Shelter the Sea

by Heidi Cullinan

  “You can’t use the S word,” I reminded him. We didn’t say the R word or the S word. Ever.

  “It doesn’t make sense to be lonely. I’m with people all day long. Dr. North says it’s different, that lonely isn’t the same as being alone, but…I still feel st—silly. And lonely. And sad. I try not to be. I try to be happy. But inside I’m not.”

  I felt sad now too. I hadn’t known my boyfriend was this unhappy. He had seemed happy to me while we made dinner. Maybe I hadn’t been paying attention. Maybe I wasn’t a good almost husband after all.

  “Have you talked to Dr. North about your depression being worse?”

  “Yes. He asked me to try some alternative therapies in addition to some new medications. He wants me to run to get my adrenaline up, but I don’t want to do that. I’d have to go in the neighborhood alone. People might talk to me. Or think I was rude for avoiding them.”

  Jeremey also had social anxiety. He was fine when he was with me or with David, but alone was never a good plan for him. “My mom used to have a treadmill in the basement. She could maybe bring it over here. Or you could go over there. My parents’ house isn’t far.”

  “I don’t… Not yet. It’s too much. I’m sorry.” He sighed. “This was another thing he asked me to do. Vocalize my struggles with my depression to you. So at least I’ve done that.”

  I wasn’t sure how vocalizing helped Jeremey’s depression. Maybe, though, it was good because now I could help. Probably me helping hadn’t been what Dr. North meant. He’d gone to school a long time and knew more about depression, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t do something too. “I’ll do some research and see if there are some alternative therapies that might be better suited to you. If you like some of them, you can ask Dr. North if he thinks they’re good therapies.”

  More tears fell from Jeremey’s eyes. I could reach the tissue from the box on the table beside the sofa from where we were sitting, and so I took one to dry Jeremey’s tears, but when I wiped his face, Jeremey caught my hand and kissed my fingers. “I’m sorry I took so long to tell you my depression was worse.”

  I touched his lips. “You don’t need to be sorry.”

  He squeezed my hand. “I thought you might be angry because I didn’t tell you right away.”

  I didn’t understand why he thought I would be angry, but I did feel sad that Jeremey had worried I would be angry. I shook my head. “I would never be angry at you about being depressed, Jeremey. Only sad because I couldn’t take it away for you.”

  He shut his eyes, the lines on his face relaxing. “Thank you, Emmet. You’re the best boyfriend ever.”

  I was pretty sure the best boyfriend ever would have known his boyfriend was depressed without being told, but I didn’t say this, only kept wiping Jeremey’s face and humming as we sat together, listening to the washer finish its cycle.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jeremey

  The night I confessed to Emmet my depression had become bad again, I lay awake late into the evening, staring at the ceiling of my bedroom, thinking about treadmills.

  Emmet was the third person in as many days to suggest I use one. Three times people had told me treadmills were the perfect solution to my problem, and three times I had smiled and nodded instead of replying, “I fucking hate treadmills.” I would never have spoken so rudely to Emmet because it would have upset him, but it was with him I came the closest to blurting out the truth. I wanted to tell him treadmills made me crazy. They didn’t go anywhere, and I loathed them for it. This was my whole life, staying in place, rehashing the same shit. I didn’t need exercise equipment to reinforce this.

  Also, treadmills were so rigid. If I got tired, they didn’t give a damn. They kept going. I know that was the point, but I didn’t appreciate it. If I had to run, which I couldn’t say I was a fan of, I wanted to be outside, in the trees. I wanted to go somewhere, even if it was only around a block. Maybe it would be the same block over and over, but it would never be the same block every day. Different cars would be parked on it. Different people would pass by.

  I wished I could guarantee no one would stop and talk to me while I walked. I could get exercise, would happily add walking as part of my therapy—jogging, whatever I needed to do—but whenever I tried, all that happened were strangers insisted on striking up conversation. Even if I had headphones on, they wanted to get chatty. If I had David with me, it was a little better, but his chair took up the whole sidewalk, and anyway, he loved talking to people.

