Page 34 of Grin and Bear It

My body felt heavy, leaden and useless, every movement wrenching at me, hurting but not hurting. It wasn’t the ache of exercise or a long hard session between the sheets, but… It was like my body protested at movement, any movement, my head throbbing, my eyes refusing to open much more than a crack, even when I forced them to.

Because this was the other side of hyperfocus.

Do you know that there are a million different versions of you running around in the world? Not actual people. Widespread cloning isn’t a thing yet, but rather in people’s minds. I knew this because the moment in time when I met people seemed to colour their perception of me completely. If I met someone during a period of hyperfocus, which could last days or even weeks, they assumed I was always put together, competent, bright, sharp. When I started to falter or even fuck up, the way they responded was with lots of ‘Buck up’ and ‘You’ll be right. Keep going.’ In their minds I couldn’t perform to that high standard then, and not be able to do that now.

Then there were the others.

If I met someone as things were starting to slip, my hands clawing at the reins of my life, trying to keep it under control, they viewed me with suspicion, distrust. No matter what I did after or before, I was unreliable.

And then there were people who met me when I was like this.

I needed a shower,to brush my teeth, but I couldn’t, didn’t. I found my softest, oldest, rattiest dressing gown and wrapped it tight around me, then shuffled my way out of the room.

“Morning!” Coll said brightly from the kitchen. “I made some… Oh, El.”

I hated that, the sympathy throbbing in her voice, and the way she turned the burners off on the cooktop to bustle over. I hated that she pulled out a chair for me to sit on and that I sank gratefully into it, like I couldn’t do it myself. I could, I insisted, inside my head. I could… But even my thoughts seemed to short circuit as I dropped my head into my hands.

“You’re on a come down?”

When I’d described what this felt like, Coll had likened it to the way it felt when recreational drugs wore off. She’d experimented with some when we were younger and doing the concert rounds, feeling like she was flying one minute and then in the corner, listless and broken afterwards. The term didn’t feel right, and neither did her tone. Something inside me jerked and bucked, wanting to rise up, but this smothering exhaustion just smashed everything to pieces until all I could do was simply exist, just breathe.

I was just so fucking tired.

I nodded slowly and she crept closer.Don’t, I wanted to tell her.Don’t hug me, even though she did. The sensation made me feel better and worse, all at the same time, and I just couldn’t bear it.

“I’ll make you some breakfast,” she said quietly, creeping away, like I was an oversensitive child or something.

Which was what I felt like.

But as I rubbed my hands across my face and then pulled them away, it all hit me.

This house was a monument to half-finished jobs, from the renovations of the house itself, to the doom piles on the table. Everywhere I looked there were reminders of things started, abandoned and not finished. I pressed my fingers to my eyelids, wanting to shut it all out, because I didn’t have the energy. I just didn’t. But my mind wouldn’t allow that. Even if I didn’t look at anything, a running tally inside my head was keeping score and I had no runs on the board.

“You’re such a flibbertigibbet,” Mum had always said. “Always flitting from one thing to another. Just pick one thing and stick to it, Eleanor.”

If only it was that easy.

“Ellie is quite distracted in class,” my teachers told my parents. “Her work is brilliant, when she completes it, but she has quite a lot still to be submitted…”

I could still see my parents’ look of disbelief, quickly followed by disapproval.

“El, you’ve been up for two days straight,” a younger Coll said, her hair dyed bright green then.

“I’ve got to finish these essays,” I told her.

“They’re done.” She scanned my computer screen to confirm. “You’re done. Hit submit.”

“But I just need to add—”

“Submit them or I will,” she ordered. “Then get some fucking sleep.”

Those werewords to live by. I sucked in a deep breath, smelling the savoury scents of Colleen’s cooking, feeling my mouth water while my gut roiled rebelliously at the smell.

“I’m gonna go back to bed,” I told her, miserably, rising to my feet. Then I heard a knock at the front door.

“El—” Coll said, setting down her spatula. “Who the fuck is that?”

Only one way to find out. I got to my feet, feeling the pain and doing it anyway. I didn’t want to, my hands clutching my dressing gown closer in response. But when I hobbled over, then opened the door a crack, I wished I hadn’t answered it at all.

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