13. A Goodbye Letter to My Best Friend
March 2016
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s her heart beating fast enough to tear open her chest.
Her hands shake hard enough to register on a seismograph.
The tears slip down her face fast enough to end the world’s ocean crisis.
She takes in everything and can’t let it out. Someone pressed the mute button on everyone around her but turned on the white noise machine in her mind. Everything is moving in a fast and furious blur and her brain processes it too slow.
Her mind loops on I can’t, can’t, can’t go.
So she gets up and runs. Faster than a speeding bullet. Other than the feeling of a heartattackdeathstroke, she is invincible.
She slows only when her heartbeat does. It feels good to catch her breath after a run rather than a panic.
She lets herself sit and sit and sit.
Assess.
One million eyes, lies, cries, and goodbyes.
Much too much for a girl who’s trying to hold onto her last shred of sanity.
Much too much for a girl who can’t remember the last time she got in a car without panicking.
Much too much for a girl who is starting to find comfort in the constricting of her chest and the incessant pounding of her heart.
So she waits until her hands still. A too-calm, steady still. She could be a surgeon if she weren’t
afraid of blood and death and wind and chances and loss and anythingeverything.
And then she pulls out her phone, her finger automatically hovers over the call button because she’s done this more times than she’d like to admit.
The phone rings softer than her ears at two AM. On the third bell she hears fumbling of the
phone, “hello?”
“Hey, look, I’m sorry but I don’t think I’m gonna be able to make it tonight.”
“What? Why not?”
“I’m not feeling too great.”
“Just come for a bit.”
“I’m sorry I just… I just- can’t.”
“Okay… feel better!”
“Thanks.”
And then the call clicks off.
She exhales a little bit of the breath she’s been holding her entire life.
Maybe this was the sign of a problem. Could she even count how many times she’d cancelled plans this month? Or maybe this was the sign of a problem solver. The issue was panicking in front of people she knew. And she’d just eliminated that possibility. Ha. So there.
But maybe it really was a problem. She hadn’t gone out in so long. But then again, it was cold out. Yeah, that was it, just the winter blues. She’d be fine when the sun came out.
Except somehow she was always cold, like she’d snowed herself an eternal winter.
She sits there reading through texts from months ago, scrolls until the blue bubbles blur before her eyes like the lines between too much and not enough. The feeling weighs as much as a few cars.
Cars that most definitely could crushkillrunover her.
And then someone pours acid over top of the feeling and it fizzles and burns. It’s been injected in her veins and it spreads through her body. Fear of the feeling just fuels the blizzard so she just shuts her eyes and leans into the eye of the storm, letting it take over her.
She checks the time. Every panic is five to twenty minutes closer to a dream. Fifteen minutes of flashing sirens inside close the gap between now and little bit closer to finally being where she wants to be. But where does she even want to be?
Home.
So she starts walking with keys between her fingers. She’s strong, she’s fast. She’s Wolverine with mace in her purse and 911 already dialed.
And when she finally gets to her house she heads straight for her bed. Then she does a nice little cool down from her walk home by sprinting up and down the stairs to check the locks just one last time.
She chugs a bottle of water. Just because she’s killing herself from the inside out doesn’t
mean she’ll let herself die of dehydration.
She climbs into bed, because carrying the weight of things no one ever asked her to is tiring. She shuts her eyes and lets horror movies play on the backs of her eyelids.
She is so tired, yet she lays there for hours before the Sandman finally takes pity on her and sprinkles a little bit of sleep over her.
She wakes up in the middle of the night, and still she is exhausted because slumber is not
enough when it’s her soul that’s aching.
It’s a strange time, when the lateness of the night melts with the earliness of the morning.
She reaches over to her nightstand, her hands blindly groping the wood of the table in the dark. There’s a slight rustling sound as her fingers grasp it. She closes her fist around it. A
broken gold heart locket. She had a bad habit of pulling at her necklaces and the chain had snapped long ago, and so had the ties that came with the necklace.
There was no photo in the locket, because the girl that had given it to her hated being photographed. Unnecessarily afraid of the camera, her porcelain skin and permanently pouty mouth deserved to be frozen in time forever.
Oh, how she wished she could rewind and pause. If only she could use her frigid ice princess powers to freeze time in a safe spot. A place with friends and family and love and laughter and confidence and peace. A time with soft words whispered at three AM, because she felt like staying up, not because she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep even if someone glued her eyes shut.
But she hadn’t slept in months. Things had been falling at her feet since the moment they were done perfecting themselves. She unhooked the leashes on far too many people far too soon.
Which maybe could’ve been bearable, had the one person whose leash she’d held tighter hadn’t broken it to match the locket.
She’d been given the locket at the same time she met a boy. The boy made her laugh and made every moment feel bright and infinite. He was sunshine personified. And at the time, she almost was, too. But he didn’t knot his ships to the dock tight enough and slowly the tides brought him further and further out to sea.
