by T. T. Kove
‘A what?’
‘Picture an N. I’m linked to you, you’re linked to me and Glenn, and Glenn’s linked to Nik. It’s a polyamorous relationship involving four people, usually two couples where one member of one couple is also involved—sexually or romantically or both—with one member of the other couple.’
I... could picture that as an N, yes.
‘Is that a thing?’
‘It’s the term they use in the polyam community.’
‘The what?’
‘Polyam, short for polyamory.’
I was the one with two boyfriends. Shouldn’t I be the one versed in all these terms? But no, here my very monogamous boyfriend was the one with all the wisdom.
‘I also learnt another term from that link Nik gave me,’ he continued. ‘Metamour. It’s the term someone uses for their partner’s other partner or lover. So Glenn’s you’re metamour.’
‘That sounds weird.’
‘Actually, I kind of like it.’ He chuckled. ‘Now I can just be like, Alex is off with his metamour, and people will have no idea what the hell I’m on about.’
‘You’re not telling people that.’ People would ask him to explain. And then he’d have to actually explain.
‘Would you prefer for me to just say Alex is off with his other boyfriend?’
‘Yeah, well, that doesn’t require lots of explaining, at least.’ It didn’t really sound too good either. I’d never heard about any of these terms before. I hadn’t even heard about polyamory before Nik mentioned it to me. Which meant it wasn’t something people knew much about unless they were poly themselves. That meant we constantly had to explain it to people. We only knew regular, monogamous couples, after all.
‘Alex,’ Andreas said firmly. ‘Stop worrying so much. Just chill out and go with the flow. That would do you some good.’
‘I’m trying. And failing pretty miserably at it. I can’t shut my brain off. It’s just constantly working.’ It was exhausting.
‘Have you told your doctors or psychiatrists about this?’
‘Yeah. I get some pills to calm me down before bed, so I can fall asleep easier. It’s been harder to fall asleep the past two weeks now I’m not so depressed that I’m tired all the time.’ Those helped. A lot. But I wasn’t sure if I’d get a prescription when they discharged me from the centre.
They were probably the kind of meds that could lead to addiction.
One girl I’d talked to in here had said she was addicted to relaxants or sleeping pills or something. I didn’t want to become addicted to pills—but I might be dependent on them. Mood stabilisers, antidepressants. I could end up having to be on them for the rest of my life to keep myself stable.
‘I just need my mind to stop spinning.’
‘Stop thinking of worst case scenarios. You’ll figure shit out. I know you will. Just get your depression, or bipolar, if they’re right, under control first. Everything else can wait till later.’
It didn’t really feel like it could, but we’d already had this chat so many times. And I hadn’t just had it with him, but with Glenn and Leo and Thomas as well.
‘You did get my mind on other things,’ I said instead, trying for light-hearted. My hoarse voice probably ruined it, but it was better than nothing. ‘I think I should start googling as well, or else the three of you will know everything and I nothing. Which sucks, considering I’m the one with two boyfriends and all.’
‘You can spend your time on that,’ he suggested, much better at light-hearted than I’d been. ‘You’re so great at studying, you’ll out-learn all of us, even Nik, in no time.’
‘I can’t believe we’re here.’ I turned over on my back and stared up at the ceiling. It was a very boring ceiling, nothing much to look at at all, but my back hurt from being curled up for so long.
‘Where?’ Andreas wasn’t following my train of thought. It wasn’t like I could blame him.
‘That I’m polyamorous. Two boyfriends. I never even thought I’d find one guy willing to put up with me. I didn’t plan on being alive long enough to find one.’
‘And then you met me,’ he finished. ‘Thankfully.’
‘Yeah.’ I sighed. ‘I love you. I also love Glenn. You sure that doesn’t bother you?’
‘It doesn’t, Alex. I promise. Cross my heart. I’m not lying to you. I would never lie to you.’ He sounded sincere.
