Chapter 22: I am trying to be happy about my happiness, I don't know why I am bad at this…
"I don't know what they call people who suffer from these thoughts like I do, and I haven't tried asking my doctor because it feels kinda stupid, you know?" She moves slightly, adjusting her body on the bed. The video is shot entirely in grey with the lamp in the corner being the only splash of color on the screen. She is hidden in darkness, only the outline of her body visible, but he knows her, knows her as intimately as he knows himself.
"I am always anxious. I realized it after I met my Dad that I have always been so. It was just that I was too busy to notice the whole "will-won't" scenario my brain engages in on the most trivial of issues. See, if I call my friend Bonnie and she fails to pick the phone, my mind sort of starts imagining these scenarios and all of them are worse than the last. If I text someone and they read it, and I see that they've read it and they don't reply, I start thinking that they have somehow come to know that I am not a nice person and they just don't wanna associate with me anymore. I am awkward and my people skills suck. A lot. I am so bad at casual conversations that I mostly keep to myself… "
He keeps staring at his screen. He doesn't think he has blinked since the video started playing.
"I don't really know why I am telling all this to strangers or what's the point of this whole video. I just think that people who subscribe to me for my content should know that I am a ball of issues and all those are very real. I met my dad just six months ago and it still feels like a dream sometimes, you know. My brother and I, we spent almost all our life relying on each other. I am the oldest, so the support bit falls on me." She laughs softly at that before continuing.
"As long as I remember, I was always fascinated with the concept of having a Dad. Our mother… she wasn't a nice mom. Some people can be good persons and not nice parents. My mom isn't either. So, like every other child, I too dreamt of a Dad who would come and take us with him. But he never came and I learned to be what my brother needed me to be. And then, umm we… you could say we were abandoned. You know, that was probably the first time we, my brother and I, realized that it was very expensive to be poor in this country. We were too busy trying to keep our heads above the water. I took a part time job at the bakery, babysat kids, worked as a maid, gave tuitions. Did a lot of things, basically," She giggles and Damon feels his lips stretch in a smile.
"So, I was in an accident six months ago and well, we got to meet our Dad. He's the kind of Dad that I would have loved having while growing up. He is a baker among other things and we always have these baking marvels for breakfast in the morning. That's Dad's thing. He likes doing this for us. You guys will know once you see them. Jeremy finally persuaded Dad to join Instagram where he posts his pastries, cakes and cupcakes and leaves paragraphs on Jeremy's posts which drives my brother wild. But I love those. Those sentences are kinda my way to assure myself that this all isn't a dream. I don't know if some of you who've met your parents late in your lives go through this. So, this me. This is the Elena you get when you click on my videos. I like to think that I… am a person in making, and that's what I wanna show. I don't wanna lie to you guys, and pretend to be something I am not. I don't want people digging through my life or my Dad's life to come up with baseless controversies. I would rather tell everything to you myself than have you find out crumbs of my life through sensationalist programmes. That's all."
That's where the video ends.
The video that he has seen maybe nine, ten times already.
He looks at his ceiling, thinking about the things she said, and wonders if he should call her tonight to tell her about his mother.
He's better now than he was six months ago, yet complete sentences take a lot of effort.
The guilt rarely prompts him to slit his wrists unlike as it once did…
Six months ago
He starts losing it.
It's slow at first, the gnawing guilt eating away at him, but soon it becomes unmanageable.
When he is awake, he sees her all the time to a point that he starts having conversations with thin air. When he falls asleep, he sees her dying and comes awake with a scream.
Even the constant updates of her physical health aren't enough to calm him down.
He stops sleeping altogether, scared that one day when he wakes up, Vicky will tell him that she died while he was sleeping.
He hasn't been out of his home since he visited her at the Hospital. His eyes have sunk into the sockets and he looks gaunt and unfed. The truth is, he can't seem to keep his food down. When he starts eating, the first thing that comes to his mind is that cursed memory of her sitting down in her own vomit as he walks away.
It gets to a point where the pain drives him to a knife that makes shallow indentations at his wrist.
Vicky finds him almost passed out and somehow manages to get him to his bed, and call his doctor who is not happy at the state he finds Damon in.
Damon Salvatore has regressed into the behavior he displayed after his mother's death. He's suicidal, he hears Matthew tell Vicky. It's an uphill battle from there to make him take his meds regularly, and his sessions with his psychiatrists become a nightmare.
Because he stops speaking.
~UV~
He should probably give Vicky another raise, he thinks. His company is standing, expanding and generating profit because he was smart enough to hire his cousin straight out of college.
She has made sure he lives long enough to tell Elena how sorry he is for everything.
He realizes now, after long sessions that helped him understand that it was far more important for him to get proper counseling after his mother's demise rather than the vengeance he swore on his father and his wife for his mother's death.
Some people are good persons, but not nice parents.
His mother was one of them. It was always about Giuseppe. Her whole life revolved around a man who didn't give a damn.
There are few memories of his mother that Dmaon can recall in which she isn't crying out for his father in one form or the other.
She chose to give up her life for someone like Giuseppe. He didn't need to follow into her footsteps. But he did.
He gets up from the bed to walk out of his room for a midnight snack.
It has been ages since he had the desire to eat something.
Calling her yesterday was an impulsive decision borne out of desperation to hear her voice. He isn't completely okay, nor is he in a place to analyze or examine his feelings.
He needs to be a human first in order to love.
And she, she doesn't need a half sane man declaring his undying adoration. Being her voiceless friend when things get too much is all they can afford between them for now.
~UV~
The Elena of this chapter is basically me without the whole mum-dad, abandonment thing. I am a ball of anxiousness wrapped in faux bravery. And Damon's thoughts are all over the place because he is all over the place. Thank you for the reviews. We crossed 300.
See you, magical people, in the next chapter…