touch

This was the craziest weekend of my life. To put it all in a few sentences, mainly I rode in a frozen school bus to Powell, Wyoming, and a debate meet. I was apparently doing really well when I broke into quarterfinals, I'd won five debates, lost one, and was in third place out of about twenty I think. But that same old monster was with me, and I was more depressed than usual and more confused than usual because Matt had just asked me out, and I was convinced that I was doing horribly and my mind kept whispering, you're a failure, you're a failure. And I got second place speaker but I didn't know any of that all I knew was that I could barely walk because all I'd eaten in three days was a piece of celery.
At quarterfinals, I felt the most dejected, discouraged, and hopeless that I've felt for a very long time. Everything horrible that anyone has ever said to me kept replaying in my head, mainly my mother's words. And I thought, I'm pathetic. And I thought, I'm never going to win. And I thought, I'm not worth it.
And I lost. Not by much, and my opponant did cheat a little in her final speech, but I lost, because I debated badly, because I had no confidence. And as the judges disclosed, as I walked out of that room, I felt so incredibly numb. Like every nerve in my body had been boiled and turned off. And I knew life wasn't worth it anymore. My addictions welled up within me. I felt like dying. I wanted to die. But there was Matt. There was Amanda.
The only real thing was the razor in my backpack. The only real thing was me in the bathroom. And I was torn open and apart. I was raw and confused and numb. I was leaning against the door physically, but in actuality I was floating near the ceiling. There was only me and the pain, far off, and the fact that I was a total and complete failure and would never amount to anything.
Amanda was there. She should have run away. She should have but she didn't. She saw the cut, the blood. More than that, she saw how far away I was. It doesn't make sense that she cared but she did and she came to me where I was and she brought me back and that meant more to me than anything ever has.
On the way home the bus was so cold and Matt was there beside me, and we were talking, and suddenly his hands were in mine and his head was on my shoulder and his lips were a centimeter away from mine. And there was terror in me but there was also this yearning, this joy, this need for this touch, this closeness. And I moved closer to him (that was the hardest part, the moving closer, the fighting with the thing inside my head that screamed "stop" and suppressing it and moving closer to what I most feared) and I felt my whole body against his and my universe stopped and I thought, SO THERE MICHAEL (because that was my cousin's name). And I knew, that though my mind was fighting, what was real was the softness of Matt's hands, the strongness of his fingers stroking mine, and what was dead but never gone was that panic inside of me.
I was so afraid. Of what I don't know. Being raped maybe. That dirtiness maybe. All the irrational things in the world. But I let myself fall into that moment, the craziness, that such a torn-open, crazy weekend could end with that sensuality. And it wasn't (for once) masochism, it was desire. To be healthy. To be happy.
He fell asleep on my shoulder with his hands in mine. And Amanda was behind me with her hat and her scarf and I thought, this is enough, to make me happy forever, just moments like these and this stillness.