Charlotte - "intimacy"

A/N: The city I am in has been dusted with about four inches of snow and tons more is expected. Perfect writing weather, enjoy-

~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Some Rooms Become Us
- Panoptique Electrical
~-~-~-~-~-~-~

There seems to be no beginning. It's there before she awakens, recklessly thrashing through her dreams, holding her hands down as she relives every wretched second of the one night she'd pay greatly to forget ever happened.

It's put a damper on the way she lives- the way she dresses each morning, the way Cooper clings to her hand in the car when they share a ride, the way she is addressed in meetings, the way people breathe around her. As though she may have a complete emotional breakdown at any moment. They should be so lucky, she thinks, to be able to witness that catastrophe. And she knows, through her dealings with coworkers, ex-friends, and lovers that there are some people in the world that would enjoy nothing more than to see her in this trauma- to scrutinize her pain and tell her somehow (though never aloud) that she sort of deserves this.

She's sure they'd get a good chuckle while feigning distress that something so monumental could have happened to someone they know. They'd make it about themselves without realizing that her heart seizes every time she hears a door click, every time she hears an unfamiliar voice. If they knew- if they knew how much of a struggle it is not to jump off the couch when Cooper swaggers through a room (to know the heartache of not wanting to hide in his embrace), if they knew how her teeth are constant ground together in anxiety, if they knew how much of an effort it is to stay still when her skin is crawling, well then she suspects that they may ease up a bit.

But that isn't what she wants, nor what she needs. She needs to get back to a place where doors are something she slams in people's faces, where her office is a place of work, where her throat doesn't ache when her eyes pop open each morning. She needs them to become unconsumed so she can follow suit. Because it's much too much to be carrying the load alone, to shoulder the burden of fixing everyone in the damn practice.

But as the days linger into weeks, and weeks into months there appears to be no clear starting line of healing; no end in sight.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~