Page 244 of Disarm
Future scenes that feel like they were shot for someone else’s movie.
A bigger bed. A dog. Maybe kids, maybe not, but the idea isn’t immediate nausea anymore. A picture of me coaching some middle-school team, yelling plays from the sidelines while Miguel leans in the doorway with a coffee, watching like he’s already proud of their future report cards.
I can see it.
I can’t feel like I deserve it.
My chest hurts, and I lie down on the carpet, staring at the ceiling. The tiny cracks in the paint look like rivers on a map. I trace them with my eyes, trying to breathe around the pressure in my ribs.
The volume’s at a ten now.
Full scream.
“This is forever,” it says. This noise. This work. This constant almost.
You’re tired.
You’re allowed to be tired.
If you go, they’ll all be sad. For a while. But they’ll get… quieter lives. Less late-night panic. Fewer safety plans on fridges.
Miguel could find someone whose trauma doesn’t require a spreadsheet.
Dad could call a son without bracing for an emotional landmine.
Mom could sleep without worrying that one of her boys is going to disappear.
You’d be doing them a favor.
I know, in some thin, rational part of me, that this is bullshit. Dr. K has said it a thousand times.
Suicide is not a gift to the survivors, Caleb. It’s a wound.
But that part of me is drowned out by the exhaustion. By the grief. The fact that someone who taught me, very early, that leaving was an option… just proved it again.
Maybe this will help you move on.
Maybe it will, I think. Just not in the way he meant.
My body feels very far away. When I stand up, it’s like watching someone else move.
The bathroom cabinetsticks a little when I open it. It always does. Miguel keeps saying he’s going to plane it down “one of these weekends,” but we both know there’s always something else. Behind the toothpaste and the cheap cologne is the orange bottle I pretend not to see most days. Leftover prescription from the last time things got really bad. We argued about keeping them in the house, but the compromise was only for “in case of emergency” insomnia.
Reaching up, my fingers are steady when they close around the pill bottle. That feels wrong. The rest of me is shaking, but my hands are surgeon-smooth.
I carry it to the sink and set it down. The reflection in the mirror looks like shit. Hollow eyes. Messy hair. A bruise of exhaustion under the skin.
“Are you sure?” I ask him.
He doesn’t answer.
My stomach rolls. There’s still time to stop. To put the bottle back. To flush the pills. To text someone.
Anyone.
I think about Miguel’s hand over mine last night and the way he said, “Whatever it is, we’ll handle it. You don’t have to do it alone.”
I think about how heavy that sounded.
