Falling In The Ocean

📅 Spring ➝ Autumn 2015

【ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴀʟᴄᴏʜᴏʟɪsᴍ ᴀɴᴅ sᴇʟғ ɪɴᴊᴜʀʏ】

Things had changed since Seth had first met Jazz, that strange day in the lift where she’d peered out from behind her stack of moving boxes and told him she ‘knew he knew more than other people did,’ then asked him not to mention her to anyone. He’d seemed to be her first connection in her new situation, at the beginning, and she’d messaged him in a flurry at first about everything from if he could help her put together a shelf (“I can try”) to if the fire escapes could be accessed from the ground (“I would say to keep your windows locked, but not to worry,” he’d replied) to if he knew anywhere nearby that was hiring. (He did not.)
As the stability of her new situation sank in, however, the anxieties that plagued her seemed to lessen...though she still seemed explicitly fearful of people. Or at least, people other than him.

But she laughed more, even if it could be at odd times or a little after the joke had been said. She was sweet and good-intentioned, clearly, despite the way her affect seemed to slip or stumble in strange directions. Really, it made getting to know her...more engaging, in a way. Each interaction with her had an additional layer of complexity and Sethfire enjoyed getting to the point where he could follow; to where she made sense to him.

“I knew that you were Special,” she said to him one day as they were having an afternoon cup of tea together. It was the same tone she’d used for her previous statement, which had been about cereals being on sale when she went grocery shopping the previous day. “When I met you, I knew.”
“Special how?” Sethfire prompted. It came out somewhat flat. Honestly, he felt tired, even a little nervous. ‘Special’ was a word he didn't much care for anymore. He’d been special enough. Exceptional, enough. They were words with expectations; pressures. He wasn't feeling exceptionally special at that particular moment: He’d drunk quite a bit the previous night, and he’d had a difficult work day, with one too many clients who had experienced congruent trauma to himself.
“It’s not with a ‘how,’” Jazz said matter-of-factly. “Just Special. Like, you know when you can feel in the air that the weather will change? The air feels Special. You’re like that, but a person.”
“Are you suggesting, Jazz, that I can alter the barometric pressure of a room?” Sethfire joked gently. “Or the humidity, perhaps? I do hope not on that count.” 
She laughed. “You’re funny. I know I don't really need to explain. I know you know. You just don’t like admitting it.”
“I assure you, I’m not Special,” Sethfire said. He glanced out her window; the skies seemed greyer even on clear days. Perhaps the smog. “I am just a man, Jazz. I am just a man…”

He was just a man, a lone man, empty-nesting at 25 years old and starting to slip even as he denied it. But the trio had moved out in January, downstairs, and he hadn’t realized he was leaning on their impressions of who he was to keep himself up until those supports were absent, and he had no one immediately around to keep him centered. 

Drinking became a larger part of his life. There was no one present he had to be a role model for, for one, but also being alone was easier to stomach when he himself was better company, and he found himself less insufferably analytical when tipsy or drunk. It also made a day’s work seem a bit more like background noise, which was quite nearly a necessity what with how many trauma survivors he was speaking to as clients; how many trauma histories he was hearing in excruciating detail. Alcohol turned the volume down on it all once he arrived home. He figured knowing the risks and being mindful of his consumption was quite good enough to keep him in the clear during what was certainly a temporary and stressful adjustment period. He wouldn’t let it become a real issue.

And yet one spring night he managed to drink a bit too much. He knew he’d overdone it because his vision swam and he kept tipping forward as he paced through his flat, and it seemed like his short term memory had a tendency to spill out whenever he did. He was aware of a turn, somewhere, where he ceased to feel comforted and started to feel sad, and then he was in Athena and Kato’s old bedroom, staring morosely at the dust-covered blankets, and then he was in the kitchen again, remembering having called his mother from there, hating himself over it, and then—he didn't know how it happened—he was in the bathroom and there was blood all down the sink, pulsing out of a cut in his arm in time with his heartbeat.
Oh, shit.

