A Tiny Piece of Something Greater

by Jude Sierra

  “Is this about that?” Joaquim whispers. Reid needs a moment to work out what he’s asking. He swallows hard.

  “No. I got it after…”

  Joaquim waits. They both press into that silence, but it’s not a bad silence. It’s a trusting one, patient.

  “Last year I had a breakdown. My family had me, um, committed. Well. Not like… probably not like it sounds.”

  “Uh, I’m not sure what that means,” Joaquim says at last.

  “Well, most people have these loony bin images or ideas. Or like, a hospital.”

  “You weren’t in the hospital?”

  “Well, yes. At first. But that was maybe three days. Then my family sent me to this place called Sycamore Grove. It’s a long-term psychiatric care place. They do long-term treatment programs for patients who haven’t been able to function in ‘real life.’ I hated the way they used to say that. But it wasn’t bad. They try to teach patients skills and how to manage their medications and treatments and stuff. Hold down jobs. Live independently.”

  “And you did—?”

  “No, that’s only one of the things they do. I was on a shorter treatment plan. I was there for three months.”

  “Reid, can I ask you questions?”

  Reid rearranges himself on the bed, facing Joaquim and bunching the pillow under his head. His hands are shaky and sweaty, but overall he is much calmer than he anticipated.

  “Yes. When I said that earlier, I meant it. I’d rather you ask than imagine things that are worse or wrong. I mean…”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is going to change how you see me anyway, right? I might as well do damage control. Let you ask questions and stuff.”

  “Reid,” Joaquim says. His voice is faint and laced with sadness. “You don’t have to do damage control. I’m here.”

  “True. You didn’t run screaming for the woods when you found out I was crazy in the first place.”

  “Reid.”

  “No, I know. Sorry. This is kind of a defense mechanism. So. Anyway. Ask away.”

  “Why were you there? What happened?”

  “Okay. Well. So, for a long time, I knew something was different about me. We all did. But we didn’t know what. I didn’t know how to talk about it. I mean, I was a kid when this all started, and it’s not like my parents had any experience with mental illness. Like I said, the cutting started when, as I now know, I was cycling rapidly and in mixed states. I had all of these awful weird feelings. I still do. I feel them in my body. Everything is overwhelmingly irritating. I have no control over my feelings; I am angry and everything is wrong. My skin feels all wrong. When I was younger, I was confused and had no idea how to describe these feelings or that wrongness, or explain why it was happening. Initially, the cutting came from that. The anger and the pain I was in. Then it became addictive.”

  “It was bad? Is that why—?”

  “No. I mean, yeah, cutting isn’t a good thing. I… controlled it differently. That’s why the scars are different. It became less spontaneous. It was calming. I could control it. Or that’s what I thought. But my parents found out.”

  “How?”

  “My father. He saw the cuts one day when he accidentally walked in on me in the bathroom. And that’s when everyone decided I needed help.”

  “Everyone including you?”

  “I don’t know,” Reid says a little miserably. “It’s all a little… I don’t like to think about the whole thing that much, and with everything that happened after, some of it is hazy.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, I went to see a therapist. And she referred us to a psychiatrist. Cyclothymia is rare, or rarely diagnosed. It can fly under the radar, be mistaken for other mental illnesses. Anyway, initially, her diagnosis wasn’t right.” Reid’s eyes are closed. Remembering and talking about this part—well, he’s never done it. Nausea and aching pain bloom in his chest and stomach. “The thing about mood disorders is that everyone’s chemistry is unique. And you have to be willing to adjust medications over time as things change.”

  “What things? Like moods?”

  “More like… My therapist Nancy—a different one—says it’s like trying to keep a balloon in the air. You have to keep tapping it to keep it afloat.”

  Reid lifts his hand to his mouth and bites the cuticle of his left thumb. The unsettled feeling in his body doesn’t calm. It’s dark enough that Joaquim can’t see when he digs a fingernail, hard, into the same cuticle. It offers a sharper pain, a focus, and a tiny measure of calm.

