The Me That I Became

by Christopher Harlan

  He does. He stops and thinks. Maybe hearing me say it like that brings it into focus for him. But it’s true. It’s the plot of a movie, only it was real. “I have a million questions for you,” he says.

  “Ditto.”

  “Not here, though.”

  “No,” I repeat, agreeing with that decision one hundred percent. “Definitely not here. But I’m glad you brought me. I’m glad we’ve finally been honest with each other.”

  “Me, too. I’m fucking exhausted right now.”

  “That makes two of us. Take me home. We can talk there.”

  “Okay.”

  He sounds deflated. I can’t say I blame him. We’ve had about forty-eight hours of drama, and all I want to do is fall on my face and sleep for a week. But right now, there’s a conversation to be had. Both of us owe the other some explanations. I just hope that we still have an ‘us’ when those explanations are done.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There have been a few times in my life where time has passed so slowly that I didn’t ever think the moment would end. Recovering at the hospital after my suicide attempt, the week after Nana died, and now this conversation I just had with Brandon. We came back to my place to do it. First Brandon dropped me off at the university parking lot so that I could pick up my car, then I stopped to pick up Starbucks. After that, we had the mother of all talks, the kind that makes a regular conversation look like a newborn puppy. I told him everything.

  I explained that I never got along with my parents—just one of those things, but that I was relatively normal up until high school. I told him about Nana, and how she lived with us for most of my life, and how she was the only person who kept me sane. She was who I went to when I couldn’t go to mom or dad. She held my secrets, she gave me comfort, and more than anything else, Nana got me—she loved me for me. I didn’t have to be anyone else when I was around her except myself. I didn’t have to be the perfect granddaughter, or go to an Ivy, or win a game for her to love me unconditionally. I’d just started my senior year in high school when she died from Cancer. That was what my therapist called my ‘trigger’, the event that sent the wiring I already had in my brain haywire.

  After that things just got worse. I got into a good school—not an ivy, but a high-level college—but all the behaviors from my mental illness made it almost impossible to do well. I had to take like three or four leaves of absence. I’d miss class ’cause I couldn’t get out of bed, or because if I went to class my anxiety would have crippled me. I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t do assignments. It’s a small miracle I made it through the whole experience.

  But college is when the drinking started. It’s when the partying replaced class. It’s when I learned that there was a whole world of distractions out there that could help me forget my pain—sex, drugs, alcohol, partying. All of it helped me hide. Helped me to learn to be numb without feeling numb. That’s when I bounced from guy to guy, I’d take any drugs that were in the room, and I’d drink when things got too real.

  “Jesus,” Brandon says. “I had no idea. I never would have guessed.”

  “What? That I’m as screwed up as I am? That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I built a life around keeping that from people. Keeping it from myself, even. But it was after college, right after, when all the distractions faded away and I was left with my sadness—that’s when I tried to kill myself.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. . .”

  “We’re being honest, right? You didn’t have to bring me to Alexa’s apartment and tell me about your family, but you did. Now it’s my turn.”

  “Alright.”

  “It was a cry for help, like I told you. I was a master of deceiving people, so if I’d wanted to kill myself I would have done it. Instead I chose to do it at my mom’s house, where I was still living while Carla was away. I took pills, just like Alexa, only mom was in the house. I knew that she came up to get me for dinner every night because I slept at odd hours. I took the pills an hour before. I could literally smell dinner cooking when I did it. I knew in all likelihood she’d come to get me for dinner, find my note and my empty bottle, and freak out. Maybe I was trying to punish her, I don’t know.”

  “And what happened?” he asks, looking at me intensely.

  “I lived, obviously, but I had to be rushed to the hospital. Carla flew home from out of state to see me in the hospital and never left my bedside. Mom and dad did what they usually do—overreact and make it about what a selfish daughter I was for almost causing them trauma. After that they insisted I see a therapist who they chose, and he basically plied me with high doses of whatever anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds he had. I was a zombie.”

  He listens like he always listens to me. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking or feeling, but I don’t want to make this all about me. I know that he’s hurting a lot, too. “So how did you break that cycle?”

  “Cold turkey. I basically got sick of how the meds made me feel. I was getting every side effect in the book. I just wasn’t me. So, I just stopped taking them. I’d hide them, throw them away, store them where no one would ever find them. Eventually I felt good enough to start applying for jobs with my social work degree. I saved enough to move out, first in a crappy apartment with a roommate, then later on with an old boyfriend, then I made enough get the place we’re sitting in now. I left the other therapist but found another bad one. He wasn’t pushing pills down my throat, but I wasn’t getting better, either.”

  “Wow,” he says, taking it all in. It’s a lot, I know. “You never cease to amaze me, you know that?”

  “What are you talking about?” That’s not the reaction I was expecting.

  “You basically pulled yourself up by your bootstraps and got yourself better. I’m so proud of you for that. You should be, too.”

  “I did,” I tell him. “But I need you to look at me like we’re not in a relationship right now.” God, I hope we are still in a relationship right now. “I got myself back from the brink of a terrible situation, that’s true. But I never got myself better. I still would engage in those old behaviors, just not to such excess that it left me suicidal. I still drank to avoid pain, I got in and out of bad relationships. Or, even worse, I’d get into good relationships and sabotage them from the inside.”

