Page 20 of Glad You Exist

Liz looks up at us as her tears continue to fall. There’s something lurking behind her eyes that I can’t quite pinpoint. Is thatfear?What does she have to be afraid of?

“I broke, okay? Just like you, I wanted my best friends to be there for me. I know now that I should have told you why I wasn’t comfortable being around other people. I expected you guys to just know something was going on. To…I don’t know, maybe check up on me. It was selfish of me to just assume that, and I get that now, but back then it was hard, and at some point, I started hating you all for having lives without me. Deflection? Jealousy, maybe? I couldn’t control anything at home. I couldn’t even control my own thoughts or feelings. So, when you guys would hang out with other friends or do your own things, I felt cast aside and lonely until I finally decided that if I was feeling that way, I may as well just be alone.”

She looks like she has more to say, but like clockwork, she gets a distant look in her eyes, and she visibly shuts off anything that resembles the girl we all used to know.

Falling back on the loveseat with a weary sigh, she closes her eyes. Once again shutting us out and letting us deal with the aftermath of her words while silent tears roll down her cheeks.

I feel like I’ve been hit by a semi. Her words, her pain, have that impact. Here I was thinking she had been ignoring me, choosing not to hang out with me, when she had been facing battles all on her own.

Ishould have known she wasn’t okay. We had known each other since we were fetuses, for fuck’s sake, and I didn’t even think to pull up to her house and check on her? I let my damn frustration at thinking I was being friend-zoned make her feel like she meant nothing to me when in fact she meant everything. Another thought hits me at full force.What if it is too late?

Something akin to loss rolls over me. I used to be able to read her. I used to be so attuned to her every thought but now she just seemed like an old movie I watched as a child. I can’t quite bring back the same feelings or thoughts I had back then. All I have left is the memory of it all. That realization makes me question whether I ever really knew her as much as I thought I did. I can’t shake the sinking feeling that everything might be lost. Yes, we are here to make things right. To talk things through. But what if the friendship and closeness we shared before is long gone? What if we can’t get it back?

It’s one thing to feel tethered together in this moment but what happens when we’re back in our own lives? We spent the last three years apart, accustomed to doing our own things.What happens now?

I try to push away the thoughts that are starting to bulldoze me as I take in the room.

The aftershock of what Liz said has had a similar effect on the others. Kim is silently crying, and Kyle is hinged forward, his hands clasped in a fist between his knees.

None of us know how we are supposed to act or what we are supposed to say to make things right and move on from this. We all had a hand in ruining our friendship and we haven’t even begun to discuss all the horrible words we said to each other back then.

There are too many things bubbling up inside of me threatening to spill out. I know if I even attempt to say anything right now, everything will come pouring out. I can’t decide if it will make things better or worse.

I share a somber look with Kyle, and we both decide it isn’t the time.

I have no fucking clue if that is even a possibility anymore.

Ifeel incredibly exposed. I didn’t tell them everything, but I told them enough that now all my insecurities are yelling at me to get up and get out of there. Escape.

I am in no shape to be here. I am about to crack. I have laid it out for them to dissect and prod, should they choose to. Yet no one does. They simply accept it.

I can’t figure out if that’s good or bad. I swipe at my tears and channel all the therapy I’ve gotten in the last three years to controlling my emotions. I will the tears to stop flowing as I ponder the possible outcomes of just outright telling them that I almost died. That three years ago, I was sent to rehab and when I came back, I had become a shell of the person I had once been. I don’t know how to get the old me back. She feels gone.

Shewastheirfriend. Not this person I have become.

But I can’t even if I wanted to. I simply have nothing more to give right now.

I am tired and worn out. Now all I want to do is to curl up on my own bed. To be back in the safety of my own room. Away from these people I once thought of more as family than my own parents before they bear witness to my impending breakdown.

As if on cue, a knock cuts through the silence and without waiting for a response, my brother walks in. He scans the group and zeroes in on me.

A crease forms between his eyebrows as he reads the room. Judging by the way his mouth pinches, he knows he has interrupted something. His gaze locks with mine. I can tell he is trying to ask me without asking me if I am okay, but he’s torn between not knowing how much I divulged to them and whether he simply walked into a fight.

“Liz, Mom isn’t feeling well and wants to go home. You ready to go?”

I simply nod and make a move to get up. Suddenly I feel Brad’s hand cover mine and I nearly jump from the sudden contact. I drop my blanket at his feet.

I look down at him from his perch on the floor. He looks up at me tentatively as he rises to his feet. His head tilts and his eyes shift between mine like he is trying to read me.

“I should go…Mom had a couple of mimosas. She’s not fit to drive.”

He stays silent, still holding my hand and searching my eyes, for what, I don’t know.

It’s like he’s panicking. No. Heispanicking. I know him. I know by the way his thumb is currently pressing gently on my wrist. In the way his shoulders stay rigid as his eyes do that crazy dance between mine, that he’s trying to figure out a way to get me to stay.

It would be futile. Nothing he can say right now will make me want to do that.

I turn to my brother and—as calmly as I possibly can—nod towards the door.

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