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It started off as innocently enough. In fact, it started out justified.
She’d gotten bit. She’d run into a shabby cottage (in the name of recon, of course), with only three bullets left in her gun. She’d missed the first two, but her last shot made impact with the rotting, snarling thing, sending a spray of blood onto the wall behind it. The metal buried into its shoulder, disabling its left arm. Then it pounced on her.
She hadn’t even been mad about it. She hadn’t taken it out with three tries, it felt only fair that it got at least one shot at her in return.
It sunk its rotting teeth into her shoulder, the acrid stench of the thing curling into her nostrils. It growled, teeth clamping down as it shivered at the taste.
The second she saw the non-existent glow of flames, her knife was buried in its head. The fun was gone now.
That night she’d decided to do something about it. She poured alcohol on her small blade, then dug it into the scar and sliced it up enough that it was unrecognizable.
It was smart. She didn’t want to die, to get shot by some rando accidentally catching a glimpse of skin. It was basically healthy, actually, since it was about making sure she fucking lived.
Plus, it wasn’t like it felt good, carving into herself like that. It wasn’t a release or a balm or anything typically thought of when she pictured someone cutting themselves up. It just hurt.
She didn’t stop, though.
She ended up turning the weird semicircle of bloody flesh into a flower with just a few more minutes of slicing.
Then she colored in the flower.
Then it stopped feeling healthy.
It was the next day she realized how stupid she’d been (not about the whole cutting thing, but how she’d gone about it).
She’d thrown on a T-shirt, but a quick glance in the mirror revealed just how visible a petal was, jutting out from under her sleeve in a jagged arch.
Long sleeves it was.
Still, she’d come to the realization that she’d need to be a bit stealthier to avoid the wrath of Joel and his weird new doctor lady who always smelled like pot. She didn’t live in his house anymore, but she saw him enough (and knew he looked intently enough) that she was sure her arms wouldn’t be safe for long.
She selected her thighs as her next canvas. They were fleshy, which was good, and easy to reach. Plus, it wasn’t like they were visible in any normal circumstances.
The only time she could picture a situation where they could be seen was swimming or sex.
She didn’t really swim much anymore, and she was still too fucked up from one bad day when she was fourteen to let anyone get to third, so neither was a particularly big issue.
She fell into the routine easily. Didn’t try to resist it or quit.
When she felt the compulsion, she’d just walk into her bathroom, clean off her knife, and slice.
She was sure there were plenty of reasons for it. Unresolved trauma, lack of control, maybe just boring old self-worth issues. It didn’t really matter why she did it, honestly, and she wasn’t feeling introspective enough to dig deeper than that. All she knew was that it was happening, and she didn’t mind so much.
No one noticed, either. How could something be that bad if no one noticed?
To be fair to the few people still in her life, she didn’t talk to them too much anymore. It took too much energy, energy she didn’t have. Not when she woke up feeling more exhausted than when she fell asleep. Besides, it wasn’t like the lack of her presence was all that much of a punishment. They should be relieved she wasn’t with them. She would be relieved if she wasn’t with herself.
She remembered laying on her bed, staring at the sketchbook on her nightstand. She could see the worn edges of the paper, the slight warping from long-evaporated water she’d spilled on the page. She could picture Joel leaning over her, back in her old room. Her old house. Her old life. He’d loved her drawing, and so had she. She’d loved it.
She didn’t really draw anymore.
Actually, she didn’t really do much of anything anymore.
Patrols used to be something she was excited for. She couldn’t wait to go out, to protect Jackson, to repay her debt to humanity. It was shitty that she wasn’t trying to do that anymore, but the knowledge of how awful she was wasn’t enough to get her to stop. She only patrolled when she absolutely had to, and when it was over she’d go straight back home. She’d get back in bed even though she was sweaty and dirty and hungry.
She was eating a lot, which she also knew was bad since she was doing less than nothing to contribute to the community. She’d go to the dining hall and get everything she could carry, then bring it home and cocoon in her bed until she had to go back out.
Dina showed up at her house once. She smiled, joked. Ellie hadn’t. Ellie had said she was busy. Dina asked with what. Ellie told her to go away.
She ran out of room on her thighs, so she started on her belly. There was more room there than there ever had been. She was sure there was some irony in that, how her eating gave her room for her cutting. She didn’t really care, though. It was just something she did, now. The cutting didn’t even really hurt anymore. Not how she wanted it to.