  I rolled to my side in the bed, bunching the blanket tight so I could hug it to my body. I was exhausted, so worn out I could barely move, and yet I couldn’t sleep because my brain was a hamster wheel. Depression clawed at me, a yawing spiral beneath my feet, and it left me so weary, but anxiety chewed at my insides, thrilled to have me captive at last so it could feast. It told me to call myself the S word for not liking treadmills or being able to run in the neighborhood, for making such a big deal out of a simple thing such as getting exercise. It told me I was right, I should hate that this was my life, how I couldn’t be happy like everyone else. I could hear, dimly, the voice of my therapist reminding me everyone else wasn’t happy, everyone had problems, but I argued with the voice. Yes, everyone had problems, but they didn’t have these problems.

  Thanks to my fucking brain chemistry, I was going to spend the rest of my life weeping in the kiddie pool while everyone else sighed about the difficulties of the deep end and the super slide. It made me angry. Sad.

  Made me feel so alone.

  My depression was bad now, worse than before I’d confessed to Emmet. It was ever-present lately, this thing I was always aware of, but I’d hoped telling him would make it better, that saying it existed would lessen its effect. Talking about it hadn’t changed anything. I felt like I was clinging to the edge of a pit, sand whipping around my face, the wind swirling below and trying to suck me into the darkness.

  I thought of lying in bed for eight more hours, spending the whole time fighting not to let go and slide in, knowing the whole time I’d also be battling the whispers predicting terrible things might happen to me. Technically I knew I was capable of such a fight. I also knew it meant I would be a pile of pudding the next day. If I wanted any chance of functionality tomorrow, I was going to need to take one of my pills, the ones I hated, the ones that made the pit go away, but I went away too.

  The pills would give me a hangover. If I took one now, I’d lose part of tomorrow. Through noon, most likely. I might get the afternoon. Maybe the morning if I pushed. Even with all this, though, it would be a dull, flat day.

  Why was this my life? How was this fair? Why couldn’t I climb out of this pit? Why couldn’t I enjoy my life? Why was this how I had to exist?

  The dark whispers tugged at me, pulling at my feet. Part of me simply floated there in the middle of nowhere, waiting for it to end. Part of me clawed harder at the edge.

  Oh God, I was cycling. And slipping. I needed one of my pills, right now.

  Where were my pills?

  I opened my eyes, lifted my head. I felt as if someone had filled me with cement. The pills weren’t on my bedside table. The only thing I saw was a pile of tissues and my phone, which I’d forgotten to plug in. Left to my own devices, my room would be a mess, and my med bottle would have been on my bedside table but now probably knocked off and rolled under the bed or lost under moldy laundry. However, I live with Emmet Washington. He comes in every evening and helps me tidy up. The only reason tissues littered my nightstand was because I’d been crying as I went to sleep, and I’d had to blow my nose.

  But where were my meds? I tried to think. My head hurt, both from crying and from exhaustion. My head was also somehow seventy-five pounds heavier than usual. Think, think…

  I remembered, the thought blooming like the scene from a movie in my mind. Hall closet by the bathroom. I could see the med basket, the tidy box labeled with my name. It was just outside the door. Emmet’s mother said it wasn’t good
to keep medication in the bathroom because of the moisture from the shower, so we kept our medicine in the hall closet. So that was great, I knew where it was. Except as heavy as my body felt, as intense as the depression was on me, the damn meds might as well have been on the moon. The idea of pushing back my covers, leaving the bed, walking across the room, opening the door…I was exhausted simply thinking about it.

  I knew what I needed to do, but I didn’t want to do it. I’d only had to do this a few times before, but having to ask on the heels of my confession felt so crude. I felt like an animal, or something worse. Shame licked at me as I fumbled with my phone and texted Emmet.

  help pls

  I heard him leave his bed, open his door, open mine.

  “Jeremey?” His voice, scratchy from sleep, pierced the dark.

  I couldn’t look at him, too ashamed, only stared at my phone, still in my hand, tears falling down my face. “I’m sorry. I…need my pills. I…can’t.”

