Teen Ink

December

It's a sticky transition out of depression, a sort of quicksand mentality that can't be remedied by booze or a relationship or both. It's a matter of time. It's a matter of not thrashing about anymore and clawing at the walls in vain, but looking for loose vines to grab onto and gently easing yourself out.

With Sam on the crook of my elbow, I felt no anxieties going to Hillary and her roommates' house for New Year's Eve, and only waved a brief hello to Sprinkles instead of a long renedezvous. I didn't touch the Chex Mix. Sam took a picture of Hillary's framed picture of us as little kids, kept it as blackmail.

You said that you didn't want 'us' to have just been a transition. We were just a transition, but really everything is, everything in our lives is just trying to propel us forward into the next transition.

But every stage depends on the previous one, and there is no way that I would be holding Sam's hand instead of staring at my wall had it not been for you. You might've sat in your bathtub a lot more evenings than necessary had it not been for me.

We texted Happy New Years to each other, and I hoped that if you kissed someone that they would be nice and gentle and everything you wanted, but I really did not wish it was me.

At midnight I kissed Sam, and I felt the clocks reset and numbers change and thought of everyone kissing at that very second and I knew I was gonna be okay.

The End