At the beginning, it would slice through her skin, part her flesh, and crimson would leek out like her cuts were crying. Like they were mourning the loss of the thing that kept them safe. She would gasp at the pain, hold the cut and breathe through it. Slow. In through her nose, out through her mouth.
It wasn’t like that anymore. Now she cut, and she didn’t care. She started going deeper, trying to find that same pain, same shock, but it was gone.
She missed it.
She was going home from the dining hall one night, a bag of food slung over her shoulder. It was something new she was doing; going later to try to avoid the people.
“Ellie!” A voice rang out behind her, one she more than recognized. One she knew.
Joel jogged to catch up with her, breathing heavy by the time he reached her. He had retired from patrols the previous year. He was getting old. It was always a weird thing to think about.
He’d told her that Tommy, Jesse, Dina, everyone had come to him. Said they were worried about her. That she was acting weird.
She’d said she was fine. She’d said not to worry about her.
“I think I should be.” Joel replied, then, “and I think you should be yellin’ at me right now.”
That night she cut herself so deep and so fast she had to give herself stitches. She felt the rough string as she threaded it through a bent sowing needle, a little strand of fiber woven so tightly in her shaking hands that she felt herself remembering those days in the basement, caring for Joel as he clung to life. Despite herself, she couldn’t help wishing to go back to that time. To be how she was back then, before the fireflies or the steakhouse or the cutting. And as she wished for it, wished upon a star that exploded billions of years ago, she realized that she wasn’t mad at Joel anymore. That she wasn’t really anything anymore.
She should tell him. He’d like to hear it. It would make him happy to know she didn’t care. She would in the morning. She’d feel better in the morning.
But when she woke up, she didn’t go find Joel. Didn’t talk to him. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, it was just that she was too tired.
She’d do it tomorrow. She’d feel better tomorrow.
It went on like that for a long time. Or at least what felt like a long time. She remembered it being her nineteenth birthday, Tommy showing up at her door with a letter from Joel she left unopened on her desk. Jesse and Dina tried to take her out that night, but she pretended to be sick. They didn’t believe her, but it wasn’t like they could force her to have fun.
She didn’t do anything for herself. She just got back in bed. She needed to change the sheets, they were dirty and sweaty and itchy. She should do it now. She should get up and do it now.
She couldn’t even bring herself to feel ashamed that she didn’t even try.
She ran out of room on her stomach, so she gave up and started on her arms. She did what she’d promised herself not to when all of it began. It had been nearly nine months. That was enough time for a baby to be born, spent doing absolutely nothing but wasting air that would be better spent on a flower. At least a flower would bring people joy. Make the world a bit better.
So she rotted and she slept and she ate and by that point people had stopped asking her to do patrols, so she barely left the house. She was the weakest she’d ever been, the dumbest, the worst. She didn’t think she’d ever been so thoroughly wasteful, so completely worthless. In fact, she realized it would be better if she just stopped wasting everyone’s time and resources. But she didn’t stop, and she didn’t change, because she was too tired. She was too tired. She was too tired.
It wasn’t too long later that she decided to kill herself.
The moment came when she looked down and realized she’d run out of room on her arms in a few weeks. She’d have to find somewhere new to cut…
Or she could just stop worrying about it.
So she made her choice: when she ran out of room on her arms, she would kill herself, and it was the first decision she’d made in months that she actually cared about.
Things got a bit better after that. She felt a bit lighter, a bit happier. What’s done was done, and she knew she’d made her choice. There was no going back now.
She felt, if not happy, then… content with her plans. It was nice. It felt good to have something to look forward to.
So a few days after she’d worked it all out in her mind, how she’d do it, when she’d do it, why she’d do it, she finally got up. She changed her sheets. She cleaned her small apartment. She got out of her pajamas and into something she liked. She did it because she’d decided that the last few weeks of her life would be ones that mattered.
The first step was to see Joel. She walked over to his house, the one they’d lived in for years together. She knocked on the door, smiled when she saw him. He smiled back.
They sat in the living room. He made her tea, and himself coffee, and Ellie told him that she wasn’t mad anymore. That she forgave him, that she was sorry, too, and he cried, and he hugged her, and she hugged him back. It was good. It was a nice moment. She didn’t want Joel to think she’d do what she’d do because of him.
