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...
(A/N) Even I've forgotten what happened last chapter sooooo...
Go back and read it :)
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"I never really liked thinking about the future, you know."
My words were quiet, but they didn't escape the attentiveness of Romeo. All the talk about who we dreamed of being cleared the way for the negative thoughts to launch an untimely ambush, reminding me of all the reasons I hated thinking about what would come next in my ever-gloomy life.
"Why not?" Romeo questioned, tilting his head to look up at me. He'd dropped his head back into my lap, my arm no longer around his shoulders as it now lay resting alongside his. He lay comfortably on his side, our fingers loosely intertwined as opposed to actually holding each other's hands. His hood was still atop of his head, his movement to glance up at me done very slowly in order to make sure his hood wouldn't suddenly slide down. "What don't you like about it?"
There was the obvious reason I didn't like thinking about the future - I was scared of the unknown, and the uncertainty that life could bring - but also because I didn't know if I would still be alive to have a future.
As morbid as it sounded, I didn't expect to live long enough to reach my thirties, let alone have a career I was proud of and a family who loved me. It was like part of me had always assumed that I wouldn't make it; I wasn't mentally strong enough to handle the problems of my teenage years, so how would I possibly be able to survive all the next big levels of life that I hadn't even faced? Like my GCSE's, which I'd be sitting in just over a year, or the stress of A Levels and Sixth Form, followed by University and then working a hectic 9 to 5 while struggling to balance a relationship and a family and all the other responsibilities of growing up and being a grown up.
The future just seemed like a lot - and I'd rather avoiding having to think about it instead of worrying and ruminating over every little way that I might fail at life.
And then there was the other small, completely minor fear I had; the more prominent reason as to why I hated to think about what comes next. "I hate that it's all going to be worse," I mumbled, Romeo's eyebrows furrowing at my words as I sighed softly before further elaborating. "I hate thinking about the future because everything I struggle with now, is only going to get worse."
Romeo tugged my arm closer to his, entwining our fingers tighter together as he spoke. "That's not necessarily true Cass," he countered, speaking slowly as he pondered upon my words. "Things do get better - maybe not everything, but most will. And even if it doesn't get better, that doesn't mean it will get worse."
The older you grew, the more aware you became of how messed up everything was. My trauma didn't make me a fighter: I didn't become stronger and wiser and braver, I became cynical and weaker. And at first I didn't think it would get worse – I thought I'd been through the worst of it all, and I could continue to cruise my way through life at the same intensity of problems I was facing – but the more I lived, and got hurt, and learnt from the pain but became weaker, the worse my problems got.
