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Even wakes up, and Isak is there. This is the first thing.
Even wakes up, and Isak is there, and Even can feel the pounding in the back of his head. He can feel the bone-deep heaviness. The tether to the core of the earth. Even is weighted down with sadness. This is the second thing.
Here is what they don’t tell you about the sadness: it is not only softness.
He has seen it in films, in TV shows. When they talk about depression but they hide from the worse sides of it. The bad sides of it. The dirty, gritty, greasy sides of it.
It’s not just sleeping all day, though that happens too, cracked open head and mouth that doesn’t feel like it fits in his own body. Hands that shake when he holds them out in front of him, disorientated. Sheets that haven’t been changed in months, stained with sweat and food and spit, stained with all of the worst parts of his skin, spilling out into the real world.
There are weeks when he can’t get out of bed, can’t eat because the food goes rotten in his mouth. Can’t leave the house because the walls are a monster and that monster has eaten him alive.
It is this, but it is not just this.
One time, he punched every mirror in the house. Punched them over and over again, until they all shattered. Punched them so his reflection, blinking back, would be just as flawed as his head was. Just as flawed as his mind was. When the glass spilled onto the floor, he expected to feel something. Nothing happened, so he smashed every plate, every bowl, every mug. He spilled it all onto the floor and walked across it, waiting for his skin to react to his head.
When his mother had seen his bleeding body she had cried for hours. Each one of her sobs had wracked itself down his spine, and he’d felt violent and ugly. He’d felt pulled apart at the seams, too big for his own skin. Furious at himself for doing this to her, at her for crying in the first place. He’d felt so angry that it had exploded out of him, a supernova of accusations and cruelty.
“Stop fucking crying, I have it worse than you.”
Slammed door. Broken handle.
He’d cried then, as well. Angry and painful and tearing itself out of his body. He’d collapsed on the floor and been unable to move, stuck underneath the force of everything, the force of it all. His head hurt for weeks afterwards, and his mum still sometimes had trouble meeting his eyes, mouth twisting sideways, eyes watering up.
The sadness isn’t just sadness. It is complete lockdown, body malfunctioning. He feels distant and dislocated, an impostor in his own body. He is the worst kind of liar, and he is good at it. He’s been hiding behind this face for twenty years now, he is good at claiming he is this person.
He is a kite-string of personality traits, an amalgamation of movie quotes and famous people and anything else he saw in someone and stole for his own. He is a hoarder, a fake, a liar.
When he tells Isak to get out, that he’s going to leave, that he shouldn’t have to see this, to handle this, he does not mean the fact that sometimes his bones are too heavy to lift.
He means that there are going to be days he plays shitty, screaming, pulsing music at full volume and holds the speakers to his ears to see if listening to violence can shake the feeling from underneath his skin.
He means that there are going to be days he questions everything about Isak, everything from the way he smiles, to the way he looks at Even – because he can’t believe that Isak would actually love him. He can’t believe that anyone would ever be stupid enough to give Even their heart, because Even swallows things whole. Even’s teeth are made to tear things apart, and Isak Valtersen is easy prey.
There are going to be days when he’ll be itching for a fight, when he’ll aim right for the jugular. Days where he’ll force a fight so that someone screams at him the way he feels he needs to be. A sick kid of masochism that he can’t stop himself from doing.
“I love you,” Isak says, soft and gentle and careful. He’s all golden curls and open palms and he’s facing Even in the bed, and Even looks at him and says:
“I love you too.”
This is the one thing about him that isn’t a lie. Even loves Isak so completely it threatens to consume him at the same rate his mental health does, a sick kind of overpowering love that sometimes feels cloying, too heavy. A love that is so much it has to be a burden, Isak has to feel the weight of it.
Even loves him so much that he wants to bare his teeth to him and say run for your life. Loves him so much that he wants to kick the walls of this bedroom down around him, cover himself in brick-dust and building and bury himself alive so that he can’t rip Isak to shreds with his bare hands. Loves him so much that he wants to never see him again because he’s going to ruin him.
Here's what they don’t tell you about the sadness: it’s not like drowning. Drowning is peaceful. Drowning involves the sea and a body, and nature taking her course. Even’s sadness is more like a nuclear bomb, painful and dangerous and with devastating side effects. No one around him doesn’t get burned.
“I can take it,” Isak says, chin locked, head tipped back. “Minute by minute, yeah? Whatever you throw at me, we’ll work through it. Together.”
Even nods. He’s selfish. Too selfish to say: no one can take it. Too selfish to say: I can throw a hell of a lot.
Here’s what they don’t tell you about the sadness: it’s not only softness.
If Isak was a colour, he’d be cream. He’d be the colour of a wedding dress, the colour of a cloud. Isak would be the feathers on a swan. He is pure, and clean, and Even is going to colour him in, in all the wrong ways. Even is going to split him open until his insides pull out, because his sadness won’t stop until it’s pulled everyone else down too.
He is a tar pit, quicksand. He is sticky and scary and hopeless to resist. Even kisses Isak and tries to press apologies under his blood with only his lips.
I love you, he thinks. May one of us make it out alive.
*
Here’s what the sadness doesn’t tell you: it passes.