Chapter Text
December 1, 7:26 pm
There's a museum worker that came to the hospital today. She brought ancient artwork from millions of years ago, and there was a rotting in my gut with the realization that I will never create anything that would even compare to that.
It was tragic, and I hate how often I have to use that word to describe my life.
December 2, 11:38 pm
I had group today, meaning I didn't work and I spent the entire afternoon on Missy’s couch, crying over dumb romantic comedies before Julia told us the dirty details of her night with Zac. He came over yesterday, and they had a sleepover- lacking any sleep- which was enough of a scandal for us to giggle about it like high schoolers that just got felt up for the first time behind the bleachers.
She's finally moving on, though, and I wonder if that's a sign that I’m ready, too.
December 3, 6:34 pm
When Lucas sleeps over, I sometimes think that he's you- wrapped around me in bed and pulling my body to your chest. There's a moment where panic completely overwhelms me and he wakes up because I'm shaking so badly.
Except instead of getting irritated like I think he will, he just holds me closer. He whispers into my ear that I'm alright, and he presses his lips to the side of my neck and a breath I didn't even realize I was holding escapes me.
December 4, 3:19 am
I wish I had never met you.
I wish your smile didn't make me melt.
I wish I didn't smell your cologne when I lay in bed at night- despite how hard I scrubbed, despite how much bleach I used against the stain of it on the drywall.
I wish that I could open doors without flinching because you used to hate when I would do it for myself. You'd insist that you're my boyfriend, you take care of me, you open my doors. You’d tug me sharply back by the hair on my head and mutter words about chivalry before I stumbled through the newly available entry like that was okay.
I wish that I could sleep without thinking of you.
I wish that I didn't still find your things tucked into the corners of my home, of my mind.
I wish that I could give the boy that treats me properly my entire heart, offering it with my soul and anything else he desires, but I can't do that because it's still yours in some way.
I wish that I could stop seeing myself as yours.
December 5, 12:51 pm
I'm on my lunch break at work, and Missy came to visit me today. With the holidays approaching and the lack of volunteers, she was welcomed by everyone with open arms before she passed out candy canes from the nurses and introduced herself.
All of the kids are trying to get home for Christmas, but I know the truth and I know where they will be in twenty days. They'll be here, trapped behind secure doors as most of their parents rattle off stories of a wild winter training camp they're in for whatever sport they’ve shown the slightest ounce of interest towards or the mysterious friend that whisked them away to some retreat with their family this year. Their relatives will think that they're off having grand adventures instead of staring out their windows, crying over the dinner they won't share with the ones they love.
When my mom was in rehab, we said she was in Florida. I spent the holidays with Lucas down in Texas because I couldn't face the Matthews and their perfect portrait of a home while mine slipped through my fingertips, and we told his distant cousins that my mom was tucked away in Florida for some audition her manager sent her to, one he was sure she would get so she would have to take the risk- but his parents knew the truth. His grandparents, too.
And they pretended that they couldn't hear when I cried late at night and Lucas held me until I slept because my mother almost drank herself to death the week before Christmas Eve and would be in a rehab facility far away from me well past Christmas and New Years and my birthday and everything that I only had her to share with after Gammy’s death.
We’re gonna try to make Christmas good for them this year, we really are. We’re going to try to remind these kids that they may not be at a camp or a resort or in some state hours away, but they are in a place where they are safe and they are loved and they are nothing to be ashamed of.
December 6, 9:52 pm
I love Lucas, I really do. I love his eyes and his smile and his hair and his touch and his laugh and the way he twirls me in the air when he's excited.
I love him so fucking much that I can't breathe when I'm around him. I just hold the air in my lungs like the world is going to implode if I don't, and he smiles lopsidedly when I start to pant from the action.
I'm waiting for it to end, for him to leave, but he doesn't.
December 8, 1:47 pm
Do you think that astronauts realize how lucky they are? They could be floating in space and with a click of their helmets no longer exist, and it would be written off as a malfunction in their suit.
If I tried to no longer exist with a click to my skull, that's suicide, and that would shatter everyone around me because I should be happier, I should be getting better, I should finally be okay.
I should've studied for NASA.
December 9, 6:41 am
I dreamt about Lucas last night and I'm going to talk about him instead of how much I ponder on death during group therapy today because I'm happier and I'm better and I don't need to be in space when the boy who loves me walks the earth.
That boy is slowly fading from you to him, and I'm gonna be okay, I think.
I’ll have to stop holding my breath one day.
December 10, 8:18 pm
We made paper snowflakes at work today and hung them all around the dull corridors of the hospital, laughing with tape stuck to our clothes and hair and everywhere it shouldn't be after I had to sneak it in.
(It's a hazard, they warned me.)
The twins chose different colors to paint them and Ben made one as large as his head and Nicky laughed so hard that the milk from his snack came out of his nose and, fuck, I love these kids.
December 11, 11:16 pm
I used to despise skating at Rockefeller when I was younger. A crowded tourist trap that made me want to lay on the ice so they could slice me up with their ridiculous strides.
Sundance took me today, though, as a surprise with Julia and Zac and he held my waist the entire time I skidded and slipped around the arena.
