Before I Break (If I Break 1.5) Page 4

***

  I follow Jenna to her house to make sure she makes it in the state she’s in. She gets out and walks over to my car.

  “You’re sure you don’t want me to go with you?” she asks quietly. I nod my head. I really do want her to, but I don’t know what I’m about to hear, and she’s not as good at keeping her emotions in check as I am.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I’m done talking to them,” I say, trying my best to smile. She leans down to kiss me but doesn’t on my lips, just right near them. I’m not sure what to make of that. My brain is too tired to analyze it.

  As soon as she closes the door behind her, I hit the gas and head to my house. There are so many things running through my head. The voice named Cal. What Dexter has to do with this? Jenna’s theory. My parents. The girl my mom called Lauren, who, if Jenna is right, is...I won’t even think about what that means.

  When I pull onto our street, I see a white Audi parked across the street from our house. I didn’t notice it before, but it’s hard to miss now. That has to be the girl’s car, which means she’s still here. My stomach turns. I pull around to the back of the house. I park in my normal spot and go in through the kitchen, once I make sure the coast is clear.

  “I want to talk to Cal. Right now!” I hear her voice yell. My stomach to drops, and I move closer to the door so that I can to hear.

  “Does he not want to see me? The damage has already been done! I just–He owes me an explanation!” I hear footsteps approach, and I move back from the door.

  “Lauren, please calm down,” I hear my mom say, and the footsteps stop.

  “You know my name?” I hear the girl ask. She sounds as surprised as I was. She doesn’t know my parents.

  “We know who you are. You’re Cal’s wife,” I hear my father say. My throat tightens. How do they know this ‘Cal’ guy? My heart is beating faster and faster, but I know there is a reasonable explanation for this. There has to be.

  “So he told you about me? Then, why does he act like he doesn’t know me? Is it because of that woman out there? I’m sorry I don’t know who… He never mentioned you. He—he…” her voice trails off, and I’m as close as I can be to the door without going through it.

  “He doesn’t know who you are. The person you saw earlier wasn’t Cal,” my mom says, and I let out the breath I’ve been holding. The knots in my stomach release. I can’t help the wide smile that spreads across my face as a sense of relief courses through my system.

  “I don’t understand… No that was Cal. I know it. It has to be,” the girl says adamantly. She sounds so sure about it, I feel sorry for her. I don’t know who this Cal guy is or how she could feel so strongly about a guy who seems like an asshole…

  “Are you telling me that… is he Cal’s brother? Is he Cal’s twin?”

  Why didn’t Jenna and I come up with that? It would make so much sense. Maybe I have a twin, or a brother who looks like me. I don’t know anything about my birth parents. It’s entirely possible, but the message...It doesn’t fit unless he’s screwing with me, but why?

  “Yes,” my dad answers.

  “William, no. No more lies. She deserves to know the truth. We agreed that we’d tell her,” my mom says sternly, and my stomach churns. My heart is beating in my ears.

  You can't get married because you already are....Since no one gave two shits to inform you. I'm Cal.

  I hear voices, but I can’t tell who’s saying what. I squeeze my temples together and make myself focus. The one thing Dr. Lyce told me to try to do to prevent blacking out. I’ve been getting better at it the past year.

  “…I understand he used me. … He never loved me,” the girl states before she cries. I’ve missed something. I put my ear back to the door.

  “Oh, no sweetheart, you have the wrong idea,” My mother says, and I don't know what I missed.

  “Chris and Cal share the same body, but the person you met today is Chris, not Cal. That’s the reason why he reacted the way that he did. He truly doesn’t know who you are. Cal is a separate personality from Chris....”

  I’m going to be sick.

  I’m going to throw up right here.

  “Chris has what is called Dissociative Identity Disorder,” my mom says, and I’ve heard enough. I’m dizzy. I make my way over to the kitchen table. The room feels like it’s getting smaller. My chest constricts.

  “You–you’re both lying for him. You’re covering for him!” the girl shouts.

