping became a habit I adopted into my usual routine seamlessly.
And then the nightmares begun.
Everything that I detested about living began appearing in my dreams, starting off with subtle hints until eventually becoming full-blown replicas of my real life. I was no stranger to the odd nightmare... but these were different. Vividly realistic, I had woken up one too many times hyperventilating at a scenario before I realised it hadn't been real.
Life just couldn't stand to see me coping for one moment; it was as if the universe was programmed to help me up and then immediately crash me back down again, leaving me scrambling through the dark while I stumbled my way helplessly through. My greatest coping method had slipped through my hands, resulting in a downwards spiral so doomed even I hadn't been able to stop it myself.
Sleepless nights, waking up screaming in the dark or being mid-panic attack as I woke up gasping for air became every night realities that nearly pushed me to closer to the edge than I ever had been before. Without a way to silence my incessant thoughts and temporarily leave the life I was living, I began to free-fall into the darkness I'd become today, completely immersed as I struggled to find a way out. What once was a gift became a curse, and eventually I came to terms with my inability to have a peaceful night's sleep.
I suppose that's why, as I glanced down at Romeo's sleeping figure beside me, I felt the slightest bit of jealousy.
He had such easy access to the one thing I needed, and although he had good intentions, I'd found myself tense up when he'd suggested that I should sleep too. He didn't know that I was destined to wake up fighting for air with tears streaming down my face, or that I was too much of a coward to try and sleep because of the underlying fear that it wouldn't end well.
But maybe it'll be different tonight, the insane part of me reasoned. Maybe I'll actually be able to sleep normally. Whether it was Romeo's positivity rubbing off on me, or a part of me I might have always had, I didn't know, but I was still reluctant enough to not completely trust the new voice in my subconscious.
Romeo sat slouched beside me, the steady rise and fall of his chest the only giveaway that he was even still alive. His face was etched into a frown, as though there was something still troubling him that he wouldn't disclose. More prominent under normal light, the veins through his neck and his face seemed to glow through his skin, like pale blue rivers trying to escape their channels. His lips were still tinted blue, and he looked as though he hadn't seen the sun in years.