But then she found another boy. One with better hair and better jokes. However, this time
she was skeptical. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to fall for another boat that could drift away. Of
course Locket Girl convinced her otherwise. Locket Girl convinced her that nothing could go
wrong. Locket Girl believed in bright and infinite, even if she’d never seen a forever love.
Locket Girl told her she was great, and he was great, and obviously they’d be great together.
Except suddenly Locket Girl didn’t think she was so great, so why would he?
One day Locket Girl unhooked the anchor and paddled away from shore as fast as possible. She didn’t even have the chance to ask Locket Girl if she was too much or not enough.
She was always good at spiraling. So she spun the long way down from the hands of one best friend into another. This best friend kept her on her toes. Held her close. Whispered everything she didn’t want to know into her ears. Made her heart race. This best friend had a noose around her throat and showed no signs of letting go.
Lost in the constellations of her thoughts, she finally slips back to sleep, the broken locket still clenched in her fist.
Weeks pass, but they could be seconds or years, they feel all the same to her.
She spends more time in blind panic than being alive.
She texts her parents to make sure none of the horrible things they’d ever warned her about had happened to them.
Instead of a reply, she gets a call from her mother, “you’re doing it again.”
“Your father and I are fine. You don’t need to worry.”
“Please don’t start this again. You can’t keep doing this.”
“Won’t you at least try to get help?”
“But hone—”
“Mom, really I’m fine, I just wanted to check in. I didn’t mean to freak you out. I’m doing just fine, really. I love you.”
“If you say so, dear… I love you, too. We’ll see you soon, yeah?”
As soon as she ends the call, her heart binge-eats feelings and gains fifteen pounds. She blasts bass-boosted rave music because as long as she can hear the music thumping, she can’t hear her heart over it.
And that’s exactly why Locket Girl left. Because she didn’t know how to crawl out of the rabbit hole and ask for help. Because she was forgetting how to fall asleep and stay asleep. Because every word anyone said was ripping out the stitches in her heart. Because she was too much. Or was she not enough?
But maybe she imagined the whole thing. Maybe Locket Girl was coming back soon. Maybe her mother really believed she was strong. Maybe everyone cried in grocery stores. Maybe that was the problem with her brand of crazy, she wasn’t even sure of it.
She opens up her laptop and scrolls through symptom lists, self-diagnostic tests, help forums and horror stories. Paper boys and girls who let the ghosts out of their heads and ended up in places darker than even they could’ve ever imagined. She was not going to let them shut her in a place where everyone screamed so loud it sounded like silence.
So to prove it to herself, she calls Boy #2 after weeks of avoiding him completely and tells him to pick her up. In his car. To take them to a place where she could run into people she knew.
She breathes in because she is not afraid. Not of the dark, not of the dentist, and certainly not of cars.
Until Boy #2 texts her to come outside. She can see his silver death trap in her driveway. He waves to her from the window and she walks down the steps without holding the railing and letting her knuckles turn white.
She gets to his car and opens the door. “Hey!”
“Hey… hold on, I forgot something, I’ll be right back.” She sprints back to check the locks. Only twice. Her heart speeds up so she makes her legs follow suit as a form of justification.
She reaches the car once again and pulls open the door. “You good?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks… And thanks for coming.”
“I should be thanking you. I thought you were avoiding me.” He laughs a little.
“No, no, of course not! I was just… busy.”
“Yeah, I understand. Well, it’s good seeing you.”
“Yeah, you too.”
“Was there any place you wanted to go in particular?”
“Anywhere?”
She wants to take it back but that would mean admitting weakness.
“Anywhere.” She nods, sucking in a breath.
He pulls the gearshift and the car lurches forward at the same time as her stomach. Her finger stays directly over the lock the entire time.
“We can just get food and talk?” She can tell he wants it to be a suggestion rather than a question.
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
They pull up in front of a small burger place and the smell of grease-soaked everything is making her sick.
They walk in and the thought of sitting at a table is making her skin crawl. The thought of looking Boy #2 in the eyes makes her want to cry. The thought of thinking of anything more makes her want to sleep for years.
Instead, she angles herself so as little of her body as possible is touching the seat. She motions for Boy #2 to sit across from her. She busies her mind by counting the knots in the wood of the table. Counting and counting and recounting them.
They place their orders and she excuses herself to go to the bathroom. She stands in front of the mirror and inhales.
Oh my God, he’s gonna think you’re crazy.
Why would he agree to come with me if he thought I was crazy?
He feels sorry for you.
You don’t deserve him.
He’s gonna tell all his friends about what an awful person you are.
Then she realizes how long she’s been in the bathroom and what that could mean for her state of mind. And what Boy #2 could be thinking.
So she marches out of the bathroom with a false air of confidence. The balloon of her ego deflates when she locks eyes with a girl.
One who used to text her at three AM. One who used to ask her to slow down so they could synch their steps. One who made plans with her to buy an upscale apartment in Amsterdam. One who shared her headphonesfoodtimelovesecrets. One who should still be standing next to her right now.
