Sliding Down the Sky Read Free

need. I remember thinking that this must be what hell feels like.
    After ignoring the phone and the door once too often, Leo made the building manager let him in. He hauled me to my feet and threw me in the shower, fully-clothed and practically comatose. He sat beside me, his arm around me, until the water washed enough of the darkness away for me to see the light again.
    He saved me because I didn’t have the heart to save myself.
    That was the beginning of my journey back to life. It wasn’t the life I wanted, but it was the life I was left with. It was up to me to stand up and move on. Looking back now, that was my rock-bottom, and despite the contstant temptation to curl up into a ball and sink into the depths, I couldn’t allow that to happen.
    It wasn’t an easy road. Salvation never is. Salvation hurts like hell, because the road seems neverending and much steeper than you remembered on the slide down.
    In the days, weeks and months that followed, Leo never left my side. He moved into my apartment, he made sure I ate and washed, and he shielded me from the media. He ferried me to and from appointments with a therapist and my doctor. He made sure I took my meds. He never gave up on me, even though I was often tempted to give up on myself.
    Eventually, the numbness wore off, but pain filled the vacuum. Physical pain, mental torture – sometimes it was unbearable. I lashed out at him, because he was there. I said things, things I regret now, but it didn’t drive him away like I hoped it would. Once, I accused him of being a martyr. I think that hurt him more than anything, although I didn’t know why at the time. I had no idea then, how much he had given up for me. He calmly told me he was my brother, he was staying, and I better get used to it. Then he told me to think about what our parents would do if they could see me now. It was that thought that festered in the dark recesses of my brain for weeks afterwards.
    The days blurred into each other. I was like a crackhead going through withdrawal. Lost and hurting, for a long time I didn’t want to be saved. I wanted him to let me wallow, but there was no chance of that. Instead, there was medication to even out my moods, therapy to talk through my fears, and then finally, a turning point.
    He wanted me to accompany him, his wife Gemma and three-year-old daughter Aria here, to this white-picket-fence town, and help him renovate and manage a bar he wanted to buy.
    I couldn’t even leave the apartment, and he was asking me to move to the other side of the country.
    I panicked. I wasn’t equipped to go out into the world, I didn’t have the necessary tools anymore. The last time I had, I was a different person. I had a career I was passionate about, friends who cared about me, a world of opportunity at my feet.
    Then there was the other version of me, the out of control one, the one that scared me when I saw her in the mirror. I wanted to make sure she was never going to take over my life again, but I could still feel her, standing behind me, waiting.
    The new me was still… new. I needed time to get to know her, to adjust to her life. I was still trying to figure out where she fit into this jigsaw puzzle of a world. Now was not the time to make any momentous decisions.
    But Leo wouldn’t let up. The more we talked about it, the more I could see how much the bar meant to him. It was his dream, and he wanted me to share it, with all of them. Who was I to stand in his way? I had taken him away from his wife and child for long enough. Even though he didn’t come right out and say it, I knew he wouldn’t leave me there alone. He didn’t trust me. I understood. I didn’t trust myself.
    I didn’t want to be responsible for ending his dream, just because I had thrown mine away.
    I think that’s when I realised how much he was willing to sacrifice for me. Maybe I’d known it all along, but the knowledge had been buried beneath all the shit I carried around inside