  “Anyway, the first meds she tried on me didn’t work. Really. Things spiraled from there.”

  There’s so much more to say: what it was like to have three days of feeling better, of calm and competence and feeling put together, and then the crash. Paranoia. Coming out of his skin with jitters. Persistent thoughts that his whole life was going to feel like that.

  Reid has never been able to put into words why he did what he did next, not even in therapy.

  “What kind of spiral, Reid?” Joaquim has a gift; he always sounds poised and level. The smallness of his voice now, the quiver in it, make Reid afraid too. He feels Joaquim’s fear.

  “It made me feel good at first. It was a fast-acting med, so I felt changes pretty quickly. But then one night I was so restless I couldn’t settle down. Nothing was wrong exactly, just I didn’t feel right. The next day was worse; even Felix wondered what was up. I figured that even with the meds, maybe I was going to start cycling. But the day after that it was unbearable.”

  “The restlessness?”

  “It was wrongness. It was like coming out of my skin. I started to have intrusive thoughts.”

  “What are intrusive thoughts?”

  “Persistent, bad thoughts you don’t want to have but can’t stop. That my life would always be like that. Awful. Always feeling the way I was right then, and that even if it got better for a little while, I’d end up back where I was. That there was no point anymore.”

  “Oh. Oh, Reid.”

  “J, don’t cry,” Reid says, his own voice thick with unbidden laughter. He kisses Joaquim’s forehead. “I’m okay now. It’s a thing that happened. It could have been worse.”

  “It’s still pretty—” Joaquim cuts himself off. Reid twitches and tries to settle.

  “Sending me to Sycamore Grove was a little reactionary anyway. I mean, I needed help. And other than three-day hospital stays, there weren’t a lot of good options. Mental health care in our country is shit. Anything longer than that hospital stay is expensive and hard to find, where we were.”

  “Is it?”

  “My parents paid for me to stay at Sycamore Grove. I didn’t need a nine-month treatment plan to learn to reintegrate or anything. That’s the shortest treatment plan they have. Good things came of it, but a lot of it was awful.” Reid clears his throat and tries to modulate his voice. “There were a lot of really sick people there. Wonderful people, people who really needed the help. But I saw and heard a lot of disturbing things. It wasn’t always a good environment, particularly for the people in my house, a lot of whom were classified as BPD. Borderline Personality Disorder.”

  “You have a personality disorder?” The too isn’t said, but it’s clear.

  “No, not like you’re thinking. It’s a terrible name that doesn’t at all match what it means.”

  Reid doesn’t explain more. Suddenly deeply exhausted, he closes his eyes and moves closer to Joaquim’s warmth.

  “J?” he whispers

  “Yeah?” Joaquim matches his voice.

  “Can we be done now?” There’s a pause, and then he feels Joaquim’s hand on his hip.

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t be afraid, okay? Things are better now. They aren’t perfect. But it’s okay.” Reid is still speaking words of comfort as he
slips into sleep. Joaquim’s fingers comb through his hair.

  * * *

  Reid wakes with the sun, as usual, despite how late they were up. Disoriented by the unfamiliar bed, he sits up with a startled heartbeat, clutching the sheets. Joaquim is next to him, and soon enough he recognizes the room. Then, with painful and visceral clarity, he remembers the night before.

  Not wanting to wake Joaquim, Reid slips out of the bed and pads to the door. It shuts with a quiet snick. In his room, Reid pulls on thin pants and a pale yellow T-shirt he rarely wears because it’s terrible with his coloring. He grabs water and his meds; as he does every day, he counts his pills and checks their colors and shapes. At Sycamore Grove, they had to do this when their meds were dispensed. It was a skill taught to help those who struggled to take or remember their meds: recognizing pills by color and shape, naming and counting them. Reid didn’t generally struggle with taking meds, but the habit became reassuring.

