Tag: i FORGOT about this

returnsandreturns:

HI I DID A SAD THING. tw: suicidal ideation, mania, mixed states, depression

• most of matt’s time with elektra in college was wrapped up in a manic episode that just felt like being in love–and it was love, too, but it was also his heart kickstarting constantly and energy staticky under his skin and his memory of it fucked up later, no idea how the time passed.
• he doesn’t just fall into depression when she leaves him but the broken glass place between the two where he spends a week hooking up with different people from random bars and stealing the pills from their medicine cabinets
• (eta: it should be noted that this wouldn’t be matt’s normal instinct, that this is the thing your brain pulls out when you’re trying to figure out the most harm you can do to yourself without actually hurting yourself, how reckless and stupid you can be)
• he finally goes back to the dorm with the bottles in the bottom of his bag and wonders what foggy would do if he asked him to read the labels to make sure he’s not just taking a bunch of tylenol
• foggy tries really hard to do the kind of things you do when your best friend gets dumped, but matt gets into bed that night and doesn’t care if he ever gets up again.
•  he doesn’t tell foggy that he doesn’t want to go find someone to hook up with because he slept with five people last week. that he doesn’t want to drink because he’s afraid of what he’ll say. he just wants to sleep, he says. he’s just tired. it’s basically the truth.
• foggy’s there even when matt doesn’t want him to be. foggy’s there even when he shouldn’t be, skips classes to sit in matt’s bed and make him watch movies and doesn’t act offended when matt gets huffy or when he gets mean, because sometimes he thinks he’s mean to foggy just to see what will make him finally give up 
• “this isn’t a normal breakup,” foggy says one day, and matt stays quiet and still for a long time before he nods. it’s not a normal breakup and it’s not just a breakup. it’s him. 
• foggy makes him eat and sleeps in his bed with him and doesn’t make him talk. he listens when matt wants to. slowly, matt doesn’t feel like the world’s going to shatter around him if he steps out into it. 
• he didn’t need foggy to do this, because this has happened before–some of it’s new, the hot fast shaky fun now now now feeling, but he’s been pulling himself out of this pit since he was a kid. he would’ve been okay. 
• …having foggy around didn’t hurt, though.
• he throws away the pills and takes an hour-long shower and practices breathing like a person and faking smiles and foggy says, “hell yes, he emerges,” emphatically when matt meets him for lunch the next day.
• matt’s smile isn’t as fake as he thought it would be.