The Me That I Became
Christopher Harlan
Contents
Blurb
Quote
Prologue
Twelve Years Ago
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Resources
Connect with Christopher Harlan
My Work
The Me That I Became
A Standalone Romance
By Christopher Harlan
Cover design and Formatting by Jessica Hildreth
Proofreading by Laura Albert & Stephanie Albon
This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to anyone who did not purchase the book outright. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any other means not listed specifically herein) without the express written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental. All people, places, and events contained herein are a product of the author’s imagination and are completely fictitious.
Warning
This book is intended for those 18 or older. It contains explicit sexual content and adult situations. Discretion is advised.
Blurb
We were destined to never end up together.
You an empath, and me the woman who can’t feel anything.
It never should have worked.
Then our hands brushed together. It was serendipity—a happy accident that made me experience the world like I never had before. You said all the right words, and for a time I remembered what it felt like to be alive.
But my shadows have returned, threatening to extinguish the light you brought into my life, and I’m terrified that our future together is slipping away. I need you now, Brandon. I need you to chase away the demons, to make me whole, and to teach me once again what it means to love. Now only one question remains. . .
Will you?
Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair.”
—Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Prologue
It’s like a wave crashing over me.
Overwhelming.
All encompassing.
The messed-up part is that you can see it coming, yet you’re completely powerless to stop its fury. At the moment right before it strikes you down you reach a level of acceptance that you have no course of action left except complete and total submission. The lack of control is just part of the experience, whether you like it or not. It just is.
Your body isn’t your own anymore.
Your mind isn’t your own any more. You understand with all certainty that a force greater than you, something as ancient as our DNA, is about to transform you into whatever it wants you to be, and that thing—whatever it might be—that’ll be the new you.
Your old self, the one that stood in the sand before the wave hit, becomes a distant memory, swept away like so much sediment, as the water retreats back to the ocean. People will talk about the old you in stories—Remember when she used to smile? Remember when she used to be happy? The old you becomes a legend, resigned to old pictures and folklore about how normal you used to be.
Welcome to the new you—Depressed you.
The wave is coming.
I can see it.
All I can do now is hold my breath, close my eyes, and accept it.
Twelve Years Ago
I lay my rose on your casket just like everyone else. It’s the least I can do, isn’t it, Nana? Everyone leaves roses on caskets, but it was your favorite flower. This rose was like you—nothing but a metaphor now, but a fitting one. You were vibrant, full of life, and enough color to brighten this dull world. But then you withered, and you lost your light. Now you and this flower will share the ground together.
You were like a second mother to me.
That’s not true. Most times you were a first mother to me. You waited until after my 18th birthday to leave this world. You held on, like the fighter you were in life—you just weren’t around long enough to teach me everything you knew. I cherish the time we had together, and I’ll miss you in ways that haven’t even hit me yet. But I’ll remember what you gave me, always.
I feel myself bending, Nana. I feel my soul starting to fray even more than it did when you got your diagnosis a year ago. A year. How did it go by so fast? I started to bend then. The tears rushed back to me, but not just for you. They came all the time, like when I was sick. Like when you used to care for me when no one else understood what was wrong with me.
You used to help me feel better when I had my spells, Nana. What am I supposed to do now? You were always underneath to cushion the blow when I fell. But you’re gone now.
What happens if I break next time?
God, how I miss you already.
Chapter One
Present Day
Thursday
“Come on,” he whispers in my ear for what feels like the hundredth time this week. The sound of those words makes my skin crawl.
Come on.
It’s more mating call than attempt at seduction, but seduction is reserved for people who are still in love, I suppose. That sounds horrible, I know. Joel loves me in the only way that he knows how to love anyone, but it’s been a long time since we’ve been in love. I’m not sure I’m even capable of that emotion anymore. It’s getting to be such a distant memory that it’s harder and harder to remember what that’s like—the rush someone gives you when you see them, the excitement they cause just with the sound of their voice, the happiness that comes from being with them. It’s been a long damn time.
I used to be a lot of things. Stable. Happy. Now I’m this deformed version of myself—a bastardization of a girlfriend—one who pretends to be asleep while her doting boyfriend tries unsuccessfully to have sex with her, yet again.
I remember a time when he didn’t even need words. Just the sight of him lying next to me, or the gentlest brush of his skin against mine would be all that I needed to be all over him. Our sex used to be passionate. We used to be passionate. Now he’s been reduced to poking me in the shoulder like I’m next in line at the bakery and he’s trying to let me know.