  Out on the porch, Reid surfaces from lethargy, rising into his body with the sun and the waking of the cicadas. His water is lukewarm by the time he finishes it. After half an hour, even being on the porch doesn’t completely calm his nerves. He takes a towel down to the water and closes his eyes. He tries to give his body over to the sounds of a great big earth around him, understanding that he is very small, a tiny piece of something greater, a small glimmer of either light or darkness, depending on his choices and will. He might be small, but he matters, and Reid wants to be a light.

  Every time he opens his eyes, the gray-blue water greets him with sameness, not awe. Reid rubs the palms of his hands against his knees, but the fiber of the fabric is too smooth. He puts his hands in the sand, but it’s not right. The world is a gray sameness; it’s all over his skin, and the longer he’s awake the more he feels this. He bites his lip; that’s different, yes, but it doesn’t stave off the buzzing irritation in his chest.

  “Morning.”

  Reid startles. Joaquim is climbing down the stairs with a mug of coffee balanced precariously in his hands. Reid bites his lip harder.

  “Hi,” he says. He reaches up to hold the coffee while Joaquim settles on the towel, squishing them together. Reid takes a deep breath and tells himself that his annoyance is tied to his own issues, not Joaquim.

  Joaquim kisses him, whispers another good morning on his lips and, when he smiles, it’s so fucking true. True and unbothered. A countenance of calm that’s unabashedly genuine. He contemplates the water. Joaquim must be too sleepy to read Reid’s body, because he settles his head on Reid’s shoulder and sighs.

  “You’re up early,” Reid manages. When he’s not working, Joaquim is a late sleeper. He’s also totally okay with taking a day to do nothing. Reid doing nothing feels guilt or has niggling thoughts that he should be doing something productive.

  “Missed you in bed,” Joaquim says. His murmured words do warm Reid a little. What happens when Joaquim wakes up more, though? When he remembers everything I told him last night? It’s one thing to say it’s okay in the moment, to promise not to judge, not to write Reid off as crazy. But the next day, and the day after, those are the days when the reality of promised words must be proven. Reid wanted something simple here on the Keys. He can no longer be not-Wisconsin Reid; he’s unzipped that second skin and revealed this truth, this inescapable self.

  Reid digs his fingernail into another nail bed and reminds himself firmly that this isn’t true. The rest of his life isn’t meant to be painful or awful. He is not obsolete. He’s had real happiness here. Integrating the two versions of himself into this life doesn’t have to be the writing on the wall for their relationship.

  That reminder does nothing to settle the restless agitation in his body. He wants Joaquim gone; he can hardly stand to be with himself. At the same time, Reid doesn’t want him to leave because he doesn’t trust himself. Defenseless against any judgment Joaquim might have, Reid moves away slightly.

  Occasionally his anxiety presents as the start of a mood change. Tracking his moods and anxiety carefully over the last year has helped Reid identify the difference between anxiety and a cycle most of the time. It’s all a mess now, because Reid’s pretty sure talking about his breakdown is a trigger. He’s never had to talk about it outside of therapy, which is different because there’s a communal understanding of need. His relationship with Joaquim, expectation-wise, was a blank slate; Reid’s now scribbled all over it.

  “I’m sorry I have to go upstairs there’s something I need to do,” Reid says, all in one jittery rush. “I’ll be back, and we can plan today until you have to go back, right?”

  Joaquim nods. Confusion slips over his face, but he lets Reid go without comment.

  In the bathroom, Reid considers his options. If he takes a fast-acting mood stabilizer, he might settle down. But taking more makes him dizzy and forgetful. If he takes his anti-anxiety med, he’ll be sleepy. Reid tries not to take either during the day unless he’s home alone with no responsibilities. Everything is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Reid closes his eyes and grips the counter.

  Calm down.

  Reid leans over the sink and splashes water on his face.

  I’m going to be okay.

  No. Nonono, his body insists. Reid digs his fingernails into his forearm. He draws a line down the muscle, hard. Focuses on the sensation. Lets it ground him.

  Stop. Breathe.

  Reid breathes and tries to stop. He takes an anti-anxiety pill. He dries his face with precision, goes to the kitchen, and fishes in the ice dispenser. At the sink, he grips ice cubes and lets the water drip into the sink as he tries triangle breathing. Reid’s rarely had patience for it, but right now, he’s breaking out every suggestion from the Distress Tolerance unit they studied in DBT.

