Awake Again

I wake with a nothingness in my chest.

The room is cold. I feel it weighing on my bones, seeping into my joints, pushing me further beneath the soft duvet. 

A ray of sunlight falls through the crack between the blinds and my bedroom window. I cover my head with the blanket, pushing out the light and welcoming the darkness once again. 

Eyes closed. 

Breathe in. 

Breathe out. 

Get up, I hear the voice in my head. 

I shake my head beneath the covers. 

I won’t.

The nothingness fills me--a familiar emptiness that feels both hollow and weighty. I wonder if one morning I won’t just float up out of my bed, so empty that I fly to the ceiling like a party balloon. 

It’s another day in bed, I decide as I close my eyes again, shutting out the world. 

I’m drifting off when I hear an annoying buzzing sound coming from my nightstand. I ignore it. It’s not important. 

Yet it persists. Once, twice, three times it rings again and again. 

I groan, my body heavy as I roll over and grab my phone off the nightstand charger. I pull it beneath the covers with me as it continues to vibrate in my hand.

The screen blinds me in the darkness of my bed. I squint, eyes watering from the brightest light I’ve seen in days. 

Mom. 

My finger hovers over the decline button as I stare at the screen for what feels like too long.

It goes black. 

It lights up again. 

Mom. 

I think I use everything in me to push the green accept button and bring the phone to my ear.

“Where have you been?” my mother’s voice asks, not demanding, but tired. Concerned.

I pull the blankets closer to me, shrinking within the layers. I hate that she sounds this way because of me. 

“Here,” I say. It comes out as a whisper of nothingness, though. I swallow. My throat is dry. I clear it. 

“I’m here,” I say again. “At home.” 

“No one’s heard from you in almost a week,” she says. “Where have you been? What are you doing?”

“I’ve been sick.”

Lie. 

“Have you been eating?”

“Yes.”

Lie number two. Funny how easily they come in the darkness under my covers where the light can’t reach me. 

“You’re lying.”

And how easily she can see through them. 

“Mom, I’m fine.”

“Don’t do this.”

“What?” I say. I can hear the defensiveness in my tone. I feel like a teenager again being asked why I didn’t empty the dishwasher or why I came home two hours past curfew. 

There’s an empty silent nothing between us. I hear it like invisible static through the phone. The sound of our two hearts beating in the dark. 

I close my eyes. I think I could fall back asleep, if only this silence wasn’t so loud. 

“I’m worried about you,” she finally says. 

I hate that I make her worried. 

I’m sorry for hurting you.

“I’m an adult,” I say instead. “I’m twenty-four.”

“I know,” she tells me. Her voice is soft and gentle. I miss her. A part of me wishes I hadn’t moved halfway across the country to get away from her and my hometown and everything I knew. 

“Get out of bed,” she coaxes me. “Come on. For me, okay?”

It’s not that easy, I want--try--to say. 

“Okay,” I say instead, maybe because it takes less words.

I wait for her to hang up first. She doesn’t.

Another silence. 

“Are you up?” she asks, all too hopeful. 

I pull my blanket off my head. My unbrushed hair falls across my face. I push it away. The sun has made its way further into my room. I squint again, wishing I had those curtains that black out light. 

My body feels stiff. When was the last time I stood up?

I push myself into a sitting position. The blood rushes to my head and the room spins around me, laughing and jostling me out of hibernation.

My feet hit the rug beside my bed. My legs feel wobbly as I stand. I am so tired--ready to go back to sleep once more. I am too nothing to stand. There’s nothing to hold me upright.

“Yes,” I tell her, pushing away the wave of nausea that washes over me. When was the last time I ate?

“Good,” she says. How does she know I’m not lying to her and still in my bed?

I hold onto my nightstand and look around my room. The calendar on the wall above my desk says it’s March 14th. My phone says it’s the 20th. 

My mouth is so dry. I walk shakily into the bathroom and fill a cup with water. 

“Is that the sink running?” Mom asks. I hear something else in her voice. Is that relief? 

“Mhm,” I say, gulping water greedily. I feel like I haven’t drank in years. 

“Slow,” she reminds me. She knows me too well. I set the cup down and wipe my mouth. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the sink. My skin is pale. My hair is a knotted mess. Dark circles shadow beneath tired eyes. I look dead.  

How did I get like this? 

“Better?” 

“A little,” I admit, swallowing the last bit of water and avoiding the ghost in the mirror. 

“Now time to eat.” 

“I can’t,” I say. My stomach lurches. I lean against the sink and steady myself. 

“Kitchen.”

She says it with a determined firmness that makes me wander down the hall and out to the kitchen. Dishes dried with food are piled in the sink. A half-eaten sandwich and empty juice glass sits on the table. When is that from?

My feet hit the cool tiles and send a shiver up my spine. 

I pry open the fridge. 

Expired milk. Very expired eggs. An apple with a brown spot growing. 

“Do you have food?” Mom asks. I can hear her over the phone opening and shutting cabinets. “I can send you some, but it won’t get there in time. There’s that corner market a few blocks away from you, right?”

“I have food,” I say, pulling the last bagel from the bag in the pantry. 

“You need to eat.”

“I’m having a bagel,” I assure her. 

“I’m still sending you some. I have same-day shipping now.” 

Is this butter still good? 

I slather some on the dry bread.

Down the hall, my bed calls me back. The darkness of the space beneath my blankets. The nothingness inside my chest that threatens to consume me. I feel it spilling out of me, overflowing into my apartment. My eyes threaten to close so I don’t have to watch it seep into my furniture, watch my life slide away in front of my eyes. 

It’s so dark in here and dark in me. 

“Do you want me to send red or green apples?” Mom says through the phone that I forgot I was holding. I hear her typing away on the family computer. 

I pick up my bagel, which I don’t put on a plate, and carry it over to the sliding door leading out to the balcony. 

“Green,” I say, pinching the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I push aside the curtains. Morning light floods in, lighting up every corner of my sad little apartment. 

“Okay,” she says. “What about bread? White or honey wheat? I know you like both. Should I send both?”

I push open the sliding door and the crisp air greets me. Sunlight drapes over my tired body as I sink into the one chair I have on the balcony. I’m hit with exhaustion and my bed calls louder to me. I force cool air into my stale lungs.

“Honey wheat,” I say, taking a bite of the bagel spread with butter. It’s dry and tastes like cardboard, but it’s more than I’ve had in nearly a week and I know it’ll make this gnawing in my stomach go away.

“Thank you,” I say. And then, “I love you.”

She pauses. I hear her stop clicking around on the computer. 

“I love you, too,” she says after a long pause. “You know that, right?” 

“I do.”

“I think you should talk to someone.”

“I know.”

A robin lands on the railing of my balcony. It stares at me, its red belly a beacon--of what, I don’t yet know. 

Somewhere in my empty mind I remember the date from when I woke up and connect it with the robin perched on my balcony with sunlight falling across its feathers. The air elicits goosebumps on my skin, yet the sun thaws me from within.

“Mom,” I say.

“What is it?”

“It’s spring.”