Done Adulting Vol. 2 Ch. 28

“I’m ready,” Ella said as she laid next to Jamie in his crib.

“Well, I’m gonna need another ten minutes,” he replied as he laid next to her naked.

“Not that, stupid.”

“Then what?”

“For my family. I’m ready to see them.”

“O. That’s ... wow.” Jamie didn’t know how he felt about that.

“I know. I just, I don’t know, why wait longer?”

“Have you spoken with them or written them or anything?”

“No. I decided not to, since things are kind of uncertain.”

“You wanna stay, though?”

“I think so.” That had been a definite yes not long ago. Jamie fought back the urge to react strongly to her wavering resolution.

“Wh... What’s making you say that?”

“Uncertainty. I don’t know what seeing them will be like.”

Jamie wanted to change the topic away from that specifically without being dismissive of the issue generally. It was important to him for Ella to know he cared about her, not just that he wanted her to stay. She knew both those things, but Jamie knew knowing was only really knowing if it was also feeling. “You know you never did tell me much about them. Are you ready to?”

Ella looked up, unsure. “What do you wanna know?”

“Only what you’re okay talking about. Do you think I’ll meet them while they’re here?”

“Definitely. I want them to understand my life here. You’re a huge part of that, obviously. And it will help them to see that I’m not alone. They’ll be worried about that.”

“So, um, how many siblings do you have,” Jamie ventured. Ella had never really talked about her siblings. If it ever came up, which was rare, she demurred. She talked more about her parents, and she didn’t talk much about her parents.

“Three.” Ella didn’t say anything else, and Jamie didn’t either. He felt a little like a therapist he once had whose strategy was to sit quietly until Jamie felt awkward enough to say something else. Jamie didn’t care for that technique, but he understood it now. “Two brothers and a sister. Brad would be 32 now, Andrew – Andy – would be 26, and Jackie would be 20.”

“That’s quite a spread, age wise.”

“Yeah. I don’t think Jackie was intentional.”

“That would make her four when you got here.”

“Yeah.” Jamie opted not to push on that.

“And your parents’ names?”

“Lynn and Peter. They’re in their mid-50s now.”

“They had you young.”

“Not so young. 22, I think.”

“That would be considered young now. Less so back then.”

“Hmm.” Jamie regretted saying that. Telling her things like that always made him feel as though he were just telling her about all the trends and events she had missed out on. He reached over and took her hand, kissing it.

“You just tell me what you need from me, Ella.” She smiled weakly and tucked her arm in, keeping hold of his hand. “She didn’t say anything for long minutes.

“I used to dream about them,” Ella said and then was quiet.

“Yeah,” Jamie prompted her.

After a pause, she continued, “I used to dream about them. We’d all be together. Sometimes like it had never happened, or like it had and I was still there, and other times like it had and I’d been rescued ... Ya don’t hear much about rescues back home. I used to think about that. Rescue. Escape ... I’d plot it out. I rehearsed it in my mind so many times, when I was lucid. How I’d crawl out of the house when they were asleep. Or how a rescue team would burst in ... I stopped eventually. I don’t remember when ... I think it just got boring. Or too hard to think about ... Fantasies get worse than reality if you try to stay there too long.”

Ella never talked like this. It made Jamie uneasy. He didn’t know where this was going or whether she’d regret talking about it or maybe be upset with him for asking any questions at all. But he couldn’t stop her, either.

“Dreams,” Ella continued, “I’m not sure it’s a dream if you’re awake. I couldn’t always tell when I was awake ... The drugs. At first, it was such a fog ... It was just me, and all this pain, and these giants ... I thought it was a nightmare. It had to be. And I wouldn’t wake up. And I’d fall asleep in the nightmare and dream, or be awake and dream. Hallucinate, I guess ...

“I dreamt about my family. We’d be together at home. Christmas. Or just hanging out. After a while, in the dreams, we’d start to fight. I’d fight with them, like it was normal. About normal stuff ... It would be so real. It would be, I would feel warm. I was always too hot at first, but in those dreams, I’d feel warm, and it would feel good ... Waking up ... or the dream ending, I guess, it just got so hard. I just wanted to sleep. I just wanted to be unconscious. Pass out. Stop crying. Run out of tears. Die ...

“Sometimes I dreamt my dad was holding me. I was a daddy’s girl. Or I’d be holding Jackie. And I’d wake up and not realize it, and it would feel so good, Dad holding me, and I’d come to, and it would be one of them. I hated them so much for that. For tricking me. I’d get angry at myself, for enjoying even a moment of it ... Then I wouldn’t want to fall asleep again, and I’d get so tired of being awake with them I’d just want to be asleep again ... I pretended a lot, to sleep. So they’d ignore me ...

“My mom used to say my great grandma willed herself to die, when her husband died; that she didn’t want to live anymore, so she just stopped. She was old anyway. I couldn’t just stop. You can’t just stop, unless you’re old I guess. I couldn’t ... It became a blur, eventually. Everything was so like everything else I couldn’t tell when it was. How long I’d been there ... I started having this dream, this same dream, eventually I had this dream.

“I would be arguing with my family, and it was just one person, but it was all of them. They’d tell me to come home, and I wouldn’t say anything. Then they’d get angry, and I’d tell them I was trying. They’d tell me to try harder, and I’d tell them to come get me ... We never fought like that. Ugly fight, mean. We’d never say things like ... ‘If you love me’ ... ‘If you love us’ ... And eventually I’d just tell them I couldn’t come home. And I don’t know why I wouldn’t just say that to begin with. It was like I was ashamed that I couldn’t come home. Then they’d get quiet. They just accepted that. When I’d say it, they just accepted that I couldn’t come home. They wouldn’t argue with that. That’s when I felt most alone. When they just accepted it.

“And I stopped waiting to be rescued. I stopped thinking about how to escape. I stopped resisting. Stopped dreaming. Guess that was resisting, the dreams. I stopped dreaming.

“When I stopped dreaming about them is when it got blurry, when I couldn’t tell when it was anymore.” Ella finished, her body turned away from Jamie.

Jamie responded by spooning Ella and pulling his blanket over the two of them, placing a long kiss on her neck and laying his arm over her. It was meager solace and no protection, he knew. He didn’t have anything else to give her, no words to say.

“My name was Courtney,” Ella said. “I never liked it.”