Paint Me, Professor | Student-Professor Erotic Novel | 18+ | ✔️

83 - Gone

Trigger warning: this chapter contains descriptions of suicidal ideation and suicide.

Christopher
***

I didn't get out of bed for three days. The emotional distress I was in was so overwhelming that my body had physically become sick: I couldn't stop shivering, I was vomiting all the time, unable to keep food in, my limbs were weak, my head was pounding. I took sleeping pills so I could sleep, which was all the time. When the effect of one pill wore off, I took another.

This was my existence for three days. Three days where I forgot the world existed, that work existed, that Ali existed.

By the third day, my depressive state became unbearable. With call after call and e-mail after e-mail from Evergreen asking why I had missed my Monday and Tuesday lectures, it took every ounce of energy I had in me to lie.

"I'm sick," I said to Professor Agnes after her forth call. "I feel terrible."

"Do you need to go to the hospital?" She asked, concerned. "What are your symptoms?"

"It's just a fever. I'll be fine."

But I wouldn't be fine. My days became a prison sentence only to be relieved when I went to sleep, when I forgot what happened, when I forgot I lived in my own body.

"You need to report to the Dean you've missed work," she warned. "At least send your students an e-mail to replace the missed lectures. This is very unlike you."

It was indeed unlike me, but I felt like I didn't belong in my body. I was living in an alternative reality where time and space were of little importance. Nothing was important anymore. I didn't care about my work, about my friends, about my nutrition. All I cared about was sleep and forgetting. If I did those things, I could stop going down the spiral, I could stop myself from reaching the depths of despair.

Whenever I wasn't sleeping I was thinking of Ali. That was ultimately why I slept so much. I couldn't face her, not even in my thoughts. I couldn't bare remembering her so distraught, so confused, so hurt, so shattered. I couldn't bare remembering the stiffness of her cheek as I hit her, as blood trickled down her nose.

My stomach turned upside down when that image involuntarily crossed my mind. Having nothing in my stomach, I had nothing to puke other than bile. It felt like my body was punishing me for what I've done.

She was gone. She was gone and so was everyone I loved. Why were they gone? Because of me, because of my behavior, because of my selfishness and because I couldn't do anything right.

She said it herself. It was so fucking obvious there was nowhere to hide: I was nobody, nobody loved me, and everything I touched turned to shit. The very reason why my life revolved around a twenty two year old girl was enough proof that I wasn't okay. The only person who could love me was someone who searched for confidence, guidance, care, security, someone vulnerable like Ali who needed all those things after her abusive relationship. In the end I gave her the exact opposite. I was an insecure liar, completely clueless about my life, unable to take care of myself, and ultimately on the verge of collapse.

When the horrifying thought of Ali becoming even more traumatized after what I'd done to her crossed my mind, wine and pot didn't cut it anymore. Molly was my only solution. I took it with shaky hands, a wave of guilt drowning me the second I swallowed it down.

I was taken back to the darkest time of my life, my past of drug abuse resurfacing. My past pain and my current pain morphed into one and I found myself grieving the two people I had loved the most in the world.