Notes and all that fun stuff in Chapter 1.
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Bobbin' 'n' Weavin' II: Drowning
Chapter 4
By Jadecow
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For a long time, I just sat on the floor. Every emotion I had been feeling in the past month --anger, sadness, fear, guilt, hatred, shame, emptiness, all those good healthy emotions-- fought to gain control. I didn't know if I had a right to cry or if I was getting what I deserved. I was alone and that was okay because I had hurt other people.

Casey was right. Every time I felt bad about myself, I tried to drag him down. What kind of person treats a friend like that? After that insight came the one that I did exactly what I promised Rebecca I never would. I treated her like her son of a bitch ex-husband. And now there was something growing inside of her and that child would probably never know me because of a moment of weakness.

I don't remember standing up. I don't remember looking into the mirror. And I really don't remember hitting it either. But I did. There was glass in the sink and my hand was bleeding. I completely shattered the mirror over the medicine cabinet. I reached inside, seeing but not feeling one of the pieces of glass that clung to the frame cut my arm.

My conscious mind caught up to my subconscious mind when I read the label on the small bottle I pulled out. I felt both sick and almost excited at the prospect. End it all while no one cared anyway. End it before I managed to hurt someone else I loved. Casey, Dana, Rebecca, my mother?So many people hurt because of something I said or did. Not to mention the one I killed.

The thought that had me opening the bottle and dumping the pills down the sink drain was that my father would be happy. For thirteen years my life --hell, maybe all of it-- was dedicated to making him happy, to trying to make him proud of me. That time of my life ended, and now all I wanted was to make sure he didn't dictate my life. So I dumped the pills and spiked the empty bottle off the sink.

What followed was a slightly pathetic burst of anger that left most of my apartment in a mess. Lots of broken glass. I basically made sure I would never get my security deposit back.

After that, I kind of loose track all together. I'm not sure if it's the fact that I drank enough rum to kill someone, luckily not myself, or if it was just one of those little breaks in my memory that come from being so completely low. Either way, the first thing I realized was that my stomach was very angry with me.

I groaned and rolled over on my side, so glad to see there was a garbage can next to the edge of the bed to notice that it wasn't my bed I was laying in. The room was spinning. I put the intense headache, sore throat, swollen tongue, and the wonderful dry heaving together and came up with the fact that I had drank a lot of something the night before. Something alcoholic, definitely.

I closed my eyes against the spinning and tried to remember what the hell I had drank, when I added another discomfort to the list: my bladder was on the verge of exploding. I really didn't want to stand up, almost as much as I didn't want to figure out why I had drank that much alcohol --the whole situation was blessedly out of my mind while I dealt with physical pain.

No one's ever said I was the world's most perceptive person in the morning. And when I couldn't really see the walls straight, I didn't notice that they weren't my walls. In fact, I didn't even notice I wasn't in my bathroom until I was in middle of pissing, sitting down because I seriously doubted my aim when everything insisted on revolving around like it was.

When it did register with my tired brain, I cursed out loud. I stood up from the toilet too quickly and actually would have fallen a lot harder if I hadn't caught myself partially on the shower curtain. It ripped under my weight and I managed by sheer luck to keep my head from slamming into the tub, instead, my chest hit it and I cursed even louder.

The door to the bathroom slammed open and Casey stood there, looking at me with my pants half buttoned laying on his bathtub with the damn shower curtain ripped off its flimsy little rings.

"You going to destroy my apartment too now?"

My stomach twisted even more at the coldness in his words, the sheer anger behind them, and the total lack of concern for the fact that I just fell. I probably would have thrown up --again-- if the idea of moving at all didn't see so impossible. In fact, doing anything put keeping my eyes squeezed shut seemed impossible. Breathing, at least, I managed to do, even if my chest ached with every breath.

"Stand up." Casey said.

I started to shake my head but decided that wasn't the best thing in the world for me to do. "I don't think that's a good idea. I fell the last time I tried to stand up."

"I see that."

But he was pulling me to my feet and not really caring that my body was doing everything in its power to ensure I stayed on the ground. I had enough time to zipper my fly --didn't even get to that before I was falling-- before I was being dragged out of the room by him and back into the bedroom. He stood me in front of the full-length mirror --the one he swears came with the apartment.

"Casey--" I wanted to tell him a lot of things, but the look he gave me made my stomach clench again, not in nausea, but in fear, because there was nothing but absolute rage in his eyes, and I couldn't remember what I was going to say. So instead I just stared at him.

"Shut up!" He all but screamed it at me, then forced my head around to look at the mirror, literately grabbing my head and twisting it. "Shut up," He repeated, lower this time, in a normal speaking voice, even if his tone told me he wanted to kill me. "Shut up and listen to me, all right? Just listen because I'm only going through this once. Look at yourself."

I started to turn to him, but his hand was on the back of my neck, like a vice. So I shot him as good of a death look as I could when the world wouldn't exactly hold still.

"Look at yourself and tell me I don't have a right to be angry with you right now, Danny. You're a fuckin' mess. Every day you look like you're slipping further and further away, and all you do is shut yourself up behind walls. Every time I asked you what was wrong, you said nothing was wrong. But something's been wrong, again, and you won't tell me because it's just easier for you to hide whatever it is that's bothering you from the rest of the world so you don't have to deal with it! Every day you come in to work looking like you haven't slept, and I know you haven't been eating. And you know what? It's not even scary anymore, Danny, it's irritating. "

He stopped talking and I was left with two feelings --anger and fear. Anger at him for thinking of me as a burden rather then a friend and fear because I knew every word that left his mouth was true. But fear leads to anger, as a wise green puppet once said, so it was all the same really, the only reaction that was going to come. "Damn, Casey, you should have become a motivational speaker."