I had to stop thinking the worst and just believe the words said to me, in the tone of voice they were spoken. I needed to stop being so damn paranoid and afraid. As Andreas said, he wouldn’t lie to me. So when he said he didn’t mind, I had to believe in that and stop worrying.
It was easier said than done though.
Chapter 16
'Hell no, I’m not going for a walk to the cemetery,’ Ben professed after dinner when Thomas asked if anyone wanted to join. ‘I’m going home to a nice, warm, comfy flat, thank you very much.’
So he left, while I bundled up in what winter clothes I had and went with Thomas and Leo and their two dogs for a walk.
'I can take one of the dogs,’ I offered quietly as Thomas grabbed a bag he was clearly bringing. I had no idea what was in it, but it seemed unfair that he should carry both the bag and hold a leash while I wasn’t holding anything.
'Alright.’ He handed over the leash to Bella, the first dog they’d adopted last summer. She’d been nervous back then when she first arrived, but she just nosed at my hand now before trotting happily down the stairs.
Leo followed with their newest dog, a neutered male called Hugin that was even more nervous than Bella had ever been.
'Are you okay?’ Leo asked me as we stopped in the driveway to wait for Thomas to lock to the door.
I nodded. ‘I guess. I will be.’
'Bipolar isn’t so bad when it’s managed with meds.’ He clapped me on the shoulder. ‘But at that, I can’t say I’ve ever thought you were manic either. Or hypomanic.’
'I know right.’ I still didn’t believe it. But then again, it’d only been a few hours since they’d told me what they suspected and given me all those sheets of paper. I wasn’t going to come to terms with this in a day, no matter what. ‘What if they are wrong? What if I’m not bipolar at all?’
'They’ll figure it out. They’ve only been there for you for three weeks. They’ve only heard you tell them about your past. They don’t actually know you, not like we do.’ Leo smiled at Thomas as he finally came down to join us, and we started walking again. ‘If it's the wrong diagnosis, they’ll discover it in time.’
'But it can’t be good having the wrong one for a long period of time.’ I didn’t want to have bipolar in my journal if it wasn’t true. ‘Not to mention, if I’m not bipolar, I won’t actually need mood stabilisers.’
'Mood stabilisers aren’t just for treating mania, Alex,’ Thomas shot in. ‘Some are, obviously, like lithium. For those who suffer from mania and psychosis, they need mood stabilisers to keep them from rising that high. But major depression can also be treated with mood stabilisers. They keep you from falling that far down. Even if it turns out the diagnosis is wrong, the medication might still be right.’
I gave that a thorough thought and... ‘Yeah. I guess. I’m just so focused on the hypomania they believe I suffer from occasionally. I don’t believe I am hypomanic. I could just have been happy.’
'Yes, you could have. And the professionals will figure it out.’ He smiled kindly at me. ‘They’ve only observed you and spoken to you for three weeks. It takes longer to be certain when things aren’t as clear cut.’
'What do you mean?’
'If you were hallucinating and hearing voices, it would certainly make it easier to set a correct diagnosis. But right now, and for the past few months, you’ve only been depressed. You’ve only told them about your happier periods, they haven’t experienced those for themselves yet. Just give them time. As Leo said, it takes time.’
I hated that. But I knew they were right. If I could just snap my
fingers and be happy again, I would, but it didn’t work like that. Everything took time. It didn’t matter how impatient I was.
We trudged on in silence. It was cold outside, but there was hardly any wind, so it was bearable. If I was being completely honest, it was downright nice to be out in the fresh air. I’d been cooped up inside so much I was probably lacking severely in D-vitamins. Perhaps I should make a new appointment with my GP and get my vitamin levels checked.
It turned out Thomas had brought lights in the bag he was carrying. The kind that would burn for a long time. The first grave we visited was Andreas’s parents’.
I held the leash tight so Bella wouldn’t go sniffing on the graves—or worse, pee on them. That just seemed rude.
Leo stood at my side with Hugin as Thomas crouched in front of the gravestone.
