The Other Me
‘Falling’ ii. I woke in the morning, not sure I’d ever gotten back to sleep, my head pulsing but raw, the way a bad cut feels after it’s been tended. Underneath it, a flightiness, like whatever had filled me last night was a breath from returning. Everything around me was too stark – noises, voices, arguments. I didn’t tell anybody how I was feeling. I’d never gone to my family with problems. When I broke up with my first girlfriend, when I got bullied in high school, when anything happened, I never told anybody. We weren’t close like that. That was a soap reality, something you’d see on TV. In…
The Other Me
‘Falling’ i. I was falling. But there was no sense of motion, no fear, nothing. I didn’t even know there was anything to be falling from. When I hit the ground, though, I was jarred right out of my body. I sat up, jolted awake from a fitful sleep. It was early morning and my thoughts swam manically in my head, my heart thumped, and my skin crawled with a cold that seeped right through my flesh and into my bones. My brother slept in the adjacent bed, his breathing deep and regular. I considered waking him, or my parents. That’s what you do when you’re in trouble. But I…