  “We’re telling you the truth. Chris doesn’t know who you are. He doesn’t know what Cal does,” I hear my mom say, and I can’t take anymore. No. No. No!

  I burst out of the kitchen, onto the back porch, and right over the railing, all the contents of whenever I last ate pour out of me. I’m outside but I can’t get enough air.

  I’m Cal.

  I try to catch my breath and wipe away the hot tears escaping my eyes. All of this time. No clue. I thought I just had amnesia, an undiagnosed neurological disorder. It was all a lie. My life is a lie or one of them is. How is this possible? How can something like this actually happen? Why would they lie to me? How could they do this? Two years! Two years I’ve gone without this happening. Well, aside from yesterday.

  I’ve finally finished my bachelor’s degree, I’ve gotten engaged, landed a steady job, and they let me do all of it knowing that this freak is living inside of me. But really I’m the freak, I’m crazy. I’m the psycho.

  I pull out my phone and listen to the message again then throw it across the field. Who the heck is this guy? Why don’t I have a clue about any of this? Why does he know more than I do? I kick the dirt. I really need something to hit, or even break. I feel like I’m breaking, and now, without realizing it, I’m crying.

  I haven’t cried since I found out my mom had cancer. I felt helpless then, and I feel the same way now. Everything I’ve worked for seems meaningless. I look back at the house and think of the girl inside. How could I be married to her? I don’t even know who she is. What do I say to her? To Jenna? I can’t marry her while I’m married to someone else, and if I’m not cured...Is there even a cure for this? When will this Cal guy pop up next? I think back to yesterday and shudder. It happened then. He came out...and he called me. He, who he is me...right? No, that guy can’t be me. I’m nothing like that. I sit on the porch, my head between my knees. What am I going to do? How do I explain this to people? How do I, can I live like this? My parents didn’t believe I could. They would have told me if they thought I could handle it.

  Dissociative Identity Disorder. What the hell does that even mean? It might as well be freaking “living inside of you disease.” I take a deep breath and head back in the house. There’s still yelling coming from behind the door but I ignore it. I head up the stairs and into my room. I flip open my laptop, pull up the search engine, and then stare at it. I sit down and stuff my head in my hands. They’re shaking. Once I do this, there’s no going back. But really there’s no going back now.

  I type in Dissociative Identity Disorder in and hit enter. 1,080,000 results. Wow. I scroll down and click on what seems like the most official link.

  Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), previously referred to as multiple personality disorder, is a dissociative disorder involving a disturbance of identity in which two or more separate and distinct personality states (or identities) control an individual's behavior at different times. When under the control of one identity, a person is usually unable to remember the events that occurred while other personalities were in control. The different identities, referred to as alters, may exhibit differences in speech, mannerisms, attitudes, thoughts, and gender orientation. The alters may even present physical differences, such as allergies, right-or-left handedness, or the need for eyeglass prescriptions. These differences between alters are often quite striking.

  I stare at the screen taking in all of the information. You’d think this would be empowering, finally knowing what’s wrong with me. But it’s terrifying because it makes t
his real. After reading about this for the past half hour, I haven’t seen that there is a cure. Treatment, therapy, something about integration which makes no freakin’ sense. Apparently I’m lucky though, there’s only one ...‘alter.’ That’s what Cal is, an ‘alter’. I suppose it could be worse, Cal could be a woman, and my husband could have showed up today…I think of his message and how he joked about it, knowing I had no clue what he was talking about. This guy is a prick. Hopefully he’s the only one, but who knows? I try not to think about what all this means. It’s kind of landed on my doorstep this morning, literally.

  My head weighs a thousand pounds. I want to wake up, run from this, for it to only be a nightmare. My life has gone from finally getting on track to straight to hell in a matter of minutes. I wonder who else knows and watched me blindly go through life without knowing the truth. Dexter obviously knew, but the real act of betrayal is my parent’s lies. I never trusted him, but them…how could they do something like this?