Joel and I have been together over a year now, and we’ve been living together for the last five months. I let him move into my apartment because his place was, to put it politely, a total shit hole. I told him after he tried taking me there at the end of our third date that we’d be going to my place from now on to hang out, which, ironically, used to be my code for having sex.
When the jab of his finger gets only the slightest turn of my head, he resorts to his curt phrases like come on, or it’s been a while, another one of his greatest hits. When those yield no results, he gives up pretty fast, a deflated huff let out for my benefit, signifying him tapping out. I never understood the choreographed exhale in these moments. Does he expect his disappointment to be a turn on?
But I guess I’m being har
sh. I hate to admit this, but it’s become a default emotion in these moments when he demands something physical, but in my head, I know that he’s not doing anything wrong. Your boyfriend probably shouldn’t have to work so hard and be rejected so often just for you to give him some sort of attention. I know it’s not him, it’s me, but knowing that doesn’t make me any more amenable to having sex with him. He tugs at the sleeve of my shirt this time.
“Come on, babe, it’s been forever.”
There it is—as predictable as the sunset. Track 1 on his greatest hits record. Forever. It probably seems like that to him. I’ve personally lost track because I don’t want to keep a record of how frigid I am. But I’m sure Joel has a mental sex calendar that’s meticulous in its accuracy. I’d feel bad for him if I were capable of feeling much of anything. But when I’m going though one of my spells, Joel’s sexual satisfaction is just collateral damage, about as much of a priority to me as solving world hunger, or seeing peace in the Middle East.
“Do you hear me?” he asks, his tone something less than aggressive, but also something less than loving. If I had any desire for him, however small, actions like this kill it completely. I go into my routine
“Not tonight, babe, I’m sorry. I just. . . I just can’t tonight.” I should get a rejection t-shirt made and sell it online. I just can’t tonight, babe written in huge block letters across the front. I’d make a fortune from women just like me.
I wish my refusal was the end to this little episode, but based on the pattern we’re in, I know it won’t be. He follows with the next line in the script. “But you seemed better. You said you were feeling more like yourself today. It’s been five and half weeks, for God’s sake!”
There it is—his easily retrievable “last time we fucked” calendar at its finest, at the ready to make me feel like the worst girlfriend in history. Maybe I am. The show goes on.
“I do feel better,” I tell him truthfully. “I wasn’t lying to you. But feeling better isn’t the same as feeling good. I’ve told you that before.”
“And the only way we ever get to have sex—hell, do anything physical, is when you feel good?”
I know where he’s coming from, and I understand his frustration, but his question annoys me. I suddenly want to scream in his face, of course I need to feel good, you insensitive prick—I’m not a warm hole for you to stick your dick in, I’m a person and I need to enjoy this as much as you do! I don’t say it in quite that way.
“Yeah, Joel, that’s kind of important, don’t you think?”
I can tell that it’s his turn to be annoyed by my question. Scratch that, he’s already annoyed, and my question pushes him right over that fine line. He lets go of my shoulder and gets out of bed. His movement is fast, the kind of physicality meant to drive a point home. Poor guy. He doesn’t need the theatrics to make his point, but I haven’t left him with much else.
“I do,” he borderline yells. I can hear the masked sadness in his voice. “I think a lot of things are important. Do you want to know what’s important to me?” Here it comes. I know everything he’s going to say before he yells it, and it’s not because I’m psychic, it’s because we’ve been over this more times that I want to remember—conversational de ja vu. Every relationship has a weak point—an Achille’s Heel—no matter how rock solid it is otherwise. Sometimes it’s very obvious, and other times it’s something so well-hidden from view that it causes friends and family complete shock when the relationship fails. This is ours. He continues.
“My happiness! What I want out of the relationship! Those are important to me. And what about the fact that I’ve been supportive and quiet throughout. . . what is that stupid euphemism you use when you don’t like the word ‘depression?’ Your ‘spells’, right? Well I’ve been supportive through whatever you want to call it, and I’ve had enough. When do I get to be happy also?”
It’s a loaded question. On the one hand, every word he’s saying is correct. He hasn’t done anything wrong. He hasn’t treated me poorly, or hit me, or been neglectful. Mostly he’s been the opposite of those things, and he more than deserves a woman who can give him what he wants. I’m just not sure I’m her anymore. Maybe I never was.
“I don’t know,” I tell him, my voice so soft that he can barely hear me.
“What?”