  I don’t mean to rain on his parade, and I appreciate his positive spin on the situation, but he can’t look at me with such rose-colored glasses. I need him to see me—maybe for the first time—as who I am. All my flaws, all my problems. If he accepts me then he needs to accept those also.

  “You know that I’m falling in love with you. I have been since the moment I saw you.” He says it so casually yet with such force. I look at him and can’t keep the tears back. “I’ve only known you a short time, but you’ve been the only ray of light in my life. I know you think I’m this super happy, super positive person who always says and does the right thing. Everyone thinks that. I’m not depressed like you are, or Alexa was, but I’m living in the shadow of it. I’m the man who loves the women who don’t love themselves. But being with you has made me happy. Hopeful.” He stops for a second to gather his thoughts. “You don’t have to say it back, don’t worry. I just thought that you should know how I feel.”

  I can’t say it back, Brandon, not yet. I’m sorry, but no conversation in the world can resurrect my soul. I hug him. We both have tears in our eyes. I’m crying for me, but I’m really crying for him. I hate that he’s in pain. He doesn’t deserve any of this. I wish we only got what we deserve in this world, but that isn’t how it works. We get the bad with the good, and sometimes just the bad. I can’t believe what I’m about to say to him. The words are so clear in my head, and they’re the right words, but they scare the living shit out of me. I don’t want to hurt him more, or to scare him.

  “I think we need to talk about us.” That sounds like the opening line of someone breaking up with you, but that’s not what I’m doing. He senses it, so I put him at ease. �
��Don’t worry, I’m not breaking up with you. But there is something I need to say. It isn’t going to be easy to hear.”

  “Talia, nothing we’ve said to each other today has been easy to hear. Just say it.”

  “I don’t think that we should be together right now.” When I say it, he has a moment—just a second—where his eyes open really wide and then go back to normal, like I just shocked him with a wire.

  “Talia, I. . .”

  “Wait. Just listen to me. Let me finish my whole thought. I don’t think we should be together right now. I think that we’re both broken, Brandon. I think we’re haunted by a whole house’s worth of ghosts from our past. If we kept going like we were, even knowing what we know now about each other, we’re not going to last. No matter how we feel, no matter how much we want it. Eventually your issues or, more likely, my issues will come into play. I’ll sabotage us. I’ll find a way to be cold, to stop being the way I am now, or something. I’ve done it a million times. I don’t want that to happen to us.”

  “So, what then? We break up so we can be together? I don’t get it.”

  “Not break up.”

  “Right,” he says, sounding just a little sarcastic. “Take a break. Much different.”

  “It is different. Look, if I wanted to break up with you, I would, plain and simple. That’s not what I’m saying. You think after all this honesty about my suicide attempt that I’d mince words about breaking up?”

  He thinks about what I just said and nods. “Then what?”

  “I’m not sure, to be honest. But I have an idea. You’re not going to like it.”

  “I’m not going to like anything that involves not being with you, but try me.”

  “This thing isn’t a cold, Brandon. I’m not going to get better in a week, or take a round of antibiotics, and be a normal woman. I need to get better, and in a lesser sense I think you do, too.”

  “What do you think I need to do?” he asks. It’s tricky to go there because I’m touching on things that I don’t have the right to touch on yet. Yes, he told me all about them, but I’m still new to that world, and no

  matter how much he feels for me, he might see my suggestions as overstepping boundaries.

  “How about this? Instead of us telling each other what to do, why don’t we make suggestions for ourselves? Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to get my life together. I’m going to get better. Not perfect, maybe not even normal, but I’m going to become a person that I’m proud to be, not the embarrassment I became.”

  “Talia, you’re not. . .”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m not self-loathing right now, I’m just being honest. I don’t like myself. I don’t like who I’ve become.” The you that you became. “Don’t you understand? That’s why I kept all this from you—from everyone. I haven’t ever accepted who I am, and until I do I can’t go into a relationship. I have to do me first.”

  He listens like only he does, like so few people ever do, and I know that he’s taking my words in and shuffling them around in his mind. I know he knows that I’m doing the right thing here, he just doesn’t like what it means for us. Neither do I. But it’s the right thing, and for once that’s what I want to do. “That all sounds like a great idea. I’m just not sure why you can’t do that with me at your side, supporting you.”

  “Because I’d get lost in you. You’ve been like a vacation from my issues, Brandon, you really have. You’ve been everything to me. When I’ve been with you it’s like my brain forgot to be so sad, forgot to make me anxious all the time.”

  “But isn’t that a good thing? Not feeling bad?”

  “It is,” I tell him, taking his hand. “It’s been wonderful. But did you hear me? I didn’t say that you made me better, because no one besides me can make me better. I just forgot for a while. And eventually—trust me on this one—I’d remember to be who I really am. And that’s when everything would go wrong with us, and I’d do anything to not let that happen.”