  When his palms are numb, he dries them too. He should go back to the beach. It’ll take a bit for the Klonopin to kick in, if it does help. No way he’ll be able to hide from Joaquim that he’s freaking out, though, and Reid is definitely not ready for him to see it. Talking about his problems was hard enough. Reid wants to keep these truths conceptual rather than factual for as long as he can.

  He texts Rachel.

  Reid: J is here and I’m struggling. What do I do?

  Rachel: Did he do something?

  Reid: No, not that kind of struggling.

  Rachel: Oh. OH. Do you need me to call?

  Reid: No. I just need to tell someone I think.

  Rachel: Did you try the ice?

  Reid: Yeah.

  Reid makes a face. His fingers are still clumsy and cold.

  Reid: Why doesn’t it work for me that well?

  Rachel: It’s a different pain honey.

  And that’s another truth that’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it. Different pains mean different things. Some pain is just pain, same as it would be for anyone else. Reid craves particular feelings. He’s learned how to manage, mostly, with particular sensations. He thinks of the popcorn ceilings and has to wonder at himself because he’s a little obsessed with them.

  Rachel: You don’t want him to see? You haven’t told him yet, have you?

  Oh, right. They haven’t had a DBT session since he told Joaquim about the cutting.

  Reid: No I have. I’m not ready for him to see it.

  Rachel: Go hide in the bathroom then. No one questions nature calling ;)

  In the bathroom, door safely locked, Reid sags against the wall opposite the mirror. Bright red lines stand out against the pale skin of his arm where he scratched himself. He didn’t break the skin, but they’re certainly visible. He is calmer now, feels as though he can control himself. That thing inside him, ugly and barbed, which presses on his chest and is too big to manage, it’s smaller. His breathing is deeper and easier.

  Five minutes later, he goes to the bedroom and finds the lightest-weight long-sleeved shirt he has. It’s humi
d, but not unbearably so. He can claim he got cold inside the condo because of the air conditioning. In fact, he’ll convince Joaquim to come up, and he won’t question it.

  He doesn’t have to go to Joaquim. He finds him in the kitchen, eating leftover fruit salad.

  “Sorry, I made myself at home,” Joaquim says. Reid’s smile is genuine; the fondness in his chest is very real.

  “Please do.” He wraps his arms around Joaquim from behind. “I like it.” The kiss he presses between Joaquim’s shoulder blades is vital somehow. Even through the fabric of his shirt, Reid’s kiss connects him to this boy. Joaquim settles into his arms and sighs.

  “Do you want some?”

  “No, I’m good.” Reid isn’t a morning eater. Joaquim seems content to let Reid continue to hold him until he is finished eating. Reid feels sleepy now, weighed down with the lethargy that’s part meds and part the crash that comes with anxiety. When Joaquim turns in his arms to smile at him, it abates somewhat.

  “Are you all right?”

  Bristling at being seen, and also at the question, Reid takes a step back. His life is nothing but a series of well-meaning people asking him if he’s all right all the time. It’s a sincere question, though; Reid’s reaction is knee-jerk and may be unjustified.

  “I’m tired all of sudden.” Tired is an understatement. Reid closes his eyes and sways on his feet.

  “Hey, babe,” Joaquim says. He puts a hand on Reid’s arm. “Let’s go lie down.”

  “Okay.” Reid acquiesces easily. He needs to sleep this off. Joaquim climbs into bed with him, lets Reid octopus-hold him, and doesn’t speak a word as Reid drifts off.

  Twenty-three

  Joaquim arrives at the condo at exactly six, as instructed. The door is locked, and Joaquim waits five minutes for Reid to answer.

  “Hi, hi,” Reid says, kissing both of Joaquim’s cheeks in a rush.

  “I’ve brought you over to the dark side, huh?” Joaquim smirks against Reid’s lips when he pulls him in for a real kiss.