Far From Home - Chapter 20: Chapter 20

Early November
Jake spent the week tied up in too much homework to fathom. For being under the typical credit-hour limit, his course load had become quite the mess to juggle. The night he called Aaron had been the worst night yet, but that didn't mean he wasn't close to pulling his hair out every single time his list of things to do in a night exceeded four assignments.
Andre didn't seem to be doing any better.
Whereas he should have already left to start his weekend away with his girlfriend, he was sitting in his bed with a textbook in his lap squinting like he was trying to decipher quantum physics from a book labeled 'Psychological Research Methods.' Andre in psychology would forever baffle Jake, but apparently his dream to become a psychiatrist to help kids back home meant more to him then wracking his brain to come up with a research project in the duration of the semester. Jake had suggested using himself as a study of the poor study habits of a frustrated college student, but his roommate didn't seem to find the joke amusing.
"You said you want to do something trauma related?" Jake tapped his pen out on his desk in thought. "Why not like... see how people react to being threatened at gunpoint or something?"
Andre shook his head as he flipped the page. "That's illegal."
"What?"
"I can't make people feel like their lives are in danger for an undergrad semester project."
"What if they volunteer?"
"Would you volunteer for that?" Andre glared at him.
"Wouldn't be the worst thing that's happened to me." Jake shrugged.
That fact should have bothered him more than it did.
"I can tell."
Jake let his pen fall still against the edge of the desk as he looked to his roommate for clarification. Andre didn't seem too involved in Jake's reaction, but Jake wanted to know exactly what about him screamed 'reckless' to the point where Andre thought he had been through worse than being held at gunpoint without even saying it. 'Reckless' wasn't even a word Jake would use to describe himself given his tendency to overcalculate rather than under. Suggesting that a care for his own life was something Jake had disregarded was somewhat of a puzzling assumption to come to.
"What do you mean?" He mumbled.
Andre glanced up to him with a bit of a contemplative, yet almost pitiful resolution in his features. He didn't try to fake a smile, but Jake noticed he usually held his emotions in his eyes, and tonight they were weighing Jake's expression with care.
"You talk a lot in your sleep."
"I do?"
"Yeah, dude." Andre looked back to his book. "It's usually no big deal, but sometimes you start some pretty heated arguments with something. I swear sometimes you're trying to fight it."
Jake's eyebrows furrowed in confusion as he stared over at his bed in contemplation. He hadn't realized he had even done it, but he wasn't quite sure how it was relevant that he did. While he felt a little guilty that he had evidently woken Andre up before—or maybe always—he didn't seem to see the connection between his sleeping patterns and being held at gunpoint... or something somehow worse.
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"It usually fades out in your younger teen years. It can be a sign of an underlying condition in adults."
God, you sound like a doctor already.
Jake scoffed with a playful smile. "What, like cancer?"
Andre didn't seem too impressed by his suggestion.
Always so serious aren't you?
"No, like PTSD."
The smile on Jake's face faded with the serious glare his roommate settled for as his eyes fell still on the page in front of him. PTSD? It was startling to think about, but it didn't make sense. Isn't that for veterans?
"I'm not a soldier." He shook his head. "I mean... I haven't like been to war or anything..."
Andre just shrugged in response. "Look it up."
Jake expected his roommate to take it back as a joke or explain it to him in some backwards way about how college was a battlefield in and of itself, but Andre was serious and Jake didn't know how to take that.
Why would I have PTSD?
It bothered Jake to consider himself being traumatized in such a major way. He hadn't been shot at in a desert or missed a near-death experience with a car bomb. He had lived a relatively normal life filled with relatively normal experiences... right? Sure, some things in his life were fucked up, but wasn't that the case for everyone? He wasn't the only one in town with a drunken asshole for a father that liked to take his problems out on him with insults and injuries he would forget giving the next morning. He wasn't the only one who had been hearing the subliminal homophobic messaging since he was young enough to speak. He wasn't the only one who had to step up to be a parent for their sibling, or who had to comfort their mother whenever something went wrong like she wasn't supposed to be the one doing that for him. He wasn't the only one. He wasn't special. He was normal.
That was normal... wasn't it?
What would it even mean if it wasn't?
Jake pulled his phone off of the desk and typed in a Google query as he kept a watchful eye on his roommate. His fingers itched to find the right words, but eventually he settled on 'can you have PTSD without being in war?'. The results came in quicker than he thought, and with far more information than he thought he needed.
The short answer was yes.
The long answer was that he was fucked.
His eyes worked over a website on non-combat PTSD and it sent his heart pounding in his chest. The list went on and on and he checked too many boxes. That wasn't normal... fuck, that wasn't normal?
Physical abuse. Check.
Domestic violence. Check.
Exposure to alcohol or substance abuse. Check.
Emotional abuse and neglect. Check.
Being threatened with a weapon. Check.
Fucking hell, how long does the list go on?
He didn't want to see it anymore. He didn't want to keep scrolling down a list of possible scenarios that he may or may not have experienced. He didn't want to admit any of the five boxes he had checked so far meant anything. He didn't want to know that he identified with too many of the symptoms for comfort, or that it meant he might not be as okay as he thought he was given the circumstances.
A message came across the top of the screen and Jake didn't even see who it was before he clicked on it to take him away from the mental hellhole he was falling into.
His screen flashed 'Connor.'
There were a string of texts dated back to July that filled the screen as he read back over them. Connor had told Jake that the stars were clear enough to see that night and Jake had gone out to his truck bed to watch them as he texted Connor back a typical goodnight with the promise of seeing him tomorrow. It made his heart ache with a distant memory of how well Connor knew him, that even now—four months later—turned his face soft with adoration as he glanced over the words on the screen.
God, I loved you then, I just didn't know it.
The last message on the screen was new—the first message sent after the last goodbye. Jake's eyes read over it with surprise and some ill-advised feeling of hope he knew he should have been working to keep down. His eyes traced each letter as if Connor had written them himself, and with it came some of that fatal optimism only reserved for Connor Morgan. The fatal optimism that he could allow himself one more conversation with the boy whose heart he broke in hopes to put his own back together.
The words came as a promise to Jake to rekindle his feelings, or to allow him the quiet mercy he needed to finally let go.
i think i'm ready for that talk now.