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“I feel nothing ! I’m just broken and sick and I need all of this to stop. So please, please just do what I never could.”
Saying the words out loud feels like a punch to the gut harder than any of the times Asher slammed his fist into his face. Maybe it’s because he’s saying them to Oliver. Oliver, who had broken up with him, then broke his heart, again and again–not that he didn’t deserve it. Oliver, who he’d never, ever want to hurt… yet that’s exactly the thing that he keeps doing.
The school therapist told him he needs to stop idealizing his partner–ex-partner. He needs to stop putting Oliver on this magical, untouchable pedestal and start treating him like a human being… like an equal. Maybe that’s the root of their problems, that Connor had never seen them as equals.
(Cheating on Oliver, than crawling back on his hands and knees when he can’t handle his shit. Forcing his way back into Oliver’s life and dragging him down the shit hole with him. Of course Oliver can find someone better!)
He’d agonized over whether or not to make an appointment with the university therapist for weeks before finally doing it. He’d fallen back into bad habits. Some that he thought–hoped, maybe–he’d long put behind him. Eventually, it got bad enough that it started scaring him. He finally picked up the phone and dialed the number for an appointment that day.
It was his mother who forced him into therapy when he was seventeen. He was only home for the summer and apparently his behavior was too much for them to handle, even for so short a period of time. He hated it. What a weakness it seemed, to be forced to talk about your problems to a stranger, only to realize how much bigger they are when finally made to stare them in the face.
His emotions go back and forth sometimes like a goddamn pendulum. He’ll feel empty, feel nothing, feel so dead inside he’d do almost anything to feel something. And then out of nowhere he’ll explode into an angry outburst. Emotional instability, his therapist jotted down in her notes.
“Why did your parents want you in therapy, Connor?”
A young Connor shrugged his shoulders. Two hours twice a week without him in the house was too good an opportunity to pass up? “They think I sleep around too much,” was what he finally said. “They think I have a ‘problem’. ‘Game’ is what I have,” he said with a snort.
Reckless and impulsive behavior, was what his therapist called it. Connor argued it was just a horny, teenage boy embracing his sexuality. What’s wrong with that? His therapist called it dangerous. And he was told to watch out for self-harming behaviors.
(Sleeping with Thomas, what kind of fucked up self sabotage was that?)
He doesn’t know why he acts this way, and he doesn’t know how to stop. Therapy helped. He went back to school after that summer with his head more firmly screwed on. Talking about things helps. Only temporarily though.
It’s always so, so easy to lash out, to hurt others–but it never feels good. He chalked it up to a defense mechanism. It doesn’t take a therapist to see how fucked up that is. But he can’t stop.
(I kind of recall you hating him before he became barbecue.)
Sick.
It’s sick. He’s sick.
The word tastes like vomit in his mouth. And as Oliver stands mere inches from him, so close he can smell the familiar scent of Oliver’s tea tree shampoo, he thinks for a second that he might actually lose his lunch.
But then Oliver’s eyes meet his own, and the only sure thing Connor feels is how much he hates himself.
“I don’t want to keep hurting you,” Connor murmurs, swallowing the lump in his throat.
The look Oliver gives him is so sad.
“I don’t know why I do this.” Connor’s gaze drops to the blood stained tissue in Oliver’s hands. He blinks slowly at the sight of it. He feels empty again. “There’s something wrong with me.”