Chapter Text
They ask you how you can possibly work for so long. They marvel at how quickly you write, how swiftly you race through tasks. They ask you if you ever sleep.
To all of these questions, you laugh a little.
You sit alone, hunched over a desk, at three in the morning. You're hungry, but it's not for food, it's for distraction. You never are (never were) content to remain idle. This is a fact and it always has been. They say you were never once at rest, never once at peace, not since the day you could write. You try to remember a day to counter that point. A day where you were just happy, and relaxed, and doing nothing- but you can't. You can't remember that day because it doesn't exist.
You didn't forget it, it just isn't there.
You forget a great many things, but that you are obsessed with distractions is not one of them. You figure if you can keep your senses whirring and jerking and shifting you can evade the sense of impending anxiety that everyone, everyone will leave you, will hate you, will want nothing to do with you. In an effort to preserve what little you have left of your own sanity, you distract yourself with endless heaps of work.
Your charts have charts. Your tables are organized by color. You have filed every last paper in this place, you have corrected even the corrections on paper. You have done everything there is to do, and you are looking at the bookcase in the corner, tempted to yank every book out and re-sort it six times over. You know what would come first. By title, A-Z, then author, A-Z, then primary subject matter A-Z, and then all three of those, but Z-A. Then you'd remove all of the paperbacks from the hardcovers and do it again. That will take hours.
You do it.
You organize the books and you focus on the comforting look and feel of putting the smooth shapes into the curvatures of a wooden shelf that holds them so neat, so sturdy, in just the right place. You are in bliss. You don't think at all, you are not concerned about anything, just these books, and how to sort them best. You are content, doing this, even if it's not the same kind of content everyone thinks you should have. You hear someone come through the door, but you don't look at them. You raise your arm, extend it as far as you can...
And then you realize the shelf is too high.
Panic surges through you, electric volts of humiliation as you turn to see someone standing there, watching you stretch, watching you fail. You are mortified. There is no word to describe the fire that catches inside of you and burns up the circuits of every wire that makes up how you operate. Your arm drops, the book does too.
You are in bliss. You don't think at all, you are not concerned about anything, just these books, and how to sort them best. You are content, doing this, even if it's not the same kind of content everyone thinks you should have. You raise your arm, extend it as far as you can...
And then you realize the shelf is too high.
Panic surges through you, electric volts of humiliation as you turn to see someone standing there, watching you stretch, watching you fail. You are mortified. There is no word to describe the fire that catches inside of you and burns up the circuits of every wire that makes up how you operate. Your arm drops, the book does too.
You are in bliss. You don't think at all, you are not concerned about anything, just these books, and how to sort them best. You are content, doing this, even if it's not the same kind of content everyone thinks you should have. You raise your arm, extend it as far as you can...
And then you realize the shelf is too high.
Panic surges through you, electric volts of humiliation as you turn to see someone standing there, watching you stretch, watching you fail. You are mortified. There is no word to describe the fire that catches inside of you and burns up the circuits of every wire that makes up how you operate. Your arm drops, the book does too.
You are in bliss. You don't think at all, you are not concerned about anything, just these books, and how to sort them best. You are content, doing this, even if it's not the same kind of content everyone thinks you should have. You raise your arm, extend it as far as you can...
And then you realize--
"Helios!"
You freeze. You look over and the thought you had stops processing as you see someone coming in close, reaching out and taking the book. They set it down and guide you away, and you protest.
"What are you doing? I've got a lot to do, you can't just burst in here and keep me from-"
"You've tried to put that book away three times since I walked in, Helios...the shelf is too high."
You look at the shelf. You realize that the distance is not in line with the length of your arms, and they are right- the shelf is too high. You sigh. "Yeah, okay."
"...I mean it...you- you kept freaking out every time you couldn't do it, so you just kept deleting."
That was the first time you remember anyone telling you what you had been doing all along. No wonder there were gaps in memory. No wonder there were lapses. No wonder...