The next step was Dina and Jesse. She apologized for being so absent, asked if they could spend time together. That night they all went to the Tipsy Bison and got drunk and laughed about dumb shit and danced to no music. It was the best fun. It was perfect.
The final people she had to see were Tommy and Maria. She was greeted at the door of their house by Benji, who smiled up at her. He’d grown since she’d last seen him, she realized. All of her time spent fading away meant she missed the way he started to talk, the interests that came and went. She felt bad about that.
But it was too late to change anything now.
The next few weeks were good. Really good. She went to Joel’s for breakfast and sat with him on the porch, she babysat Benji and got food with Tommy, she spent her nights walking around and drinking and joking with Jesse and Dina. She worked out, she helped her neighbors, she laughed a lot.
Everyone kept telling her how glad they were to see her doing so much better. She thanked them, said she was, too.
Everyone but Joel. He just watched her, he talked with her, but he still seemed worried. He knew something was wrong.
Then, one day, after so many good ones, she ran out of room on her arms. She cut herself one last time, on the side of her arm, right above her elbow.
It was morning. She’d spend the day with everyone, then that night…
She had it all figured out. She’d gathered everything she’d need. She tied all her loose ends.
She was ready. She was happy. It would be sad that she couldn’t see Benji grow up, and that she wouldn’t be there for Joel and he got as old as she joked he already was, but it was the end. It was the end. It was the end.
She sat with Maria and Tommy that morning, chatting happily. She played trucks with Benji, pretended to be an evil Porsche that got defeated by his favorite red pickup. She wondered how they would tell Benji she was gone, if they would wait until he was older to explain what really happened. Maybe he would grow up with the knowledge he had a dead cousin, one that was too hurt and too tired to make it. Maybe he’d see a picture of her at Joel’s house and live with the knowledge that his uncle had two dead children. Maybe he’d remember her laugh, or the silly voices he did, or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t know her at all.
When she left to go have lunch with Jesse and Dina, Maria gave her a hug at the door. It was sweet. Maria wasn’t much of a hugger. She said she was so glad Ellie was back in their lives, how much they’d missed her. Ellie nodded, she agreed.
Then she left.
Lunch was as fun as ever. Jesse and Dina had broken up a few months ago, which Ellie hadn’t been around for. She wasn’t there to support either of them, something else she felt bad about. But they seemed to be doing okay, they seemed happier as friends. At one point Dina jokingly threw a grape her way after a barb about her taste in music, which Ellie managed to catch in her mouth. They’d all cheered, banging the table and discussing it like they’d won one of those contests in the old VHS tapes Joel showed her years ago. A woman had walked over and told them to quiet down, that they were being extremely rude. They apologized, but once she was out of eyesight they giggled, almost manic in their glee.
As she went to go see her final person, Jesse grabbed her shoulder and said she was doing a good job. He told her that Dina was worried sick about her.
Just like with Maria, she nodded, then agreed.
Then she left.
It was a quiet day with Joel. They sat together on the couch, her head on his shoulder, and watched a movie. It was Joel’s turn to choose, and he picked some old comedy about a detective. They laughed, too. She choked on her popcorn at one point, and he had to pound on her back until she spit it back up.
Towards the end of the movie, during the big chase, she felt him lean over and kiss the top of her head. She looked up at him, smiling, but he was watching the television once more.
He’d be sad. He’d probably be the saddest of anyone, but he’d be okay. He had Tommy and Maria and his friends from the construction crew. It wasn’t like it had been. It wasn’t like it was with Sarah.
Before she knew it, the movie was over and she was putting on her coat to go back to her house. Joel offered her the chance to stay over, but she said no. She had plans.
He nodded, accepted it. He asked if he could walk her home, but he also said no to that. She hugged him, though. She hugged him, and felt his large arms reached down and hug her back, and it felt like she was fourteen again. Just for a moment.
And she went to leave, but she turned back and looked at him one last time, and he looked back. And they looked at each other, and she knew he saw something in her eyes, some finality, some goodbye, but he didn’t say anything. Neither did she. She just nodded, smiled.
Then she lef—
“Ellie.”
She turned back around, only a few steps out the door. “Yeah?”
There was a long pause, a silence. He looked at her, really looked, eyes trying to dig into her head, decode that thing she was trying to hide from him.
And he did.
He knew her too well. He knew her better than anyone in the world.
“Are you gonna try an’ kill yourself?”
She stared at him for a moment. A long moment. A moment full of memories and pain and love and laughter.