  He came to stand beside my bed. “Which pills? Are you hurting? Do you need ibuprofen?” He rocked back and forth, and his hands flapped gently. I’d scared him.

  “Klonopin.” There. Now I’d scared him more.

  He left without a word. I heard him in the hallway, searching for the bottle, then in the kitchen, getting a glass of water. When he returned to the bedroom, I pushed myself to a sitting position. It felt as if I’d moved a mountain of earth. I was able to keep myself upright, but my head felt heavy, and my shoulders rolled forward, burdened by my self-disgust. My arms shook, and my torso slumped, as if my spine couldn’t support itself. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “Why are you sorry?” He held the water and the pill out for me, staring at the top of my hair with a mildly puzzled expression, but I knew how to read Emmet’s face. He was worried, terribly so. “Please take your medicine so you can feel better.”

  “It won’t make me better. It’ll make me feel like a cotton ball.” I had unusually strong reactions to a lot of medication, and this was one of them. But better a cotton ball than a sand pit of death, so I took the pill anyway, and the water. “I hate this. I hate that I have to be this way.”

  “I don’t hate you this way. I love you.” Emmet sat beside me and took my hand in his awkward, Emmet manner. “The depression is telling you lies right now.”

  It was. I knew this, but… “It’s always telling me lies, Emmet. And it’s so much work to tell it to stop talking, to not listen.”

  “Do you want me to sleep in here with you tonight?”

  Longing struck me like an arrow. I wanted it more than anything, but… “You had a stimulating day. You wanted to sleep alone.”

  He hummed and rocked. “You’re having a bad time with depression. You need your partner. A relationship is about compromise. It’s my turn to compromise.”

  A sob rose out of nowhere, lodging in my nose. I held it back like a sneeze, shutting my eyes tight. Here it is. The thing I feared most. And I was so tired, so busy keeping myself from falling into despair, I couldn’t keep the confession from tumbling out of my mouth. “But if you have to compromise too much, you’ll leave me, and then I won’t have anyone.”

  Emmet squeezed my hand tight. “I will never leave you. I love you.”

  Why was he deliberately not understanding me? Was he pitying me? The darkness dared me to let him see it. Push him away now. It’ll hurt, but you’re already hurting. Won’t it be easier to deal with that hurt now too? “But you can’t love this. Nobody can love this.”

  He was humming now, his free hand flapping. “What do you mean, this? You? Yes, I do love you. I just said so. I don’t understand.”

  I gave up. “You want me to spell it out? Fine. My depression. That this. You can’t love my depression. Nobody can. I certainly don’t. But it’s a part of me. I can’t get rid of it.”

  I hadn’t meant to blurt it out, but this is the thing with being with Emmet. He doesn’t understand subtlety, and so you end up being blunt when you don’t mean to be, don’t want to be. I hunched forward farther, but there wasn’t any escaping my exposure now. I was in the pit. I was the pit.

  Soft lips pressed to my cheek, cool dampness startling me out of my vortex of despair. I turned toward him, and Emmet kissed me again, this time on the lips.

  “If your depression is part of you, then I love it too.”

  I wanted to argue with him, to tell him he was only saying that and didn’t mean it, but it’s difficult to do deny someone when you’re getting kissed. When your boyfriend is holding you close and whispering over and over he will take care of you, saying you should lie down and let him hold you. When the first tendrils of your super drug are leaching into your brain, turning you into a pile of cotton candy.

  Except before the drug untethered me from the edge of my vortex, something changed. As I lay there in bed, my whole body engulfed by Emmet’s, his face pressed into the back of my neck, his breath a rhythmic echo in my ear, I still felt the edge of the pit. But this time, all around me, instead of the sucking blackness of the void, I felt the warm, sheltering presence of my lover’s arms.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Emmet

  I hadn’t fallen asleep until three in the morning the night Jeremey told me his depression was bad again. I’d been tossing and turning in my own bed when he’d texted me, but once I saw how upset he was, I was upset too. I’d meant what I told him about compromise, but it was still true that I’d had too much stimulation. Now I’d had more. Sleep was impossible.