That was a bad sign, very bad, and at first Seth had absolutely no idea what to do. He was drunk, he couldn’t drive himself to the hospital; he absolutely didn’t want to call an ambulance, and the idea of any of his band or their immediate circle hearing that he had relapsed was a poisonous thought: Athena would find out, and the hurt she’d feel, the distress—? And she was trying to grow up, to spread her wings. She couldn’t be fretting over him, trying to watch out for him! He couldn't believe he’d betrayed her in such a way, even drunk, and had to quash the urge to cry. 

Even with pressure on it, the cut was failing to stop bleeding, and Seth’s distress mounted. There was a frantic, caged feeling to it all, compounded by how much of a struggle it seemed to think coherently. Last-ditch, the only option he had, really, he dialed Jazz’s number—hoping against hope that she would answer despite the lateness of the hour.
Thankfully she did, and responded to his shaken, semi-slurred spiel about being drunk and having injured himself and needing medical attention not with horror or outright panic, but something matter-of-fact and thankfully calm. She was at his door in less than a minute, and though her face was flooded with concern, she didn’t interrogate him; just ferried him to the ER without any fuss on her part.

He needed several stitches, but his drunkenness and genuine shock at what he’d done and the honesty in his assurance that it had in no way been a suicide attempt kept him from being asked into the psychiatric wing, thank God. There was no way on Earth he could do that to his band; let alone to his job! He needed to keep himself together; needed to fix this slip as swiftly and silently as possible. So many people were relying on him. On him! He couldn’t betray that confidence...how could he betray that confidence? 
He thought of Athena and bit his lip. 
How could he betray that confidence again?

On the drive back to the apartment, he caught Jazz glance at him out of the corner of her eye. She’d been mostly quiet, obviously worried but simultaneously, in some way, apparently unfazed. He wondered if she pitied him.
“...So much for being Special, hm?” he finally sighed, looking up from his hands in his lap to see her expression.
She quirked her brow and blinked. “You’re still Special,” she said. She shook her head. “You can’t help it.”
He stared for a moment, then quite nearly laughed. That did seem to be the crux of it.

He still tried to redirect her whenever Specialness came up; he worried about encouraging such a belief in ESP. He felt he was a safe enough person to sense trustworthiness in, but that ‘next time’ her randomly-placed trust might land her somewhere more problematic.
Yet even as he attempted to keep her safe, Jazz was becoming a source of safety for him: She was someone pressureless, someone he had no need to keep up appearances for. Her ‘Special’ didn't involve expectations, like he thought it would, and he had nothing to prove to her: No real role to play other than that of a friend. His advice wasn’t truly guidance; his support was not guardianship. 
It ceased to bother him that her anxiety held her back from meeting his band-mates: Rather, he grew somewhat grateful for the separation, for the shelter of her specific friendship, where he had no great authority either over her—or in her perception. 

Her anxiety did begin to slacken further. She still came off skittish and her quirkiness meant her sense that others eyed her oddly was not inherently paranoid, but she was able to work a job and interact with people, at least casually. Certainly she voiced the fear it held for her, but she was truly trying; truly striving. Sethfire couldn’t help but feel glad for her, even as during autumn’s set-in, in his own life he all but quit working towards his counselling license and instead retreated further into himself. And into his alcohol.

“You need to stop drinking, bro,” Jazz said in October, the concern in her eyes too heavy for Sethfire to manage a laugh at the bizarre way she’d started to incorporate slang into her already odd mannerisms. The doleful “bro” was likely not worth risking tearing a stitch over, anyhow, and the shame over her having had to get him to the hospital again, this time for the stitches in his stomach, overwhelmed the humor.

“...Likely, Jazz. And a strong suggestion to receive from someone employed at a bar. I’ll endeavor to cut back.”