I can still feel it. The gaping black hole that sucked up what was left of the broken organ within my chest. A swirling hurricane of debris and chaos.  Heartbreak.

That winter was piercingly cold. A black cloud of anxiety and paranoia stalked behind me and absorbed all of those beside me. Nobody ever teaches you how to cope with mental illness or how to ignore the scratching thoughts inside your head. You’re just told to repress and move on. However, a seventeen year old girl only has a small amount of storage space inside her. I broke.

“Why must you freak out over everything? Can’t you just calm down?” his words hit me like a cold winter storm.

Calm down… my mind moved its attention to my thoughts. Why won’t you just calm down? The black cloud began to tighten up around me, blocking the inside of my ribcage. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. My heart went for a race but my breaths lagged behind. I closed my eyes, trying to slow down my brain and focus on what was really going on.

“Listen, if I knew how to explain this feeling, I would. But I can’t. It’s scary and painful, but I need you the most. I need you to help pull me out of the trap,” I staggered, staring down at his dashboard.

“I promise I’ll be there for you. It’s just hard to keep up with sometimes.” That night, he made a promise that was bound to be broken.

The leaves began to dry out and the pumpkins started to rot. My recently-deleted repression began to fill back up again. Everyday, I would push it down further and further. My health took notice. It’d strap me down to bed and drown my eardrums with music about sadness and misery. The pain would keep me from going to school. I was bound to my bed.

“Honey, you’re sick again?” it seemed like my mother asked me this every week.

“Yes, mom. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s like a constant migraine that just won’t go away,” I tried to give an explanation. Unfortunately, no blood test or MRI in the entire world could pick up on the smoky fog assembling inside of me. They didn’t see the theme park being built inside my brain or the chains being shackled around my heart. They tightened so hard that he began to be pushed out.

“You never listen to me! Why won’t you just listen?” I begged him to understand. He just looked at me with a soulless stare. The repression poured out of me like a broken soft serve machine. Cold yet slick, and covering everything around us.

“I’m so tired of this. You’re not happy, I’m not happy. Don’t you see? This has all just turned to s***!” He slammed his hands onto the steering wheel and clenched his eyes shut. His face puffed up with sorrow, and it tears began to leak out as he opened them again.

“I love you to death but I can’t do it anymore. You’re changing and I can’t help you, nobody can help you. It’s too much.” The black cloud came out from behind me and cloaked itself over his shoulders. He didn’t say a word the rest of the way home.

At this point, we seemed closer than ever, yet miles away from each other. What looked like a light at the end of a tunnel was only more pain and more suffering. Winter came plunging. The wind roared outside like an angry lion. Shards of frozen rain pelted against my window, much like the ones falling down my cheeks. It was the first snowstorm of the year. My phone lit up like the sad and dull Christmas tree in the corner of my bedroom.

“We should be done.” The words I thought I would never hear were now floating inside the screen, waiting to be rescued. I had nothing else to say besides “Fine, great.” My thumb pushed hard against the send button, causing all the dusty remains of myself to crash down from the ceiling. When the linty surface finally settled, I could feel myself take in a breath of fresh air. The black cloud escaped me wrapped itself around my ankles. The brain roller coaster slowed down, and the chains tightened in my chest. The screen went black, and so did I. My anxiety gripped harder onto both of our shoulders that night. I wonder if he can still feel it.