  “I understand,” he says. He sounds defeated again, but this is a rough thing to accept. I rub his hand to let him know that I’m still here. “And there are things that I should be doing, also.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like selling Alexa’s place. It’s time. It’s been time for years. I think that maybe holding on to that place was me holding onto her. But she’s gone, isn’t she?” I nod. The tears are swelling again in both of our eyes. “You need to accept yourself. I think that I need to accept that my sister is dead and forgive myself for that.”

  “Come here.” I take his head and put it against my chest. I hate how much pain he’s in. I don’t say anything else, I just hold him there, pressed against my heart, hoping that that’s enough. A few minutes later he calms down and sits up. His eyes are red, but he looks a little better despite that, like he’s finally starting to let some of his guilt go.

  “Everything you’re saying makes sense. It does. But doing what you’re saying also scares the shit out of me.”

  “Me, too, Brandon. It scares me to death. But what scares me even more is what I’ll do to us if we don’t.”

  He nods, a glimmer of acceptance showing itself. “How long?”

  “I don’t know. I need some time. If you don’t want to wait for me. . .”

  “Stop it.”

  “No, listen. You have some things to work through, but you’re not like me. You’re the man every woman dreams of. You should have a normal woman. You don’t have to wait for the fixer upper. You deserve better than me.”

  He looks at me sharply, something between shock and a little twinge of anger, but it takes me aback. “Listen to me, don’t do that. That’s your self-hatred talking. If I wanted someone else I wouldn’t have pursued you. I wouldn’t be here for you now, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have shown you what I showed you. You’re the only person in the world who knows about me. You’re not a fixer upper, god dammit. You’re a beautiful, sexy, complex human being who I’m falling in love with, and I’m going to be by your side until you tell me not to, even if we’re taking a break. I don’t care how long. I don’t. . .”

  “What?” I ask.

  “I don’t even care about us as much as I care about you. I want you to get better for you, not for me. And, at the end of that, if I’m lucky enough to still have you want me, I’ll be here.”

  No one in this room needs more tears. I think we’ve cried enough for the entire city, but I can’t help one last tear from falling when he says that. Deep down I expect him to leave, to get away from my crazy, broken ass before I poison him like I poison everyone else. But he called me on it, and I believe that he really will be there for me no matter what.

  I don’t know why I do this, but the only thing that makes sense is to kiss him—really kiss him. He kisses me back the same way, and I can feel the passion coming through his lips. He puts both hands on my face as the kissing intensifies, and I start to get the heat in my body that only Brandon inspires. His touch is everything, and his kiss is something maybe greater. His hands start to run all over my body. He’s frantic about it, but it only turns me on even more. It’s like he can’t stop himself, and he can’t wait to touch me. I feel exactly the same way.

  Without warning he lays me down on the couch and lifts up my shirt. My weight is pressing down on the back of it, so I sit up and pull it off myself. As soon as he sees me doing it he does the same, and in seconds we’re both basking in the sensation of each other’s skin.

  He slides inside me so easily. I want him to be there, to feel him so deep in me, to know that our bodies are one. He’s so powerful on top of me, and I let him do what he wants, just letting my body and my heart feel the passion coming through his body into mine. I moan from underneath him because he feels so good. My legs are wrapped around his waist, and every thrust of his hips makes the fire inside burn hotter, burn brighter, burn deeper in me.

  He doesn’t last long, and neither do I. It’s not about lasting long. It’s
not about not being able to keep our hands off of each other. He’s not fucking me right now, we’re making love, our bodies existing only for one another at this moment. I feel his body let go when he releases, and as he does I respond, the shudder of a powerful orgasm taking over, making me shake underneath him. We go into the bedroom afterwards, and after we’re done he looks at me. “I’m going to leave when you’re asleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, I’m not sure when. I’ll set an alarm and be really quiet so as not to wake you.”

  “Wait, why? You don’t have to. . .”

  “I don’t want to say goodbye to you. We said a lot of painful words over the last two days, but those would hurt me more than any of them. Let me just vanish. I’ll be gone, but never more than a text or call away. Let me fall asleep with the feeling of your skin next to mine, and let me leave without having to say goodbye to you. That would break me.”

  “Okay,” I say. “We won’t say goodbye. Let me know you’re out there, okay? Even if we don’t speak every day.”

  “You’ll hear from me every day,” he tells me, smiling a little bit. “Just not in the way you think.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “Let’s go to sleep. I have dreams of you to remember.”

  We kiss one last time. I let my lips linger on his, hoping that they’ll remember his touch when we’re apart. I close my eyes, my last thoughts being of our uncertain future, and the hope that I can find myself on the other end of this journey I’m going on alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Two Months Later

  I take morning runs now. I come back from today’s exhausted, but invigorated. I can’t believe I’m saying that. Those words don’t go together, at least they never did for me. Running was always one of those things I’d see other people doing on Instagram, #running, #morningrun, #feelingtheburn. I used to scroll right past those posts, thinking the people in them were special kinds of lunatics for waking up before their day started, so that they could get all sweaty and wreck their feet before work. But now I run every morning, and now I’m on my way to Starbucks to refuel. Morning exercise is part of my regimen—the homework my new therapist gave me.