All in my Mind

XXII.

I know I have issues with foresight. It's not that I can't see the consequences of my actions. I'm smart enough to know when I'm putting a bad idea unto motion. My struggle is genuinely just in scope. I know what I'm doing is going to end badly. I just misjudge how hard the fall really is.

This time it started without sleep, and there was a restlessness to match it.

My first instinct was to sit infront of my window to practice signing with my hands, but that was kind of redundant now. It wasn't a skill I needed.

So I just sat there and stared into the darkness of outside for a very long time instead. Not being able to sleep was comfortable and familiar this time around. I didn't get the same distress that I'd gotten last time. It made it easy not to cave.

My door opened once in the middle of the night. Nurse John was checking on me because I hadn't gone to bed. Because I've been good for so long, I just needed to be polite when I asked him to take me to the restroom. I felt bad about how easy it was to flush my pills. It shouldn't have been so easy.

That's their fault, not mine.

I never so much as even closed my eyes that night. It was my first all nighter in weeks. I should have been distressed by that, but I just wasn't. I was too preoccupied with waiting for the part where everything got too blurry to follow. I just wanted to lose my ability to think for a little while again. That was all that mattered.

My hands were a little shaky though.

It was to nobodies surprise that O'Conner walked into my room without knocking sometime in the middle of the morning. Maybe I'd been given prior warning of this, but I couldn't exactly be sure. To be fair, the door was open and my attendance to our appointments had been poor lately. Plus she and I had definitely parted ways in a tense kind of manner the day before. When she walked in, I was laying starfished on the ground in the middle of the room.

"Alex," she said my name to get my attention.

Because I hadn't slept and my brain was a little wired, I didn't sit up for her.

"How was gossiping with my mother?" I asked with false amusement. "Was it a nice debrief? Do you think she considered all that to be a valuable experience?"

For what it's worth, I considered it a valuable experience. Maybe not for the same reasons my mom might, but I still did. It was valuable in that I learned that their lives didn't stop for me. They kept changing. Emily grew up. My mom was still momming. Those two existed without me and they were fine. I was the unnecessary part left behind.

It was comforting in a way.

"It went fine," O'Conner relented to tell me. "Nobody was unhappy with you Alex. It didn't go as badly as I know you think it did."

"Oh I heard," I mused. "You told her I've got good boundaries. I remove myself from the situation. Isn't that what you said?"

I turned my head to look at her. She was crouched a few feet away from me. Her face was unreadable.

"Being able to manage yourself and your reactions is a valuable skill," she informed me.

"Not really a new one though, is it?" I asked sardonically. I sat up a little bit so I could give a a little smile. "I'm good at acting the way I want to act. You people just don't like how I choose to be. That's your problem, not mine."

"I don't think you give yourself enough credit," O'Conner countered. "That was your first time seeing them in a very long while Alex, and the composure you mustered for them... even with some distress, it's the best I've seen you try to present yourself in all of our time together."