Locket Girl, laughing at something someone said. There is a girl sitting in front of Locket
Girl and a boy to the right. She thinks maybe she’s seen that boy before in a picture Locket Girl had sent to her. Locket Girl is leaning into his side and he has an arm around her shoulders. Locket Girl looks up and makes eye contact for a fraction of a second before looking back down.
Her dam breaks and everything comes at her at once. Ice starts running through her veins and her insides freeze. The tiling beneath her disappears and she can feel herself falling, falling, falling. The oxygen cuts off and she is dry heaving on emptiness. Her muscles tense like she’s at the top of a roller coaster but the tracks are missing in front of her. A wave of nausea washes over her harder than a hurricane. Everything inside her shakes like she’s in a snow globe held by a child. A sob is yanked from her mouth and it rips throughout the restaurant.
Every eye turns towards her except the ones that matter.
Her vision is tunneling but she can see a tall figure moving towards her. All of a sudden she is outside and the icy air is a welcome sensation on the skin that feels like it’s on fire and the sweat pooling in her shoes.
Her wailing mixes with the wind until her body can’t take it anymore. She falls to her knees and shakes with so much force, she feels as though she might actually fall apart. Whoever brought her outside runs back into the building.
When the convulsing finally ebbs away to a wobbliness filling every inch of her, someone kneels down beside her. Boy #2. He is holding her coat and concern in face. If he says anything to her, she doesn’t hear it.
She feels as though she has just run a marathon, the exhaustion is otherworldly. As if he knows it, Boy #2 put his hand on her elbow and leads her to his car.
The entire drive is a blackout in her mind. They pull up in front of her house and tears are still slipping from her eyes as if there’s an endless supply of them. Her vision is blurry as she fumbles the door handle almost falling as she drags herself out of the car. Without a word to Boy #2, she stumbles up the steps into her house.
She collapses onto her bed, trembling for what feels like hours.
She could not for the life of her calculate how many hours she’d felt as if death was pulling her into a hug, only to opt for a limp handshake at the last moment.
Instead she sleeps like she’s fallen into a coma.
She wakes in the dead of night to the jolt of an epiphany. She never wants to let another restaurant episode occur. She never wants to let herself feel hot flashes of fear drowning her vision. She never wants to allow herself to feel like the threads are being pulled one by one from her soul. She never wants to lose control to something inside of her.
She grabs her phone from where it had fallen on the floor. She opens her contacts and picks the first one in her favorites. It feels like an eternity since she’d last contacted the person who used be her number one. Locket Girl. Quickly she types out, thank you. Finally free from the expectation of a reply, she hits send.
She swears to herself she’ll call Boy #2 tomorrow. And maybe buy him a house, too. He deserves it. She wants to deserve him. She wants to keep him close, without a leash.
But first, she needs to do something for herself. Tomorrow she will have all the time in the world.
She types a few words into the search bar and filters through the result. Finally she finds what she is looking for. She knows she cannot sleep now. After what’s felt like a century, her sleeplessness is from adrenaline of excitement rather than fear.
She makes a cup of coffee and busies herself to pass the time until the start of the listed business hours. She watches the clock, willing it to push forward to the time she knows the building is opening. In a flurry of exhilaration, she dials the number she saved just hours ago.
“Hi, I’d like to make an appointment…”
A Note
This is the story of a nameless, faceless girl. This is an almost direct effect of anxiety, the feeling of being nothing more than your fears. While undiagnosed, she shows signs of generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and obsessive compulsive disorder.
Personally, I connect very much with the protagonist. The emotions in her story matched out my own, when I began writing, I was consumed with anxiety, and panic attacks were becoming a more frequent ordeal. Her lowest points hit around the same time mine did, but like her, almost immediately after a drop came a high. Finally life stopped feeling like a sprint to first place and more like a marathon to my own finish line.
As much as wish the symbolism in this piece was glaringly obvious, I realize it would then cease to be symbolic. Boy #1, to me, is not a boy, and neither is Boy #2. Boy #1 is the symbol of an era, golden but fleeting. Boy #2 is hope, often ignored until absolutely vital. Locket Girl is someone who did not gift a locket, but friendship.
The one concern I have with the reception of this story is the potential villainization of Locket Girl. Perhaps it can only be understood by those who have or have had their own Locket Girls, but Locket Girl is not a bad person. Sometimes people grow apart, but it is in everyone’s best interest to see them through the rose-tinted glasses we wore when they were beside us.
I’ve attempted to capture the theme, The Race Against Time, in a personal way. For me, anxiety has always felt like a time bomb of deadlines and relationship-expiration dates. Life and anxiety are both some of the fastest things I can think of. Your time in this world is limited, but what you can do with it is limitless. You may not have an endless supply of time, but certainly you can make the most of it when you finally escape your own bubble of fear. Spending your time in a panic may be individually unpreventable, but reaching out for help can make all the difference. Essentially, the statement I’d like to make with this piece is that although life is short, whether or not it becomes a race is up to you.
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