April 27th

I run errands all day, he works, and we both end up at home within an hour of one another. He is upset when he notices my replacement phone, because I didn’t wait for him to get me a “better” phone on his plan. I remind him that I just needed a phone that works, nothing fancy.

There is a packet from workman’s comp waiting for him. He reads quietly, his eyes glassy. He tells me there is a letter from his psychologist, stating that he should not have ended therapy because of the severity of his injury related ptsd. “I just had to be done with it,” it was too triggering to talk about his injury every week. I don’t have much to say. He already knows my opinion: four session of cognitive behavioral therapy isn’t enough to treat anything.

I can hear our roommate’s car leaving the driveway.

He puts the packet away and pulls out his laptop. He has been planning a trip north for a music festival. “Fuck, it’s sold out. FUCK! … You don’t get it. It’s the experience, and now I don’t get to have it.” He had just invested in a small quantity of acid to sell and to try for the first time.

“I want to die,” he says. He tells me he is very depressed, that he wants to kill himself, that having the one thing he had been looking forward to snatched away was too much. Everything is terrible because I was not doing enough to be there for him, because I was not getting my life together fast enough. My car was still busted. My first paycheck from my new job isn’t much. He asks me if I love him at all. How could I, if I couldn’t get my life together for him?

I can hear the dog shuffling to hide under the bed.

His voice gets louder. I don’t know how to respond to him. I feel immobilized, unable to react. He tells me that I am a robot with no feelings. He screams, a mean sound, no discernible words. His feet are heavy in the hallway. The wooden bathroom door moans from the force with which he slams it.

I can hear the dog shuffling again. He crawls into my lap. I had started to write a message to a mutual friend because I was frightened. The dog scurries back under the bed at the sound of the opening door.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re talking about killing yourself and you’re yelling. I am scared and I was about to text Rose.”

“I’m calm now. I just needed to get that off my chest. Besides, it’s late and you’ll wake her up. We need to go to bed. We work in the morning.”

We turn off the lights and get into bed.

The shock and burn of morning sunlight upon eyes, my only evidence of having been asleep.