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It had been 3 days since Zaria had taken her medication. It didn't start deliberately, it never did. The bottle fell off the nightstand and rolled under it. Or rolled under the bed. Or disappeared by some cruel twist of fate. The first day she had been in a rush, too busy to take the time to find them. The second day slipped by unnoticed. It's hard to make a habit, but it's far too easy to break one. By the end of the second day, her sleeping got worse. Finding herself unable to sleep when she was supposed to, mind racing. It wasn't even racing with thoughts, just noise. Noise that filled between her ears and behind her eyes. Noise that swelled to throb out on her temples. Zaria didn't get much sleep that night.
The next day, Zaria awoke on 2 hours of sleep and a splitting headache. Usually she would be able to make the logical leap to take some sort of painkiller and get some breakfast started. But today that felt - distant. Sure, she could do what was good for her, but why should she? What was the point? She fumbled for the half-empty water bottle on her nightstand, and downed it in two gulps. There. The water was enough of a breakfast, and they say hydration helps with headaches, right? It was supposed to be a gym day, but again, that question reached out. What's the point? To be in good enough shape to lose? She was plenty fit, it didn't matter if she skipped a day. The bed is fine for now. Not good, but fine.
Zaria had dealt with mental health issues her whole life. She’d been slapped with every label under the sun but none of them fit- well, one did. “Treatment resistant.” She took a cocktail of daily meds, after years of trying ones that only made her worse, these seemed to at least not do that. She was always unsure if they actually made her better, though. At least until she stopped taking them, then she remembered why she took them. She'd spent as long as she could remember with the exhaustion, and the lack of motivation, and most notably, chronic suicidal thoughts. For Zaria, thinking about suicide was just like thinking about what she was going to wear that day. It was always there, always an option, always standing just in her periphery. But anything you think about 100 times a day becomes mundane, and over the last twenty seven years this shit has gotten plenty of time to get mundane.
The scary part was the anger. With medication and years of practice, she usually managed to keep it coiled up like a heavy snake in her stomach. Always there but she could keep it from lashing out. She could usually aim its attacks inward instead of outward. But now, uncontrolled, the snake was in her throat. It sometimes felt like the snake had eaten her tongue from the bottom out, disguising itself as her. Hurting people with words disguised as her own. She felt it creeping up like bile. A familiar, despised, hatred. For everything. For her friends, for Sol, for herself. For how much better everyone's lives would be if she wasn't in them. It squeezed at her throat.
Zaria’s fingers traced familiar bumps and ridges on her skin, self soothing. One of her earliest memories was being in grade school holding her fingers over a lighter whenever she felt like this. Like some sort of weird ritual to banish the thoughts that scared her. Like the external pain would cleanse the internal. It's partially why she got into wrestling. It's meditative, the pain. Taking the same bump over and over. Getting the air knocked out of you, ringing your bell, getting knocked open the hard way; all variations of a 7 year old girl in her bedroom with a cheap lighter.
She rolled over in bed, pulled the covers tighter, trying to shield the world from herself. She knew somewhere in the back of her head that she had made plans to train with Sol today, but a louder part insisted that Sol would be happier without her. That Zaria just held her back. Her phone buzzed. She pulled the covers again. She estimated by the light coming in, it was probably around 9 or 10 in the morning. She could still catch Sol if she hurried- but anger made itself known again quickly. Cognizant thought slid away, replaced with stomach-churning hatred. As always, the feeling came first, and the reasoning came afterwards. She felt disgusting. Zaria hated her cowardice, her fear of feeling weak, and then hated herself for hating herself. But that was too Big. It was easier to push everyone away. To say that someone else had done something wrong. To not tell anyone where the line was, so she had a reason to get mad when they crossed it. So she could be alone. Can't look weak if you have no one who wants to help you in the first place.
So Zaria lets the phone ring out when Sol calls.
“Maybe she'll finally get the hint…”
Zaria closes her eyes, falling back into an unsteady sleep. Pills unfound, habit broken.