Kelsey
Kelsey had a problem, and that problem had a name. She’d written it down slowly and stared at it. Even on paper, his name had looked like trouble, starting with the letter D.
They had met during her sophomore year of high school in the wake of a year-gone-wrong. Failed final exams, a sister that did more harm than good, a dead dog, parents that fought more than they breathed. In a world where joy’s color seeped from the edges of reality into the ground, suddenly he was there to hold her.
In the beginning, there was comfort. She no longer traipsed down the halls alone. Instead of shuffling with bowed head and tensed shoulders, there was a newfound confidence that was formed from the knowledge of having companionship. Classes that once dragged on for miles became journeys that were all to short. Going home no longer felt like walking into a prison cell when Kelsey could simply curl up in bed, cradling him in her heart. She no longer found comfort in food or hid behind her books in the family room. There was no necessity for it with him there.
But nothing lasts forever.
Ever so slowly, he became her whole world. She became transfixed, unable to recognize the feeling of crashing. Slowly, her classes were completely overshadowed by him. Once perfect marks were washed away in the force of his flood, naps after school became hours spent beneath the sheets. Discontinued snacking turned to a lack of eating. Yet, despite it all, she couldn’t bring herself to care.
When looking back, she supposed that she really should’ve seen the truth for what is was.
The longer they were together, the more toxic they became. Kelsey grew thinner. Kelsey failed her classes. Kelsey lost what friends she had had due to disinterest. In all the things she lost, he was there catch her and hold her close and cling to her like no one else would. Sometimes she suffocated under his weight but couldn’t fathom tearing herself away.
And then one day, months and months down the jagged line of life, Kelsey recognized that things were no longer a two-way street. That they never had been. Every aspect of their relationship had been one-sided, with him taking and taking and taking until she was nothing but an empty husk floating through life. She breathed for him, she bled for him, she lied for him. The realization came in the form of a psychology lecture, her mind faraway as her hands copied the board with perfunctory grace. Suddenly she was writing his name, the graphite jagged and slow to form.
It is one thing to recognize a problem; however, it is another thing entirely to find a solution for it, and Kelsey found that no matter what she tried, she couldn’t go back. He clung to her very being, a gravity from within that rooted her to the spot and ensured that she couldn’t escape the pull, even as she tried to cut herself away.
Kelsey had a problem, and as she sat and stared at that long-ago written name, with him in her heart and a bottle of pills in her hand, she could only cry in relief as she finally found relief.