It felt like I was having a nervous breakdown.
I think.
I couldn't be sure because I'd never had one before. I'd never met someone who had had one before. Or maybe I was going crazy in some other way. I wasn't exactly sure. I didn't have the money for a therapist to find out what was wrong with me. And I definitely wasn't going to one recommended by Dana or that sick bitch Sarah. So I sat in my apartment slowly going crazy.
This wasn't like before. I didn't think it was. It felt different. When I first got out of the hospital I figured it was shock or depression. Now I couldn't figure out what was going on.
My mom was happy I was talking more. She was especially happy that I had my natural voice back. She was less happy when I told her I woke up one day to find that my voice returned to normal. She didn't believe me. She wanted to, but couldn't. Not really. After all she read about Beth while I was in the hospital she was convinced Beth was a bad influence. Suddenly I was reduced to being a teenager again. Everything I said now was a lie. Now that I was healed and she didn't have to worry about my safety she was free to start probing my motives. Now I was in trouble like that time when I crashed the car a month after getting my license. She made sure I was absolutely okay before she screamed at me for three days straight.
Mom was part of the reason I was going crazy. There was this tension whenever we were together. She wanted to ask me questions about Beth, but I knew all the answers would upset her. The answers would all be lies anyway. Even if she hadn't been a super villain there wasn't a whole lot I really wanted to tell my mom about my girlfriend. The bulk of our relationship was finding new places to have sex in. I couldn't exactly tell mom that. Other than that it was normal, boring relationship stuff. I didn't want to talk about it anyway. It made me sad and it was hard to keep up the pretense that I was mad at Beth for lying to me.
Inactivity was killing me. I had nothing to do. Before, I needed to sit around and process things. I was horribly depressed and the thought of getting out of my chair felt exhausting. Now that I was fully healed I had this weird excess energy. I still didn't want to do anything, but I felt I should, that I had to.
Instead I made my own cell. It was like Beth and I were both in prison now. I spent my days wandering around my apartment, drifting from window to window, looking at traffic. True, unlike Beth I had internet access, television and video games, also my door unlocked at my will, but I was still trapped. I even had my own guards. Looking out my window I periodically saw police cars slowly driving down my street. Before news got out that I was a super villain's boyfriend I almost never saw cops in my neighborhood. Now I saw them almost daily. Because of their increased presences I hadn't been able to contact Dana or Blood Shadow.
If I had something to do which I was forced to do then I would do it. Tasks alleviated the tedium. Left with nothing I was aimless. My mom kept cleaning my apartment so I couldn't even fall back on that to fill the time. The most I could do was pick up small crumbs I felt when I walked over them in between windows.
I wanted a job. That would fill the time and it would force me to interact with someone other than my mom or Wade. Except I was unemployed and I couldn't have a job. Not one bank in the city would touch me. I was poison. Even if it was never officially confirmed that I knew I was dating a super villain, that one news article made enough of an impression. I kind of figured that would be the case when I sent out resumes, but I still had to try. Finally one of my former co-workers, Lucy was her name, deigned to stop by and tell me officially/unofficially.
It wasn't a pretty scene. I didn't handle it well. It was one of those situations where I knew I was in the wrong and should choose my words more carefully. But I couldn't. Here was a "friend" coming by to helpfully explain that no one would hire me to bank in Paradiso again. Word got around quick and no manager anywhere was going to take a chance on me. She told me this because she "cared" about me.
That's what pissed me off. She cared so much about me looking foolish in public, but didn't care enough to ever visit me in the hospital. Only one person from the bank visited me and that was Helen. She only stopped by to tell me that I was fired. I told Lucy that she could go fuck herself, that everyone at the bank could go fuck themselves. They all thought it was hilarious to watch the video of Beth molesting me during the robbery, but then they found out I was dating her and I was a pariah.
Lucy started crying. I felt bad about it later. At the time it just pissed me off. She told me in this pitiful voice that she was only looking out for me because we were friends and she cared for me. That it was unfair for me to be selfish when Jeff died that day. I told her to get fucked, that we weren't friends, we were co-workers who sometimes went out for drinks after work. I said nobody at that bank actually was friends. Whoever wasn't present at any gathering became the ridiculed one.
Finally Lucy had enough and left. She slammed my door so hard the posters on my wall rattled and nearly fell down. I stood in my kitchen fuming. I kept balling up my fists then releasing them. I wanted to hit something. I felt completely helpless and frustrated. It seemed like everything in my life was slipping away from me and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I didn't actually hit anything. I remembered Beth telling me of the embarrassment of calling someone over to fix her drywall and I didn't want to go through that. Knowing my luck I would break my hand instead of the wall. I'd spend my night crying in the hospital or Dana would insist on dragging me back to the Psycho Surgeon. I was still filled with angry energy so I put a jacket on and went on a walk. I trudged around until I started feeling bad about being mean to Lucy. That was when I knew I was feeling better. Well, not better, but I wasn't scared that I would lash out at my wall.
I had to accept that whatever I had with Lucy, which wasn't much, was over. I could call her and apologize, but it wouldn't mean anything. While I regretted the way I said it I had to be honest with myself that I didn’t regret the intent. It was true, everything I'd said. All of it. I'd spent the bulk of my twenties working the counter at that bank and never made one true friend. All my co-workers were disposable. There had to already be someone they hired on to replace me who had as good of relationship with them as I ever did.