Maybe I hated it because it was a cliché or maybe I hated it because no one had ever taught me to skate- the world may just never know.
December 13, 2:49 am
Do you remember when you were little and would hold your breath when passing cemeteries? The dumb superstition or whatever about respecting the dead? Well, Riley still does that. It doesn't matter where we are or who is with us, she puffs her cheeks really big and she freezes her lungs for as long as the headstones go.
I've been thinking about death a lot lately. I sometimes wish that I was, y’know. I wonder if that would make everything easier. I would forget you, forget my pain, forget any sorrows. I would go numb, and it'd all just end.
I know I'm not supposed to think this way, but it creeps its way into my system until I feel like I've gone crazy, like I belong in a hospital where they'll monitor my every move.
December 14, 11:21 pm
Lucas likes honey on his toast.
He burns marshmallows when he roasts them because he's weird and his room always smells like baby shampoo for some reason and his first horse was named Jet because he thought it would magically make him able to fly. He doesn't like strawberry milk because looking at it reminds him of Pepto Bismol so he gets nauseous and there was a period when he was eight where he would only use Dora the Explorer band aids because he wanted to learn Spanish.
His favorite color is blue, the blue of the sky and my eyes and the color of our tongues when we go to the gas station at four in the morning to get icees. He doesn't like raw tomatoes, but he eats them cooked, and, according to him, his mama makes the best peach cobbler on this side of the universe.
His blankets are always warm, but his sheets are always cold, and he's always the perfect mixture of both when I curl into him at night.
I've started staying with him regularly. I'm in his bed without even trying, and he holds me while I crumble into tiny fractions of a girl all across his mattress because I want to be happy and I want to forget you and I want to be dead and none of this is good- why can't it just be good for once?
He says that if I were to die, his world would go dark. I asked him why that would happen and he swipes at the tears slipping down my cheeks when he replies that it's because it would be buried six feet under in a wooden box, because I am his world and if I were to go, the sun would go, too, because he sees it in my smile and he feels it in my skin and he can hear it sizzling and crackling in my soft snoring when I sleep.
I try to tell him that I'm terrified of burning him, but we both know it's too late.
December 15, 8:57 pm
Sometimes I wonder if there's enough love left in my heart for the rest of the world. It's hard to tell because I look around sometimes, taking everything that the sun settles on in and I wish I could share it with you.
I know that you hurt me, and I know that you've done horrible things, but I love you. I've loved you since I was nineteen, and I'll probably love you until I'm ninety- and that's okay, John. It's alright that I'm going to love you forever, I just want to be able to love someone else, someone who deserves it, too.
December 16, 4:53 pm
During group, we planned a Christmas party for next week. There will be lights and music and Missy is going to bring Caleb because everyone seems to be doing okay, and that's surely fucking worth celebrating.
December 17, 3:39 am
I kissed Lucas under mistletoe yesterday, and I'm still awake thinking of it because I want to do it again. We were decorating the halls in the hospital while the kids were all at lunch and he taped it up right on his forehead before he pulled me close.
Georgia, my favorite nurse, took a picture of it without either of us knowing and I just turned my phone on for the first time since it died around when the kids got back and that picture was waiting for me.
It looks like something straight out of a cheesy ABC Family original holiday musical, and so I made it my wallpaper.
December 18, 6:47 pm
I'm supposed to try to write to you for about a year. My therapist says this is a good way to safely communicate with you, and that I'm not allowed to reread any of it until that year is up.
He thinks I need to recognize my progress once I'm at a better point in my life, once you're almost completely flushed out of my system, and at the rate I'm going, come next July I will finally say goodbye to you and this little book. I know it might jinx it or whatever, but I really think I might be ready for it by then. I'm not ready for it now, obviously not, but who knows where I'll be in seven months?
December 19, 10:22 pm
Josh came home today for the holidays and the first person he ran to when Riley and I went to pick him up (he made us promise we would) was me and he spun me around in a hug as soon as he could sprint towards us.
It felt like warmth and love and safety; it felt like a Matthews, which explains why I hugged him right back.
Why we kissed each other?
That's the question on everyone’s mind.
December 21, 5:56 am
We decided that it was an impulse thing, and so that's why we did it. I talked to Lucas and he called Rose and- though it's a bizarre situation- we all agreed that it was an impulse thing and we could forget it ever happened.
Lucas kissed me over and over last night for good measure once we were all alone in his apartment, and when I asked him why, he mumbled some bullshit excuse against my pulse and I couldn't find it in me to mind it one bit.
December 22, 8:40 pm
Our therapy group Christmas party was today, meaning Lucas and I spent two hours playing with Caleb while Missy and Julia got sick off of the sweets they wouldn't stop eating. We mainly showed him around the decorated halls, Lucas lifting him onto his shoulders while I pointed out crafted snowflakes and shimmering lights before we raced down the empty halls, and it was a lot of fun.
He told me that he thinks I would make a good mother and I told him that I think he would make a good father, and then he got this smug little smirk when we both looked at the baby giggling between us and he wrapped his arm around my waist before whispering, “What a coincidence that happens to be, Ms. Hart.”