'Do you think we have any family here?’ I asked Leo without thinking.
He glanced at me. ‘We might. I don’t know.’
Our parents had never told us anything about our extended family. We didn’t know if we had grandparents or aunts or uncles—or if they were alive or dead.
'Does it bother you?’ Something squeezed my chest as I gazed down at the gravestone of Andreas’s parents. She’d died first, and a few years later, he’d decided to join her. He’d left his three kids behind because he couldn’t live without her. They were together now, sharing the same grave.
'That we don’t know if we have any family here?’
'That we don’t have any family, period.’ I wrapped my arms around me, suddenly cold now I was standing still. ‘We have no one. Our parents don’t care. There was no one else growing up. Camilla... she just fucked off and we don’t know if she’s even alive or dead.’
'Camilla bothers me,’ Leo admitted in a low voice.
Thomas was brushing leaves away from the stone and putting the light in a spot where it stood safely.
'Have you ever tried to find her? On Facebook or anything?’ I hadn’t. I probably should’ve done that. It’d been years since she’d left, and my memory of her was getting fuzzier and fuzzier, but I did remember her reading to me when I was little. Taking care of me in lieu of parents who didn’t give a shit.
'I have, actually.’ Leo cleared his throat. ‘She’s not on there. Not that I can find anyway. Maybe she’s set it up so she can’t be found by search. I think that’s possible. Or she must’ve changed her surname. I can’t find anyone that seems related to us with the surname Eknes, and certainly no Camilla.’
'Will we even know if she is dead?’
Leo sighed. ‘I don’t know. If she’s got someone else as her emergency contact, I reckon not? If she doesn’t have anyone, maybe. Depends, I guess. She’s done a pretty good job of disappearing. Hell, she might not even live in Norway. She could be anywhere in the world.’
Thomas gazed at Leo now as he rose. Their eyes met and held for the briefest seconds, then we walked further down the graveyard. This time we stopped in front of Thomas’s sister’s grave—Ben’s mother.
Two of Thomas’s siblings had committed suicide. That must really suck. First, his sister, right after she’d given birth to Ben. Ben hadn’t ever known his mother. Then years later, his brother, leaving his three children behind.
Suicide sucked.
I was glad Glenn hadn’t managed to do it properly.
I was glad Andreas had kept me from doing anything drastic back when we met. I wouldn’t want to make Leo go through losing someone in that way. I was all he had too, after all. We only had each other seeing as Camilla had fucked off and hadn’t cared what happened to us after that fact.
Even if we could find her contact information, would I want to speak to her? She’d abandoned two younger brothers, still underage, to neglectful, abusive parents. She’d been legal when she left. Couldn’t she have done anything to help?
'You shouldn’t think so much about it, Alex,’ Leo said.
'Hmm?’ I turned to him, ripping my thoughtful gaze away from Ben’s mother’s tombstone.
'Don’t think too much about our shitty family or Camilla. They all made their choices. There’s nothing we can do about it.’ He seemed a little sad as he said that. ‘Our parents will never change. Camilla fucked off without ever looking back. If we do have other family out there... well, they didn’t do shit for us.’
'If they knew what we went through and didn’t do anything, I wouldn’t want anything to do with them,’ I professed, which was a hundred per cent true. ‘But Camilla knew. How could she just leave without doing anything?’
'I left too, Alex. As soon as school was over and I could go to the military, I left.’
'But you came back.’ Camilla never had.
'I should’ve gone to child protective services.’ He stared hard at me now. ‘That’s what I should’ve done then. I was legal. You weren’t. You weren’t a little kid anymore, but you could’ve still had a few years in a foster home, had it better during high school than what you had with them.’
'Or I could’ve been put in a group home,’ I pointed out. ‘Not many people want to take in sixteen-year-olds.’ Especially not depressed sixteen-year-olds who cut themselves, but I refrained from saying that. Leo felt guilty enough as it was without me rubbing salt in the wound.
Leo blew out a breath. I couldn’t quite read his expression.