I guess anything I said back short of me breaking down and crying would have pissed him off even further, but I didn't expect him to hit me. Or maybe I wanted that. When I had woken up earlier, my screwed up version of reality didn't exist because all I could think was that my head hurt. Pain takes away reality, it takes away everything if you concentrate on it. Given the choice between choosing physical pain or emotional pain, I'd choose physical. So I hit back.

It was quick, a fury of blows and curses and pure anger from the both of us, his justified more then mine. Maybe that's why his punches landed a hell of a lot more often then mine did. It ended when he made the mistake of hitting me in the stomach. Apparently Casey had never been told not to hit a man with a hangover in the gut. He learned, because I wound up dry heaving on his carpet.

I felt nothing for a long time. Just physical pain and discomfort, but no emotion. Which is what I wanted. I was miserable, but being miserable because someone just beat the shit out of you is a hell of a lot better then being miserable because everyone in the known world hated your guts.

I got mad. My mind had to pick one emotion, one feeling, because more then one made me feel like I was going to blow apart. So I got mad, and being mad was partially the reason why I was bleeding on the floor to begin with.

"Danny." Casey said, and it was one of the few times in our relationship that I couldn't place the tone he used at all.

"FUCK YOU!" I screamed so loud my voice cracked, and through nothing short of a miracle, I managed to get to my feet and towards the door.

I focused on the door at the end of the hall and not the fact that it kept tilting and I was more bobbing then weaving. I was almost close enough to touch the door when Casey grabbed my arm. I tried to pull away and almost fell over, but he kept me on my feet, even if my arm was bruised the next day because he was holding me so tightly.

"Your shoes!" He said, slamming them into my chest and letting my arm go. They fell on the floor and for the first time I realized I was barefoot.

I picked them up and left with them in my hands. Casey didn't go after me, didn't say anything as I went out the door. I was in the stairwell, sitting on the stairs and putting on my shoes before I realized I had left my jacket there. The thought of going back inside his apartment made me feel both terrified and sick, and I'm not sure if I was afraid for my sanity or my physical well-being.

It was raining out, just warm enough for it to not being snowing. Usually, I like the city in the rain --it brings something out of it that normally isn't there, what that something is I've never been able to figure out-- but it sucked when all I was wearing was a sweater and jeans. I didn't go home. I didn't turn around and go apologize to Casey (or anyone I had hurt, the list was running kind of long by then) until I was blue in the face. I just walked around.

I guess it was only slightly less disturbing then the fit I had the night before. I just walked through the rain, aimless. Most people steered away from me, and it took me a very long time to realize why. There was blood on my shirt. I don't remember when I finally noticed the bandage around my left hand --Casey must have taken me to the hospital before I passed out in his bed. I do remember consciously steering myself away from that train of thought. Casey, Rebecca, Dana, my father, my mother, Isaac, and Sam (which really goes without saying), were off topics. Because when I started thinking about anything, it was very hard to force myself to look before crossing the street.

Part of me wanted to go home and fall into my bed and just lay there until everyone stopped hating me, or until the bed opened up and swallowed me. I really didn't care which one happened. I just wanted to end the feeling I had then, feeling completely alone. It's such a cliché but it's so damn true, you can be in middle of a crowd, in middle of the scampering throng of people trying to get out of the rain, and be completely and utterly alone.

I'm really not one to wallow in self-pity, I prefer the joys of self-deception and denial, but that's what it was. I was wallowing in self-hatred. If wallowing is the right word, I think it was more of drowning in everything. If I didn't feel so nauseous, or if the world wasn't still spinning around me, I probably would have ran. Because the only thing that was satisfying then was the feeling of my feet hinting the ground.

The sun set and the rain changed gradually over to snow, but I just kept walking, my eyes down on the pavement for the majority of the time. Every once in a while I'd turn a corner, but other then that, it was simply walking straight a head. I had nowhere to go. I ran through the list of people I knew and came up empty. No one really wanted to see me, and I didn't blame them.

I don't know how I came to the decision, but the second I did, it seemed like the right one. Thankfully, my wallet was still in my back pocket, and I hadn't lost the card. I found a pay phone, and had to squint at the card for a long time before I could make out the numbers --I was so happy that it was there still that I didn't notice the fact that holding up a business card in the rain tends to make the numbers run together.

The phone rang two times before the receptionist picked up. "Abby Jacobs' office."

"I need to talk to Abby." All the tears burning in my eyes were in my voice, I'm surprised the woman understood what I said at all.

"She's in a session right now."

"I don't ca-- I can't wait. I'm on a pay phone. Please." I sounded so pathetic, I guess the woman felt sorry for me.

"One moment, I'll see if she'll take the call."

I knew I should have said thanks, but I couldn't.

There was a few seconds of painful silence, during which I told myself I should hang up because this wasn't fair to her, to throw it all at her because she was the only one who I could think of that didn't hate me. "Abby Jacobs."

I closed my eyes and leaned against the side of the booth, relieved and scared at the same time. I didn't know what to say. "Abby?" I forced the word out, the only thing I could say. I wanted to hang up the phone.

"Danny, what's wrong?"

Hearing someone asking me that and actually meaning it made my jaw unclench. "I?" Too bad it didn't make my tongue work. "I've made such a mess. It's all fucked up."

"Danny, where are you?"

I laughed, and didn't care that the shiver it sent down my back made me visibly shake. "I don't know. I was just walking."

"Come here, to my office, okay?"

I nodded then laughed again because she couldn't see me nodding. "'kay."

I hung up, but it was long time before I trusted myself to walk.
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