  I hear a car screech outside and see the white Audi pulling off. She’s gone. Maybe for good. She had no clue what was going on. This Cal guy has screwed us both over. If I were her I’d walk away and leave this mess behind. If he’s anything like I think he is, she’s lucky. Nothing tying her to this mess, but if that’s the case Jenna should leave too.

  She’s not tied to me. We’re only engaged.

  Are we engaged? Can you even get engaged while married to someone else? Married. Im married? No Cal’s married. That sounds even more ridiculous than me being married. I’m...Cal or Cal is me? It’s a bad math equation. How is it possible for him to have a whole relationship and manage to get engaged and married while this was happening? I should have some recollection of her. Well I did, kind of, but nothing concrete, no memories, just familiarity...

  The emotion that poured off that girl when she saw me. She looked at me as if I was her world. She was devastated when I didn’t know who she was. He couldn’t have had time to have a relationship like that. How could he forge a connection with someone that intense when he could disappear at any moment? They couldn’t have been in love.

  Fix this or there will be hell to pay.

  And who is he to threaten me? How am I supposed to fix this? I didn’t even know about any of this until today. He’s the one who ruined my life! The part that sucks about this the most is there’s nothing I can do. I’m powerless. How can I marry Jenna and not know when this guy will show up? I don’t know anything about him. How can I take his threat seriously? What if I marry Jenna one day and wake up as this guy the next? She doesn’t deserve that.

  I look under my bed and pull out calendars I used to keep before my blackouts stopped two years ago, when I started tracking the time I lost. I have four books worth. 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. I used to keep track of how many days I didn’t remember. I look over them all, counting. 12 days one month, 16 the next. 7, 10, 18, 22. I total them all together and out of four years, I was aware of what I was doing for 750 days. A little more than half of the time frame. That’s a hell of a lot of time for this Cal guy to do a lot of damage to my life…and build his own.

  A burning starts in my throat and spreads to my chest. I grab the calendars and start ripping them up and throw them across the room. I see pictures of me with my parents, with Jenna, and with friends throughout the years. I grab them and throw them too. This isn’t my life. How can it be my life when I don’t own it? When someone can take it over at any second without me having any say?

  “Christopher,” my mom says, her expression is horrified as she stands in the doorway, looking at me in the middle of my mess of a room. I’m about to be 28 years-old, and I still have a room in my parents’ house. I look at her, her face partially covered with her hands. My dad joins her soon after and takes a deep breath.

  “Son, what’s wrong?” he asks cautiously as if he’s afraid to hear the answer. I let out an angry laugh.

  “Dissociative-Identity-Disorder,” I say pointedly and watch their expression change from shocked to guilty.

  “We can explain. Come, come downstairs so we can talk about this,” my dad says.

  “What’s there to talk about? How fucked up my life is? That I’m sharing it with some asshole and you hid it from me?”

  “Don’t use that language with us!” my dad says, seemingly offended.

  “Why not, Dad? Is that too Cal-like?” I shout at them. He had no problem dropping f-bombs in the message he left me.

  “Son, we know you’re upset,” my mom interjects.

  “Upset, doesn’t explain this. My life has been a lie—I don’t have a life!”

  “You have a life. You, you’re the real person. He’s…”

  “Is that right? Because he has the wife? I’m pretty sure he has friends, and a house. He at least knew what was going on, and according to him, I’m ruining his life. He knows a hell of a lot more about everything than I do!” I shout, and there’s silence.

  “How could you not tell me this was happening?” I say, my anger turning to exasperation.

  “We thought we were protecting you. We didn’t want to burden you.”

  “Huh, how do you think I’m feeling now?” I laugh with disdain.

  “We’re so sorry, Christopher,” my mom says, tears falling from her eyes. She can save them now.

  “We thought it would make things worse,” my dad says incidentally. Like hiding the fact that I have another person inside of me was trivial. Some sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

  “How?! How could you think that was best? How could you think that me not knowing there’s this jerk-off running around, screwing people, and getting married was best for me?!” I ask, letting out a disbelieving laugh. They looked dumbfounded.

