Here is a short little chapter - I needed this to be it's own, although it is tiny. I hope that you can enjoy a tiny peek into Jade and Beck's breakup within the context of this story.
I had planned to put in a chapter covering the episode where Beck actually gave Jade a timeout ... and then realized that it came before the last couple chapters! So, I think I will be covering it in a different way in the final chapter. :)
...
It was a time out for both of them.
Beck and Jade were broken up.
It was hard to tell who to blame. Especially in the weeks preceding the breakup, there had been more tension in the relationship. Jade's annoyance was coming off as pure anger. Beck's confidence in his own correctness had transformed into arrogance. The two began to clash more than they clicked. The fateful night at Tori's house was practically inevitable. Objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by outside forces, and neither of them was holding back.
They were two teenagers. Two teenagers with the regular difficulties and challenges and stresses. Two teenagers in an unusually long-lasting relationship that was notably riddled with warning signs and symptoms.
She was pretty broken inside. Love does not cure all things, as she had discovered. She had hoped that by loving him - by investing all the good that she could find in herself into someone who she hoped would insure it for her - she could fix herself. But she could not. In the quiet moments when she was sitting alone by her window in the earliest hours of the morning and tired of pretending to be a vampire, she would admit to herself that not only was she getting worse, but she would get glimpses that the way she was acting - the only way that she could act - was hurting him too. That hurt her even more. But no matter what she tried, she could not change on her own.
He was on medication to try to make him care about even getting out of bed in the morning. She had been one of his main motivations to get up, get dressed, work on himself. Their relationship had given him purpose and had transformed him. Small amounts of conflict could invigorate him, force him to keep his mind active and alert. But as they spiraled and more and more energy went into the ceaseless arguments that neither of them could resist instigating or continuing, he began to dive back down into depression. It hurt to watch her distancing herself from him. Deep down, he knew it was not just him. There were monsters of some sort trapped in Jade's head. Still, it felt like it was his fault and that hurt. So, to stop feeling the hurt, he stopped taking the medication. The side effects that overwhelmed him at so suddenly stopping a medication his body still needed made it even worse. Irritation skyrocketed and his infamous patience plummeted.
He could not fix her, and she could not be his only motivation. It got to be too much for both of them. And so they shattered.
There was never much clarity on how exactly it happened. The tension built until Jade was too hurt to put herself out there one last time and Beck was too exhausted to chase her down. It was unfixable, at least at that moment under those circumstances. No one would have predicted that their biggest breakup ever would come in the form of silence and Beck and Jade turned away from opposite sides of the door. If there had been a window, perhaps they would have seen one another reach out, and that would have at least given them hope or comfort in knowing that the ending was not easy on the other. But there was no window. Only silence.
They kept their distance most of the time, especially at first.
She missed him. She missed how he held her without judgment when she cried. She missed how he did not need to understand her pain to give her comfort. She missed how he could balance her temper with a few quiet words. She missed how confidently he would take over a situation whenever he saw that she was about to go nuclear. She even missed how he would make her take a time out and then hug her and help her reevaluate a situation and approach it from a calmer place. Most of all, she missed him.
He missed her. He missed how she made him care for her on his worst days - sometimes by purposefully provoking him to be angry so that the sharp burst of emotion would cut through the mental fog and allow him to access other, gentler emotions. He missed how she made him laugh with her sarcasm. He missed how she always paid him for coffee with kisses. He missed how she would always rattle his bottle of anti-depressants like it was a maraca while practicing her salsa moves, and then check if he had taken his pill of the day, reminding him that it took strength to accept help with managing the disorder. Most of all, he missed her.
Despite it being what they both needed, it still felt like they were punishing themselves.
It was a time out for both of them.
...
Two more chapters, hopefully coming soon!
Have a great Thanksgiving Monday!
The Scribe