December 23, 2:11 am
Lucas stole mistletoe from the party yesterday. He then insisted we have a movie night, and I didn't think much of it because we have movie nights a lot, but as soon as I went to order Chinese for dinner, he whipped it out and pinned me against my counter.
It started off with small pecks and then it progressed to him lifting me on to the counter and I felt like a fucking highschooler again; making out with a boy in my kitchen, tossing my phone aside so my hands can roam him instead.
The only difference between then and now is that now I'm making out with the boy that I love, and, god fucking damn it, he loves me, too.
December 25, 11:55 pm
Lucas clasped a chain around my neck with a ring hanging from it tonight. It’s simple and golden with a tiny heart engraved on the inside that makes me smile. It's a promise ring and it's for when I'm ready, he explained. It's on the chain so that I have it near and I know he's there, on my side to support me through whatever I need to do, and he hopes that one day he'll be lucky enough to see it on my hand because then I'll be his and he'll be mine and everything will be okay.
When we got back to my apartment, laid in my bed over the covers, facing each other silently, my fingertips brushing along the structure of his cheeks and nose and lips until he fell asleep, and now, here I am, writing to you to let you know that the boy I love gave me a ring tonight and I'm going to wear it.
Not tonight, not tomorrow, but one day soon I'm going to be ready to wear it and that’s more than I ever dreamed of being ready to do after leaving you.
December 26, 4:37 am
Yesterday, Lucas and I spent the entire day at the hospital. I've never seen those kids so happy.
They got presents, little things for inside their rooms or toys they could play with that the nurses cleared, and they ate treats that Missy and I baked on Christmas Eve, and they laughed and sang and they were happy. Cooped up into a small wing of a hospital, shut off from their families, they spent the day smiling and laughing and playing with gifts and they were so fucking happy.
December 27, 9:56 pm
I can still remember nights where I'd stay up with you because you couldn't sleep. We’d both be dead tired because you were exhausted and I was staying awake to make sure you eventually slept and we just wanted to be close, so we’d sit in silence.
I remember just laying there, and I'd whisper your name really softly, just in case you were asleep, even though you never were because you hadn't told me goodnight yet, and I'd tell you that I love you because, fuck, I did so fucking much.
You would get that tone where you know that you're smiling- even though my eyes were struggling to stay open- and you’d say it back between the sound of your breathing getting deeper before it'd go back to being quiet.
I would just sit there and think about how lucky I was in that silence. I was in love with you and you were love with me and it amazed me constantly; how much I loved you, how happy you made me, how- even though I knew there was such a chance it wouldn't happen- I wanted nothing more than a future with you.
I wanted to tell you that I loved you in the middle of the night between whispers and soft touches for the rest of my life, and it's taken me a while to let it settle that you are not what I want anymore.
December 28, 12:36 pm
Caleb’s been working on his m’s and so today he called me Auntie Maya (not Yaya) for the first time and I started to cry.
Missy was recording it because two fucking days ago, he was still saying Yaya and I convinced him to call Huckleberry Puke-as, but in the span of those forty eight hours, Missy got him to master my name and she ambushed me with it in a public setting so that she could have a video of me crying in Central Park to hold over my head for as long as we live.
Lucas thinks it's cute and I told him that if he doesn't delete it from his phone (because Missy had to send it to everyone we know) that I would kick his ass. He thinks I didn't see him emailing to himself, and so he had this smug little smirk, too, and I still can't believe I started sobbing in the middle of Central Park and Missy got it on tape.
She says it's only going to be worse when I have kids.
December 29, 4:25 pm
Today is our last group therapy session until the new year, and so we listed off our goals and resolutions.
Missy says she wants to regain full custody of Caleb within the next year. She's talked to her lawyers, and because she has her own apartment and is going to be making a decent salary once she goes back to the law firm she works at, it should all be very possible within the next six months. Her mom is more than ready to sign him over, all they need is the green light from a judge telling her that she's deemed fit to have him.
Julia says she wants to be able to progress in her relationship with Zac at a normal rate, not holding them back because of what has happened to her. She really likes him, and I know that he loves her from the way that he looks at her, so I really want her to make it through this, too. She deserves a happy ending.
I told them that I want to work on coping with the guilt I have from breaking the routine you had me trapped in, and that I want to be able to wear Lucas’s ring. I want to be able to slide it onto my finger without feeling like you're going to take it away from me somehow because I still belong to you. I hope that soon I'll be able to function in daily life normally, without half of my friends treating me like I'm some wounded animal, and that I will let myself be happy this year.
I didn't tell them that I want to think about dying a little less, but I told myself and I'm telling you, so I think it still counts.
December 30, 7:20 pm
I won't be around tomorrow because for the first time in three years, I won't be missing the Matthews’ New Year’s Extravaganza (Riley picks the name). I hope you have a nice night planned, and I hope you're sober enough that whoever you're with doesn't have to tuck you into bed like I had to.
December 31, 2:19 am
I'm wearing his ring tonight. I'm wearing his ring, and I'm kissing him when it’s midnight, and I'm starting this year with Lucas because I can and I want to and it's going to make me happy.
I'm finally going to be happy.