“No.” She shook her head, “of course not. No.”
Another beat, another cipher that he left broken at her feet.
“Then stay here tonight.”
She shook her head, swallowed. “I have plans.”
“What plans?”
“With Dina and Jesse.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not—”
“Ellie.”
She went quiet.
“Ellie…” he said it like a warning, like a plea. He stepped forward, reached out. She didn’t move as his hands landed gently on her shoulders. “Baby.”
She felt the word strike it’s chord, hit its mark, dig deep into the bullseye in her head. Against her will, she felt her face crumple.
“Joel, please.”
“How?” His voice was scared. Scared and angry. She couldn’t fault him for it, she’d feel that way too if the roles were reversed.
“I don’t—”
“HOW?” His shout was quick, sharp, singing through the air like a sharp metal blade.
She felt a tear slip down her cheek, pool around her nose.
She could never lie to him. Not like he could to her.
“I have pills at home.” She barely whispered.
His composure collapsed, head dropping so she could only hear his choppy sobs.
She tried to step back, but his grip on her shoulders tightened, locking her in place. If it had been anyone else, it would be scary, being trapped, pinned, stuck, but not him. Never him.
“Sorry.” Her voice was hoarse. She was shaking.
He didn’t reply, head still down, hands still squeezing her shoulders so tight they felt like they would pop from her sockets.
Tentatively, she reached out, not quite making contact. “Joel?”
Still nothing.
“Jo—”
“Come inside.” He straightened, letting her shoulders go and turning fast enough that she couldn’t see his face. “Now.”
His words left no room for argument, not even from her. She trailed behind him inside, going meekly, taking her place on the couch once more.
Staring straight ahead, she could feel his burning eyes from where he stood behind her.
“How long have you been planning this?” He asked, and she could tell he was trying to sound composed.
She shrugged.
“Ellie.”
“Like… a couple weeks.” She muttered.
A pause. “When you said you forgave me?” He asked, and she immediately knew where his mind went.
“I do forgive you.” She reassured him, still staring ahead.
“Answer the question.”
She pursed her lips. “Yes.”
Another pause. Another heavy silence.
“Why?”
Maybe it was how desperate he sounded, maybe it was just the fact that she knew it was over, but for once she didn’t even try to lie.
“‘Cause I’m tired.” It was all she could think to say, it was all she could do to describe that bone-deep, aching exhaustion. That numbness that she decayed in.
“Why now?” Was his next question.
She didn’t know what to say, because she didn’t really know. She knew what pushed her over the edge, but honestly she just as well could’ve started going lower on her legs. She could’ve done something else. She could’ve tried to stop.
Maybe she was just looking for an excuse. An easy segway to do what she wanted the whole time.
But she didn’t know how to explain that, so instead rolled up her sleeve and showed Joel the cuts.
Looking back, that was one of the worst weeks of her life. There was a lot of yelling, a lot of crying, a lot of begging. She was never left alone, constantly surrounded by people feeling just about everything under the sun. They told her how stupid she was being, how selfish, then turned around and asked her how she couldn’t understand how incredible she was.
Ellie didn’t feel incredible.
She lost her energy again. She fell back down. The thought of dying was all that had been keeping her alive those last few weeks, and now that precious spark, that one last thing, was gone. Taken from her by the people she loved.
She was staying at Joel’s house again. She wasn’t given a choice.
One night she snuck downstairs, looking for all of the potentially-dangerous things that Joel had hidden from her. He’d been woken up, caught her rummaging through the closet.
She didn’t remember exactly what she said, but she knew it must’ve been bad. It must’ve been the worst things she’d ever said in her life. She could recall flashes of it, of trying to hit Joel, of throwing things, things she loved. She broke things, she hurt him, she sobbed. She remembered begging him, begging, to let her kill herself. To let her leave. She threatened and swore and pleaded and none of it worked, and she knew none of it would work.
When she woke up in the morning she came downstairs to Joel crying into Tommy’s shoulder, the wreckage of things she’d loved scattered about on the floor. Tommy had said he was taking her to go get food. Joel was staying home to clean up.
They didn’t get food. Tommy took her up to the guard towers to watch the sunrise. They sat together. Sat in silence. Tommy didn’t yell, didn’t cry, though he probably wanted to do both. No, he just watched. He just sat. Sat together. Sat alone.
Then they went home, but just before they went inside, Tommy stopped her.