“I said I don’t know, Joel. I’m sorry.”
“Well I’m sorry, too, because that isn’t good enough, Lia. Not anymore. It’s just not fair.”
It’s strange to be in an argument where you don’t think the other person is wrong, yet you can’t give them a single inch. It’s pointless. Might as well yell at a virus for infecting you. I want to tell him of course it isn’t fair, Joel. None of this is fair. The way I am isn’t fair. What the hell made you think otherwise? But my internal dialogue remains just that. I don’t have the energy for a full out battle right now.
“You’re right,” I say softly. And he is. But what he doesn’t understand, what he’s never allowed himself to realize, is that being right doesn’t matter in a relationship. It’s something a lot of people don’t get. Being correct, or making the perfect point in an argument, doesn’t fundamentally change the reality of a situation. Him being right won’t make my body respond to him. Him being right won’t resurrect my libido. Him being right won’t give my brain some more Serotonin to make me happier.
Him being right doesn’t win him anything, and it’s only at the point that he realizes this that he’ll actually up and leave me. Before that point our relationship is a dying body, still clinging fruitlessly to life. But if he had any sense at all he’d walk out the front door of our apartment and never come back.
I’d love to be able to make a long list of what a terrible guy Joel is—how I’ve fallen out of love with him because of things he’s done—or hasn’t done—but the truth is that he’s the same man he was when we met. He’s attentive, faithful, he has a good job, and he’s never been anything but good to me. Unfortunately, love isn’t actually as simple as a checklist of characteristics you find in another person. I felt something real for Joel most of the time we’ve been together, but it’s been a few months since my relapse, and when I relapse I can’t feel anything. Not for Joel, not for my job, not for anything. It’s like being an emotional zombie, doomed to walk the Earth only looking like a human being, but really, you’re just the walking dead.
“I’m right? That’s all you have to say?” He doesn’t know what to do when I agree with him, especially when he’s angry. Fights are supposed to be between people who fundamentally disagree on something—what to name the cat you just adopted, whether or not to combine your checking accounts, what kind of place settings to have at the wedding you’ll surely have one day. But fighting viscously with someone who doesn’t dispute your basic premise has got to be the mind fuck of all mind fucks. If we agree, why am I yelling? If we agree, why can’t you just change? If I’m so right, then why can’t I just be who you want me to be?
All great questions, my love. No good answers, I’m afraid.
“I also want to say that I’m sorry.” He rolls his eyes. He’s heard this speech before. “I know that you’re frustrated and I’m sorry. But it’s blood from a stone. I can’t. . .”
“Right,” he says, cutting me off, his voice rising to the level it was before. It’s an angry tone. A loveless tone. A tone you use when you want to reprimand. “You can’t. That’s what all this comes down to, isn’t it? You don’t give a shit about my wants or needs.”
“Joel, I. . .”
“No, let me finish!” Now he’s in a rage—a my-depressed-girlfriend-doesn’t-like-to-fuck-anymore rage. But that’s only the symptom. The disease is a much deeper thing. He doesn’t realize it yet, but he only wishes that sex was the issue. If it was then we could see a counselor, or I could change my diet, or we could try out all sorts of things until the situation improved.
Sex is an easy fix if sex is the problem.
What Joel is
coming to realize, slowly, is that there’s a rot in us—a bad sickness—and the lack of libido on my part is only symptomatic of larger things. Things he’s not prepared to deal with. “Every time I bring this up you hear me out, you nod, hell, you even agree with me now. But that might be worse, Lia. If you agree with me, but you won’t even try to change, what am I supposed to do?”
There you go, Joel. I’ve gotta give it to you, you’re nothing if not bright. He’s finally realizing that we’re breathing our death rattle. My only shame is that I’m too damn apathetic to just pull the plug and put us out of our misery. I need him to do that. I need him to be the one to euthanize us.
“I don’t know what you’re supposed to do, Joel. You’re a grown man, and all I can do is tell you what the situation is. What you do from there is up to you, but whatever it is, I understand.” How much more obvious can I be right now? When I was a kid we had a family dog—a little mutt named Mikey who we adopted from the shelter in town. When I was seventeen my parents pulled me into a room and told me and my sister, Carla, that it was time. That was the expression they used. It’s time. We were both young, but we knew what that meant. Mikey hadn’t been eating or drinking like usual, and his little body had broken down due to old age. What I just told Joel is our version of it’s time. I just hope he’s smart enough to get the message, for both of our sakes.
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