He's right back to square one after that; he can't sleep again and his appetite drops, everything becoming inanely pointless. He doesn't want people to catch on, though, especially when his mom has been so happy with him lately. He doesn't want to see the disappointment on her face when she realises that it's not going to get better; Blaine is stuck in some stupid, maddening circle that always leads him right back here and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

So he gets good at hiding hollowness behind feigned interest and fake smiles. It's not hard; he's been perfecting them for the better half of his life. No, the only tricky part is his nightly phone call with Kurt, who is far more perceptive than anyone else—or maybe it's just harder to act when the audience cannot see your face. He notices straight away when Blaine sounds off, when his performance starts to flag after a long, exhausting day of pretending. Kurt's voice does that thing where he sounds concerned with an undertone of fear—he's still afraid of you, Blaine—and he always makes up ridiculous excuses to keep Blaine on the line longer. The one small blessing is that he doesn't rat Blaine out to his mother. He's not entirely sure who created the diaphanous bubble that surrounds her at the moment, but he knows he cannot be the one to rupture it.

He feels trapped, like everything is imploding inwards in slow-motion and he's just stood there, transfixed by the beauty of the dust particles, unaware that everything is self-destructing besides from a strange sense of claustrophobia. Except part of him does notice the demolition; sometimes the numbness he clings onto isn't enough. Sometimes he locks himself in a bathroom stall halfway through class and allows the dust inside to pour out through his tears, or he waits for his father to be at work and his mom to have popped out to the shop and screams at the ceiling. He feels sorry for his ceiling, to be honest. It's so white and guiltless, yet Blaine still insists on hurling blame at it—blame that he knows belongs to him and him alone.

The thing is, he doesn't understand how he became so trapped in this cycle in the first place. He knows what everyone thinks, he can hear their whispers; they all believe that the break-up destroyed him, that he brought it on himself and then couldn't reap the consequences. But he can't remember it being like that—the numbness started before then, although he can't for the life of him place his finger on an exact date. He doesn't think there is one; he hasn't been damaged by a single emotion or event, but rather the damage has prevented him from dealing with them. In fact, he feels strangely detached from everything that's happened in the past few months, as if he's just an understudy in someone else's life.

He has become used to setbacks while growing up, knows the feeling of devastation when he lets everyone, including himself, down. He used to promise himself that he would become stronger than the thing that set him back, that one day he would laugh when someone mentioned it because he would be so far above it all. The setback would become the one in the wrong, not him. Lately, he's discovered he can no longer do this. He finds it hard to pick himself back up again, not because of the setback like everyone immediately assumes, but because he has no hope of overcoming it. He has no hope in himself.

He wishes he was invisible because the pretending is exhausting. He wishes tears were imperceptible so he could cry all day and no one would ask meaningless questions: Why are you crying? Why are you crying? Why are you crying? He can hide himself from them and they don't look too closely, but it's just a lot of effort. Too much effort.

 One evening he finds himself sat on his bedroom floor, fingers of his right hand curled around a fresh bottle of sleeping pills, not sure whether they belong to his mother or his father. He opens the cap, ears buzzing at the satisfying ‘pop' sound it makes, and tries to tip a pill onto his palm. Except it won't drop down, so he tilts the bottle further, coaxing the little white disc out from where it's caught on the edging. In a sudden surge of muted frustration, he gives the bottle a shake and, before he can stop them, dozens of pills tumble out, most of them missing his palm and ensconcing themselves on the carpet.  

“Fuck,” He swears under his breath, hand clenching around the practically empty bottle and then, suddenly, he feels his eyes widen, eyelashes curiously wet as they blink in shock. He freezes and then throws the bottle away from him; it doesn't make it very far but the dull thud is enough to make him jump to his feet. He can't do this. Not again.

He sets about replacing the pills in the bottle, fetching the hoover from the closet under the stairs for good measure, and then grabs his phone. His heart is pounding too fast, but he needs the sound to keep communicating to him as he taps the number onto the screen.  The call is picked up after two rings.

“Hello?”

“I…don't think…I'm okay.” He croaks out and lets Dr Marissa talk at him, allows his words to make sense inside his head and follows his instructions to write down an appointment. He breathes a sigh of relief; Dr Marissa has caught the end of the string and is guiding him out of the wind.

No, he thinks as embers glow inside—not quite a fire yet, but kindling—you caught the string yourself this time.