  So I lay there holding Jeremey, watching him sleep instead. I counted the hairs on his head until I got lost and my eyes hurt from straining in the dark. I noticed the pattern of cotton on his T-shirt, the way the fiber of the collar was thicker than the main part.

  I pressed my nose into Jeremey’s hair, my mouth to his neck, taking deep breaths to fill my body with the smell of him, trying to find the molecules of depression inside him so I could take them apart and better understand them too. But I could not. Not even when I stuck my tongue out and licked his skin.

  The only way I was able to sleep was when I rocked, cradling Jeremey’s body to mine and swaying the two of us until it exhausted me. I don’t remember becoming unconscious, but the next thing I knew, my alarm was going off in the other room, and this one was full of sun.

  Jeremey was still in my arms, asleep. He stirred slightly when I rose, but not much. The drug did that to him. He would sleep all day if we let him, and I wanted to let him.

  I couldn’t sleep, though, and my lateness had already thrown my day off schedule. It had taken ten minutes for me to hear my alarm since I was in the wrong room. Normally I wake up, shower, get dressed, eat toast, drink tea, eat oatmeal and an egg, brush my teeth, kiss Jeremey goodbye, then go to work. If I want to have sex with him before I go to work, I set my alarm an extra half hour early. But today I was off my schedule, and I had more on my schedule. I had to tell someone about Jeremey. I was upset. Too upset even for sex. I had to think of what to do.

  I sat in my rocking chair, humming and flapping as I stared out the window and thought for several minutes. Then I called the man who drove me to my job at Workiva every day.

  “Hello, Tom, this is Emmet Washington. I will be late to work today. I have a family situation. I apologize.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Do you need a day off?”

  I considered this. I hadn’t missed work at all, except for vacation days, which had always been planned. I hadn’t even been sick. If I stayed home, I could help Jeremey. But if I didn’t go to work, I’d feel bad for the other members of my team, because my absence would mean they’d have to do my work unexpectedly. “I don’t know if I need a day off. I would like to stay home, yes. My boyfriend is having a bad day with depression. I didn’t sleep much last night. I’m worried about him.”

  “Oh, kiddo. You need to call in. I can tell your supervisor for you, have him call you, if you want.”

  I thought I should be the one to call my superv
isor, and I thought I should point out I was not a kiddo, but at the same time, I was quite tired. The idea of not going to work, of going to bed, was incredibly appealing. I could get into my sensory sack and sleep. My day would be disjointed and off schedule, but I’d be with Jeremey, and this was what mattered. “Thank you, Tom.”

  Tom chuckled. “Not a problem. Text me later, okay, and let me know about tomorrow? And give my love to Jeremey.”

  I hung up, then stared at my phone, wondering what to do now.

  I was hungry but also tired. I spun my schedule backward, trying to decide if I needed to take care of anything else. I couldn’t think of anything, though it was possible I was too tired to see it. I would eat cereal, then sleep. But a thought kept nagging at me, telling me there was something else I needed to do.

  Then it hit me. David. Jeremey was supposed to go to work too, with David.

  I texted him, not sure if he was awake yet or not. Hello, David, this is Emmet. Jeremey had a bad night. I am staying home from work to be with him. I am going to eat cereal then go to sleep. He took a Klonopin, so he is extra sleepy too. He will probably not be able to be your aide today.

  I sent the text, and within a minute my phone rang, the caller ID and the vibration pattern telling me it was David. I answered. “Hello, David. This is Emmet.”

  “Hey, Train Man. Is Jeremey okay?”

  “No. He had a bad night. The depression is worse. He said he told you.” He’d confessed it to David before me, which I didn’t like, but I wasn’t going to bring this up right now.

  “I know, but that’s not what I meant. I just…” He sighed. “I hate this for him.”

  I did too. “I’m going to take care of him.”

  “I’m glad he was finally able to tell you. He was letting his fear run away with him, worrying his depression would turn you away.”