Page 117 of Until The Lights Go Out

But there was a pane of glass separating me from all of it.

I could see happiness, I just couldn’t seem to touch it. The guilt was almost worse than the sadness, because my life wasn’t bad. Objectively, it wasn’t. I had a roof over my head, a job, friends who loved me, opportunities people would kill for, a work-from-home analysis job that let me have flexible hours and an eight-hundred-square-foot apartment in New York. Yet somehow, I could still spend an entire day feeling like I was drowning in three feet of water. And then came the shame, the endless cycle of wondering what was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I just be grateful enough? Strong enough? Happy enough? People loved saying things like, “Just focus on the positives,” as if I hadn’t spent years desperately trying, as if depression was simply a bad attitude instead of something that sank its claws into my brain and twisted everything until even good memories felt heavy. The cruelest part was how convincing it could be. How logical it sounded. It would whisper that everyone secretly found me exhausting, that I was too much, too emotional, too damaged, too difficult to love. And on the bad days, those thoughts didn’t feel like lies. I knew they were, logically, but my mind played tricks on itself. That brain up there was a right bitch sometimes.

The crash only gave depression more ammunition. Over the years, I had learned to manage it more, but the crash had left evidence behind. I would sit for hours staring at the scar down my thigh from the surgery, wondering if it would be less red one day. Or the angry burns that ran along my hand and up my wrist. A body that ached when it rained. It was written across me, proof of a life lost, physical reminders of the worst period of my life. Some mornings, I would catch sight of my reflection and immediately be 20 steps behind in a race against my own mind. Because depression had a way of taking every insecurity, every fear, every regret, and holding it directly in front of your face.

“Look. See? This is who you are. Broken,” it would say.

The thing nobody would tell you was that surviving depression wasn’t usually one big heroic moment. It was a thousand tiny choices. Getting out of bed when you didn’t want to. Taking a shower. Eating something. Answering one text. Opening the curtains. Going for a walk. Choosing to stay. Over and over and over again.

People talk about recovery like it’s a finish line, like one day you cross it and everything is suddenly better. But for me, it felt more like learning to carry something heavy. Some days, the weight barely registered. Other days, it felt impossible to hold. But eventually, I learned that carrying it didn’t mean I was weak.

It meant I was still moving, still fighting all the tiny battles, still here.

And maybe that counted for something. Maybe there was strength in surviving ordinary Tuesdays. Maybe there was courage in getting dressed when all I wanted was to disappear. Maybe healing wasn’t becoming someone new. Maybe it was choosing, every single day, to keep showing up as myself. Even when “myself” felt like the hardest person in the world to be.

33

MAISEY | PRESENT

The tile floor of the hotel bathroom was ice cold against my bare legs. I had my knees pulled tightly to my chest, arms wrapped around them hard enough to ache as I tried to keep myself together, tried to stop my heart from beating so violently that it felt bruised against my ribs. I had known what today was the second I opened my eyes this morning. The date had hit me before consciousness fully had. June 14th. Ten years since twisted metal and screaming tires and blood staining my race suit. Ten years since my entire life split into a before and after.

I had tried to ignore it at first, tried to be a rational adult about it. I rolled out my yoga mat in the dim hotel room before sunrise and forced myself through breathing exercises my therapist had taught me years ago. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. I stretched carefully, trying to loosen the tension knotted into my body, trying to breathe through the panic slowly clawing up my throat.

It hadn’t worked.

Nothing worked.

Because trauma lived in the body whether you wanted it to or not.

My leg throbbed now with phantom pain so intense it made me nauseous. The long scar climbing my thigh looked angrier today somehow, red and sharp beneath the bathroom light even though, logically, I knew it looked exactly the same as it always had. I hated how much power it still held over me, hated how one glance at it could still make me feel 17 and terrified and trapped inside a car that smelled like smoke.

My gaze shifted unwillingly toward my wrist. The scars there littered across my skin like old lightning strikes, faded now, some thin and silver, some more jagged and pink. They made shame curl hot in my stomach every time I looked too long. I should’ve accepted them by now. That’s what everyone said, wasn’t it?

Healing isn’t linear.

Your scars tell a story.

You survived. But depression did not care about logic. Depression took every rational thought and twisted it into something uglier. It whispered that surviving wasn’t the same thing as living, that maybe everyone would’ve been better off if the crash had simply finished the job the first time. The thought made my chest tighten viciously. I squeezed my eyes shut.

No. No, no, no.

I pinched harshly at the skin of my leg, trying to ground myself back into the room, back into reality. My nails left angry little crescents in my skin, but even that barely cut through the fog pressing down over my brain.

Everything felt too loud today, even inside the silence.

Too bright.

Too heavy.

My phone sat discarded somewhere out in the hotel room where I had thrown it hours ago when the vibrating became too much. I knew people were trying to reach me. Serena probably. Andrea definitely. Maybe even Sebastian checking in because he always somehow knew when things got bad. And Theo. My chest hurt at the thought of him. I couldn’t answer him, couldn’t let him see me like this. Not today, especially not today. Because this version of me felt ugly, broken in ways I thought I’d gotten better at hiding. The version that spiraled and panicked and sat on bathroom floors trying not to drown inside her own head. The worst part was that Theo would understand. And somehow that terrified me more than anything else.

A sharp knock sounded suddenly from somewhere beyond the hotel room.

I froze. Silence followed. Then another knock, more urgent this time.

“Maisey?” My breath caught violently in my throat. Theo. I squeezed my eyes shut harder. “Red?” His voice sounded muffled through the hotel door, rough with concern now. “Please tell me you’re in there.”

Panic flared hot and immediate beneath my skin.