“So what, Moon? Because, the way I see it, you’re the light between the trees in the woods at night. You may not constantly beam like the sun, all in your face and stuff, but you’re a guide out of something thick and dark and scary. You have light. You have the most comforting light of them all, actually.”
He said it with so much conviction, as if he truly believed it despite the fact that he’d just watched me soak in my own bloody tub water, and he hadn’t just cleaned my blood off the bathroom floor with a towel because I’d lost my shit.
Emerson had officially seen me close to my worst, and he wasn’t leaving. He wasn’t abandoning me to deal with it on my own, just waiting for me to get better. He was taking me with him, so he could be there for me.
What a weird fucking concept.
After grabbing my toothbrush and deodorant, we headed out to his car. Every step came with a sting—a familiar sting I’d slowly gotten used to over the years. My thighs were just as destroyed as I felt on the inside, the artwork I’d prized for so long finally marred with a visual testament to the hatred and fury I had for myself. After accidentally cutting across the one tattoo that’d mattered the most to me, I’d stopped caring as much. Thought it didn’t matter anymore. If I was going to ruin one, I’d ruin them all, just like I’d been ruined on the inside. Each step reminded me of what I’d done and what I had to look forward to.
I locked my door from the outside, turning toward Emerson, who nodded at the lock. “Do me a favor, yeah? Lock your door more often. Quite a dangerous habit of yours to forget all the time.”
“I’m not used to having to. Where I grew up, it wasn’t necessary.”
“Well, your Daddy is a cop. Most of the crimes here are petty theft or robbery. If my brat gets robbed, I’ll be going to jail right along with them for kicking the shit out of whoever did it.”
Rolling my eyes, I took my time down the stairs. “Yes, Daddy.”
“Good to know your attitude hasn’t changed.”
Emerson’s housewas a lot less sparse than it was the last time I’d been there. Olivia and Kelly had stopped by and helped him unpack a lot of the rooms. I’d been at work, so I never got to officially meet them. I planned to eventually, as long as I was still in Emerson’s life, once I had the opportunity to.
I was sitting on his living room couch, the TV playing something completely random as background noise while he searched for more first-aid supplies than I had readily available at my apartment. I only ever kept a few packets of sterile gauze, some medical tape, and some bandages with a single tube of antibiotic ointment. Honestly, the cuts weren’t that bad—there were just a lot of them. Maybe some gauze to keep from too much irritation, and the ointment was never a bad idea, but if it made Emerson feel better to have an entire kit just in case, I wasn’t going to argue.
He sat beside me, sighing as the couch dipped with his weight. “I found more of pretty much the same stuff.”
“That’s fine. I won’t really need half of it, anyway.” I pulled my legs up, holding my knees to my chest. I tried to hide the wince on my face from the way my skin pulled. “I’ve never really gone too far with it, thankfully. But I’ve learned how to take care of myself with ones like these.”
The side of his nostril twitched as his eyes seemed to get lost in the space right between sad and utterly distraught. “Can I ask you why? I’d like to understand more, I guess. Like what it does for you emotionally.”
I stared at him, just blinking for a moment. “You really wanna know?” It was a genuine question. I never thought someone would care enough to try and understand. Hell, I barely understood, so why would someone else give enough of a fuck to hear what I had to say about it?
His eyes narrowed as he tilted his head to the side. “Of course I do.”
“Oh. Well, it’s hard to explain.” I turned my attention to my sweatpants, picking at the material. “It’s like…the inside of my head and heart hurt so much, but it isn’t physical. Physical pain is easier to understand and deal with. It actually feels better than the emotional. I don’t know. I’ve done some research on it, actually. The pain releases dopamine to try and overwrite the pain connection in your body. It’s the same chemical related to happiness.” I shrugged. “And then there’s the visual component. I’m all fucked up on the inside, so why not make the outside fucked up, too? At least then I can see it, rather than feeling it. Over time, it became comforting. The entire process. I relied on it when I was a teenager, quit for a long time, and then started again after everything with Jude and Sarah. Seeing my blood pour out, rather than the images of their blood, or marks I’d made on myself rather than the scars Jude gave me. It’s comforting.”
“A coping mechanism.”
I glanced up at him. “Yeah, I guess so. A pretty shitty one.”
“Well, when you put it like that, though, it makes sense. Emotional pain… Devastation, I guess, feels so big and overpowering sometimes. I feel like a lot of people do a lot of things for that same dopamine and almost numbing feeling tothe mental gymnastics in their minds. You said you were able to stop for a while?”
I nodded.
“What got you to that point? I mean, did the emotional pain get easier for a while? Until everything with Jude and Sarah happened.”
“No. It didn’t get easier. I just shifted my focus to my siblings. Being as fierce a presence as possible in their lives. Always being there. It gave me a lot more purpose that wasn’t centered on me, so I didn’t have to think about me. I didn’t have to think about what had happened to me.”
“You started taking care of everyone but yourself.”
“Except I was never taking care of myself. I was just harming myself.”
He shifted closer to me, scooting until there was barely any cushion between us. “Moon, have you ever seriously thought about getting help?”
I scoffed, rolling my eyes. “What, like a therapist?”
“Exactly like a therapist.”
“Haveyougone to a therapist?”