Made me feel even lonelier.
Here I was nearing thirty and I was a failure. It wasn't that there weren't any jobs available, it's that I felt they were unsuitable. Everything I was qualified for paid far less than I'd been making. It made me realize how much I had built up at the bank. I had never been making great money, but all the little raises over the years built up to a decent salary. It was a stark revelation to find out that I would have to start at the bottom again and spend years climbing back to the place I was currently at.
It put my current life in jeopardy. I didn't know if I'd be able to maintain it at a lesser salary. I had rent, car payment, insurance; all the things I'd taken for granted. There was that allowance from Beth. It wasn't all that much, not really, just enough to get me by. I could pay all those bills, but barely and nothing else. If my parents weren't buying me groceries I would've already starved to death. Plus, getting my money from Beth was all dependent on Dana remembering to actually transfer the funds. I quickly discovered that if things didn't directly benefit her then Dana wasn't as fastidious about taking care of business. Beth took care of reminding her as much as she could. If not, if I was really hurting, then it fell to me to call her up and beg her for money.
It was really tough to do for all my internalized reasons: It wasn't my money, I didn't earn it. I didn't have a whole lot of pride, especially after Wyatt beat me to a pulp, but it still stung asking for money. I actually liked to work. The other reason I hated asking for the money was that I knew now that Beth couldn't actually afford it.
One night I finally worked up the courage to call Dana. She was never as concerned about her phone number as either Beth or Blood Shadow. Even after all the times she'd crushed and replaced her phone she never changed her number. It was a Sunday so I was surprised when she answered and sounded drunk. She was slurring her words and twice she forgot who she was talking to. Finally I made it clear that I was Beth's boyfriend and not Beth herself putting on a voice.
I got Dana to agree to transfer money into my account in the morning, though she told me to be sure and text her to remind her. But she let slip that I should be careful with my money because it wouldn't last for that forever. Beth, like most villains, Dana told me, never expected to ever actually go to prison. Except the very, very smart, most villains lived an almost paycheck-to-paycheck existence. She told me that a lot of them would make a score, rest on that until their cash flow ran low then go out and get more.
Beth was somewhere near the middle, but still not in the saving part. Her ranch wasn't profitable; most other owners would've sold it off already. She also had to maintain taxes on it plus her fancy downtown condo. She hadn't been that dumb with her money, just always assumed she could make more to support her lifestyle. It was the same position I was in: I lived my life thinking I would always have a job with steady paychecks.
Then Dana hit me with the news which made me feel the worst:
The Psycho Surgeon cost much more than Beth originally figured it would. All the healing he'd done had driven her almost destitute. It was more than she could cover after paying for all my legitimate hospital bills. From prison she was liquidating as many assets as she could to make sure she could cover it. Dana said that while the Psycho Surgeon came off as a generally affable, if only a bit weird, guy when I met him that he was still incredibly dangerous. Nobody wanted to owe him money. She told me she could tell me some horror stories about what he'd done to people who tried to avoid their debt, but I declined.
There was some weirdness with the accountant. Dana said she drained the one account Beth told her to nearly to zero. When she went to the accountant to get details on another, the accountant became nervous and said that he couldn't authorize access to another account without word from Beth through her lawyer. The lawyer refused to let Dana get into a different account. Dana told me that this didn't sound like Beth and that she would investigate for me.
In any case, I told her to stop the allowance. I didn't want any money from Beth if it was hurting her. I would find a way to survive on my own. I could sacrifice my meager savings for a bit while I searched for a job. After that I resolved not to take anybody's charity at all in case it tempted me to remain in my pathetic state.
I felt even more terrible. Here I'd been, moping around, driving my girlfriend in to poverty and I didn't even know it. I was unwittingly making her life worse. The only conciliation I could do was thanking God she wasn't like me. That girl had nerves of steel. I would've broken immediately. She, I knew, was working on a plan to set shit right. It was only a small glimmer of hope to make myself feel better. It didn't really work.
I knew she was tough, I just didn't know if she could put up with the pressure. She was stuck in a small box with her finances dwindling and her future uncertain. I knew she had to be thinking of Wyatt. Not the present version, but her past with him. I knew she loved me. What she loved even more were her horses. I could only imagine how she felt in there, trapped, not knowing exactly what was happening on her ranch without her management. She had to dread every day that someone would come in and tell her that the auction had begun. I didn't know how she would react to something like that. Again, she wasn't like me. She wouldn't ball herself into a corner and try to cry herself into non-existence. She would go violent, she'd start a riot in that prison, she would burn that place down.
...and then she'd be moved to a different prison, thrown in solitary, and never seen again. That was depressing since in my darker moments I already considered that I'd never see her again already. At best that meant returning to my boring, conventional life. I'd eventually move onto other, lesser women; those that didn't have her fire. It would be some boring, dull woman who was content to indulge me in my simple desires to stay home and watch movies and never try anything new. Someone who would never push me out of my comfort zone. We'd grow old together and we wouldn't be in love, we just wouldn't hate each other.
I sat on my kitchen floor with my back resting against the oven, knees pulled up to my chest. I rested my arms on my knees and my forehead on my arms. I thought I knew what was coming next, but I guess I was too depressed to cry.
