Facade

33|| deafening mind

tw: gun violence, mentions of blood, death, ptsd
Song : Perfectly Wrong - Shawn Mendes

~ Alejandra ~

Quiet, not a state of it but a feeling.

That feeling is the one I've been experiencing lately, not in the sense of talking because I never shut the fuck up.

I've been quiet in a way I haven't been in years. In the way that my mind has slowed down and my chest feels a little less heavy.

Granted, the pain is still there, but now it's less inside my chest and more on the outer skin below it now darkened by ink.

I'm not sure if the physical pain of the tattoo is what's drowning out the emotional pain beneath the skin or if it's the fact that I finally told someone about the most painful thing I've ever experienced.

Either way, life has been quiet.

My days have been tranquil, with the exception of one thing buzzing in my mind like background noise every time my thoughts get the chance to wander.

I've spent the past week in Nayah's house, where I've spent the past three holidays now, watching movies with her family, cooking meals and playing house in a home that feels more like mine than it has the past two years.

With Christmas Eve only two days away, I assumed the heaviness in my chest or volume in my head would increase again at the fact that it's yet another year without my mom, but it hasn't.

Instead, I've been laughing at the movies and enjoying making the meals in the house that feels the closest thing to a home I've had in years.

I've felt quieter than I have in years.

I'm not sure what to do with that.

I don't know how to sit in this home and watch movies and cook meals without the blaring of my thoughts or the suffocating sensation in my chest taking over.

I don't know how to have peace and quiet without turning it chaos.

The unusual silence is momentarily interrupted by a ding on my phone.

Picking it up, I assume it must be Ziek since Anayah is in the shower and her phone is on the bed across from the bean bag chair I'm sitting in.

I flip the phone from the floor next to my seat to see the screen. When I do, a surge of anxiety flushes through my whole body, head to toe.

The one thing that has been gnawing at me to scream; Gabriel.

Hey.

I stare at the message, my hands now placed on each side of the screen as I read the three letter word over and over again.

Hey? What does that mean?

What do I say back?

Should I say anything back at all?

The volume of my thoughts increases by every second that my eyes trail over the letters in the grey text bubble.

Why is he reaching out to me after a week of silence? More importantly, why does it heighten the noise that has been begging me to scream for the past two days in hopes that he'll hear?

I don't have an answer.

I don't know why after everything, I still want him to hear me. 

I still want to hear him.

That familiar sound of thoughts and feelings switching and merging at a mile a minute drowns out anything else around me as I try to figure out what to do.