'What’s done is done.’ I didn’t want him to feel bad. ‘I kept out of their way. And I’m free of them now. I’m getting help. I’m good. Or I’ll be good.’ Saying I was good right now was a downright lie. But I had to hope I would be. I couldn’t be miserable forever.
Right?
'If things had been different back then,’ I continued slowly, gazing thoughtfully out at all the graves surrounding us. ‘If things had been done differently... I might’ve never met Andreas. And then you might’ve never met Thomas.’
Thomas had straightened up now and was looking at us, clearly not wanting to disturb. But he smiled slightly at my words, gaze cutting to Leo... who was busy staring at me.
'It’s because of you I met him, so if you’d never met Andreas, I never would’ve met Thomas.’ Leo crossed his arms across his chest.
'True. So something good came out of everything, didn’t it?’ I had to look at it that way. And it was true. If we could go back in time and change one thing... like contacting child protective services so they could remove me from the home... then everything that happened after that would be changed too. Wasn’t that the basis of time travel in basically any media that used it?
I might’ve never decided on that particular day to kill myself. Andreas might not have seen it and recognised it for what it was. He might’ve never talked to me at all.
So I couldn’t be entirely sad I’d been stuck in that house with my parents when I’d met the love of my life during that time. And thanks to that, Leo had met the love of his life.
'You learning all this positive thinking in therapy?’ Leo kicked some small stones away.
'Yeah, I guess. But I’ve thought it before too. If things had been different back then, everything would be different now.’
'That is true,’ Thomas agreed softly. ‘Some things, no matter how bad, just kind of seem worth it in retrospect, considering what you’ve got now.’
I nodded to that, glancing at Leo. He only had eyes for Thomas now.
'Yeah, I guess,’ he relented, arms falling to his side.
I didn’t know what Thomas had experienced, what bad things were in his past, but what I’d experienced was worth it to some degree. I had Andreas. I had Glenn.
And yeah, if I hadn’t lived through all the shit with my parents, maybe I wouldn’t be so depressed now, but... would I really take being not depressed and alone over depressed and loved?
I thought not.
The holidays hadn’t turned out as expected at all. I’d lost two whole weeks to severe depression. I was failing at uni because of it. But all that could be fixed. With therapy and the right meds, my depressi
on would get better. Maybe I’d feel up to re-taking my exams then or maybe I would just wait until I started a new degree. I didn’t know.
But as long as I had Andreas and Glenn, I’d take that struggle. Without it, without them, what would I have?
Yet I needed to not be so dependent on them, especially Andreas. They told me so in therapy and I knew it was true. I was dependant on him. Too much. Unhealthily so. But I was working on it.
Hell, I was here all alone now, with neither of them here to lean on.
I could do this on my own. I would.
I’d work hard to become a better, healthier part of me that wasn’t such a depressed, anxious wreck. That was what we were working on in therapy and I was trying not to be so needy when I spoke to Andreas and Glenn on the phone.
I thought I was succeeding.
Mostly, anyway.
Chapter 17
The library. It loomed in front of me. It was a rectangular, dark-grey building that had used to be a bank. It should be imposing, but it wasn’t. All I felt as I looked up at it was calm.
This was the place that had been my solace growing up.
I’d come to the library to read. I’d spent hours curled up on sofas in there reading all the books. I’d borrow a ton of them to take home with me, and always returned them before the due date. I’d always been good at that. I’d never once had to pay a late fee.
The library had been more of a comfort to me than anything else. I’d escaped an abusive home to come here. At the library, I felt safe. This was where I could dive into other realities and forget my own.
I hadn’t been to the library much after I met Andreas. I’d been consumed by him and the new life I suddenly had. I’d been getting to know his friends, I’d been bashed in the head, I’d gone on holidays with friends and his family, and the library had taken a backseat. It hadn’t been as important anymore.
But it had been a lifeline for me for so long.
So now here I was again. I had no one around to take my mind off things, so the library would have to do again.