“Are you okay with doing this to us?” He asked her.
He asked her, and she didn’t respond.
She didn't know. That was the truth. That was the mean, evil truth. As much as she wanted to pretend she was good, as much as she wanted to pretend she was selfless, she didn’t know. If she got the chance, would she hurt them like this? If she got the chance, would she kill herself?
Yes.
Yes, she would.
They made her go to therapy. She hated it. She wasn’t very participative, she wasn’t very kind to the nice woman who tried to talk her through her feelings. She wasn’t making progress.
They gave her antidepressants, which she took, but they didn’t feel like they helped all that much either.
Life was bad. It was bad. She wished she could’ve died that night, she wished Joel hadn’t made her stay. She wished she could’ve ended on that perfect day, and she wished she didn’t have to feel this anymore. She wished she could just stop.
She was tired again. Tired because they didn’t let her rest, not how she wanted to. She felt herself withdraw again, felt herself go back to that place she spent months in. She no longer had that something to look forward to. She didn’t move unless they made her, didn’t talk unless they asked her to, didn’t eat unless they dragged her downstairs to do it.
She was making their lives hell. She was making everything hard.
Why wouldn’t they just let her go?
Then one night she was sitting on the couch with Joel, and he fell asleep. He fell asleep, and no one else was around.
So she stood and walked out the door, into the stinging night air of Jackson.
She just walked, barefoot, across town and back. One way then the other. Then again. Then again.
She remembered the sun starting to rise, people starting to leave their houses. They saw her, just walking, and they asked if she was alright. She said she was. She said she was fine.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
She was lucky the snow had cleared up, the weather beginning to warm, or might’ve caught frostbite.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
And on one more lap, the sun high in the sky now, she heard a small mew.
She stopped, waiting. She heard it again.
After a few moments of trying to find the source, she spotted the kitten, huddling and shivering under the nearest porch.
She coaxed it out of hiding, feeling the small creature nuzzle gently at her hands for warmth. Wrapping it up in the bottom of her shirt, she held the kitten like it was made of glass. Like it was the most precious, fragile thing in the world.
It was cold. So she took it home. It was hungry. She fed it. It was lonely. She held it.
The kitten didn’t have a name, and as far as she could tell, didn’t have an owner either, so she named it Tamborine—Tammy, for short—and decided to keep it.
When Joel woke up that morning, he did so with a jolt. He felt where she should be on the couch, bolting up when she wasn’t there.
He’d called her name, and she’d heard so much fear in her voice that it broke her a little inside. He calmed down once he found her in the kitchen, though she could tell he wasn’t thrilled with that kitten she’d brought home. Still, he let her keep it.
Tammy saved her life.
She knew that was shitty, in a way. She wouldn’t stay for her friends, for her family, but she would for a cat. She didn’t know why that was, not really. She thought maybe it was the kitten’s dependence on her, or maybe the fact that it might not know she was gone if she died. It might think she abandoned it.
Wouldn’t she be? If she died on purpose, wouldn’t she be abandoning it?
The first thing she did of her volition since everything came out was get Tammy cat food. Then a bed. Then toys.
When she talked to her therapist, she talked about Tammy. When she thought about her future, she thought about Tammy.
She didn’t want to die before Tammy. She didn’t want to leave her behind.
So she started trying to be better. Just a little bit. She started trying to dig herself out of the grave she’d buried herself in, to regrow the limbs that had rotted down to bone.
She started trying to live.
She didn’t know if she was succeeding, but she was trying.
It was late at night, some time in the summer. She was still living with Joel. She didn’t mind it so much anymore.
Tammy laid in bed beside her, curled up under her armpit, purring peacefully, and Ellie felt something. Something inside her snap. Some invisible barrier that even she didn’t know existed fall down.
She woke Joel up. She cried. It was ugly and loud and painful, but she let something out of her. Something venomous. Something so dark and angry that she didn’t even recognize the horrible sounds she made as that dark poison was squeezed out of her like water leaking from a sponge. It was anger, and it was pain.
And it left her, painfully, slowly, this horrible thing that lived inside her. She was empty in its wake. Empty, but not numb.
Joel held her through it, through that thing that sat acidizing her insides being pulled from her body. He didn’t cry, at least not in front of her, and when it was done he led her downstairs and made her a sandwich.