  “You let me think that I was having blackouts and amnesia, a normal side effect of some made-up neurological disorder. How could you do this to me?” I say louder because it’s as if they aren’t hearing me.

  “We were going to tell you,” My dad finally answers.

  “When? Because this has obviously been going on for years. Why now? Oh, because I could possibly get arrested for being a polygamist?” I shout.

  “That’s enough!” my father says, authority dripping from his voice. My chest is heaving, but I try to calm down; seeing the tears covering my mom’s face and hearing her soft whimpers from her covered mouth breaks my heart.

  “Don’t you dare think for a minute this has been easy for us. You don’t think we wanted to tell you? You don’t think we wanted this guy to disappear? Trust me he’s not any fun to deal with! The day we met him was one of the worst days of our lives,” my dad says, his voice stern but yielding.

  “Not telling you was one of the most difficult decisions we have ever made. We thought we were doing what was best for you. Clearly we see that we were wrong now,” he continues.

  “You have to know we didn’t do this to hurt or deliberately deceive you. You have to know that, Chris. We thought that it would be easier for you not to know, until we knew you were in a good place to deal with this. We didn't know what would happen if we told you...” my mom explains timidly.

  “We couldn't see what good would come from telling you,” my dad interjects.

  “The doctors pretty much told us that there was no cure for this. Intensive therapy could make you one with this guy. Trust me he isn’t anyone you need to be ‘one’ with. Why tell you this if there was nothing we could do about it? It was just going to make you worried and stressed out of your mind,” my dad says defensively.

  “When you came back after my diagnosis, we were going to tell you. By that time, we knew about Lauren and saw that Cal was doing things that would eventually affect you,” my mom sighs.

  “But you were being so strong for me while I was sick. It seemed like too much. As time went on, things got better for both of us, we thought. We hoped that maybe there wasn’t a problem anymore,” my mom says, her voice returning to normal.

  “Everything has been going so well. We w
ere selfish to revel in the normalcy of life.” my dad says.

  “When you told us yesterday that you were marrying Jenna, we knew we had to say something. We were just trying to figure out the best way,” my mom adds.

  I let out a deep breath and hold my head. I know that they didn’t have evil intentions. I know all of this time they’ve had to be going through hell too. I sit down on my bed and rest my head in my hands.

  “What do I do? Where do I go from here?” I ask the people who helped me make every major decision in my life. My mom lets out a deep sigh.

  “Th—there’s something else we have to tell you son,” my mom says reluctantly.

  ***

  “You need another one of these.” Lisa pours another shot of vodka in my glass, and I down it before finishing the rest of story. The room hasn’t started spinning yet, but my head is.

  “Right. When I thought things couldn't get any worse, they tell me not only did this jerk-off marry someone, but he got her pregnant too, which makes me the father.” I laugh, staring at the empty glass. I don’t usually drink much, but before telling her this story, I told her to pull out the bottle first. Her eyes are wider than they’ve been since I started the story of my life over the past twenty-four hours.

  “Whoa, I was going to say this was your last shot, but I think whiskey is in order.” She disappears behind the bar. She replaces my empty glass with the brown liquid from her bottle; it’s the kind my dad pulls out on special occasions... I lift my glass feeling a wide goofy smile on my face.

  “To me being a father!” I say sarcastically, and she bursts into laughter.

  “You are the father!” she says with fake enthusiasm. We laugh, clinking our glasses together. The good thing about alcohol is everything that sucks in your life seems hilarious. The sting of the whiskey burns five times worse than the vodka. I usually only have a beer or two, but with each drink, it’s as if each problem I picked up today disappears.

  “I wish...I could have been there to see the look on Jenna’s face when your wife showed up,” she says with a giggle. I shake my head. I wish they got along better since she’s my best friend and all, but that’s the least of my problems now.