It took a long time to feel okay. To feel okay sometimes. A really long time, full of hard talks and tears and the residue of that dark and poisonous thing coming out with them. But she did, eventually. She stayed, and she worked, and she filled that emptiness that that awfulness inside of her left behind until one day she realized she wasn’t staying despite herself anymore. She just didn’t want to go.
She continued to live with Joel for years, even if she knew she was a bit old for it. He didn’t mind, and neither did she. Secretly she thought maybe he liked having her so close, though that was probably her fault for scaring him so badly.
She liked being with him, anyway.
She saw Tammy grow up, from a meek kitten into a lanky cat that shredded her furniture and left dead things around the house and gave her a reason to live.
She saw Banji grow up, too. He didn’t have to live with the hole his dead cousin left behind, at least not one of them. He was soft spoken and kind. He was gentle, he was good.
Ellie remembered promising herself that she’d never let that same pain that had been inside her find its way to him.
She started writing music, too. She learned piano from Maria, and taught herself the basics of songwriting. She wasn’t very good at it, but it was something, at least. Something that let her say how she was feeling, more than ever could normally. It was something for her, something she could do when it felt like not enough words on earth could explain how she was feeling. It was something she liked, too. That helped. It was nice to know that she could like things again.
She still didn’t like people seeing her scars. She was working on that, but recently she’d been able to start wearing a tanktop around the house, just her and Joel. They made him sad, she knew. Sometimes she would catch him staring at those marks on her body, those cuts left behind by her pain with a look on his face, one that looked scarily like regret.
He had nothing to regret. He saved her. He saved her, and one day she would find the courage to really thank him for it the way he deserved, the way she couldn’t repay. One day she’d manage to tell him that it was his love that saved her. One day soon.
She wrote a song that she would play him, when that day would come. But it wasn’t quite that time yet, so it would stay in her head and in that sketchbook on her nightstand that she picked back up and dusted off, marked with the bookmark from that birthday letter from Joel that she’d finally opened. It was something she never used to think she’d have the energy for, now for something she never thought she’d say.
She didn’t know if she would be okay for long, if something would happen that would send her back down, but for now she was.
For now she was.
For now she was.
And she was trying not to waste it.
i don’t know what to call this song so i’ll call it nothing at all
by Ellie Williams Miller
I sweat through the blankets like I’m killing my garden
I’m over-watering the plants with this body I hate
I sit there alone and wait for my thoughts to darken
It’s the full moon and my transformation is late…
I ate a bad breakfast so my stomach will grumble
Like my person will do when I lie about it
I’ll joke and I’ll say that it’s keeping me humble
And I’ll act like I said something shining with wit…
I’ll do the work if it’s you who works harder
‘Cause my thoughts swirl like my stomach acid
Though it’s an improvement I’m thinking at all or
At least it makes me feel alive for a bit…
I’ll see him and he’ll be laid out on the couch
He’ll smile like he’s never seen me before
And just for a second, I want to watch my mouth
So he doesn’t think I cannot be ignored…
I’ll go to bed early, ‘cause I’ll sleep or I’ll cry
I think that he’s worried that I have a cold
The truth is I’m sick, but he doesn’t know why
The reasons my mind is defective and dulled…
I’ll dream of nothing but the soothing dark
It’s scary how tempting I still find it now
But I know you still find warmth in my spark
Even if I’m still just not quite sure how
And I’ll wake up a find a large hand in my own
He’s there and he’ll tell me it was just a dream
The place that I’m in is so close to a home
Even though I’m an old quilt who’s torn at the seams…
He’ll hug me and say that my life will get better
Though I’m don’t know when that could possibly be
He says that I just need to weather the weather
But I’m in a rainstorm while I’m lost at sea…
We’ll go down the to kitchen and sit in the moonlight
He’ll make himself coffee ‘cause I woke him up
And I’ll be honest ‘cause I don’t want to fight
My words will spill out like an overfilled cup…
And he’ll say I’m not broken even though I am
And I’ll try to believe him even though it’s a lie
‘Cause I trust him more than I think that I can
So for him trusting is something I’ll try…
He’ll ask if I can sleep more and I’ll tell him I can’t
He’ll say that he’s fine even if he’s worried
The hum of the lights turns into a low chant
And I guess I was wrong ‘cause my vision is blurry…
Before I can think I’m engulfed in the darkness
Of sleep that’s easier than it was
And I’ll still dream but I’ll do it far less
Because I am held by someone I love