Page 137 of Disarm
Like I wanted to shake him and apologize to him and scream at him and crawl into his bed and never leave again.
“It felt like someone punched a hole in my chest,” I say. “Relief, yeah. But also… anger. At myself. At him. At his brain. At his dad. At the situation. And then guilt for being angry, because how dare I be mad at someone whose life I’m trying to protect?”
Luis nods, jotting something down. “So, you went from fear to relief to anger to guilt,” he summarizes. “How quickly?”
“Like… thirty seconds,” I say. “Maybe less.”
“That’s a lot,” he says. “For your nervous system to process in half a minute.”
“Yeah, well.” I shrug. “I’m efficient.”
His mouth twitches. “Have you told him any of that?” he asks.
“Some,” I say. “He woke up. Apologized. Said he didn’t mean to scare me. Called me his emotional parole officer as a joke.” My jaw clenches. “He saw how it landed. He didn’t mean it like that, but… there’s some truth in it.”
“What do you mean?” Luis asks.
“I act like if I don’t check in on him, something bad will happen,” I say. “Like I have to monitor his mental state or he’ll… break. So yeah. A parole officer. Except he didn’t do anything wrong.”
“And what about you?” he asks. “Where are you in that metaphor?”
“I’m the… alarm system,” I say. “If something’s off, I go off.”
“And who resets the alarm?” he asks.
I stare at him.
“Exactly,” he says quietly.
I let out a breath. “Look,” I say, rubbing my hand over my face. “I’m not here to… complain about him. He’s the one who went through hell. I love him. I want to be there. I’m just… tired of living like if I fall asleep with my phone on silent, he’s going to die and it’ll be my fault.”
Luis nods slowly. “You love him,” he says. “You’ve been there for him in ways a lot of people wouldn’t know how to be. And you’re starting to realize the way you’ve been doing that might not be sustainable.”
“Yeah,” I say, voice rough. “That’s… about right.”
He leans forward a little, elbows on his knees. “What would happen,” he asks, “if you weren’t the only one on watch?”
I frown. “He has Dr. Kaur,” I say. “His therapist. And my mom. He texts her sometimes. And now his dad… kind of knows the full picture. That helps. Some.”
“What would happen if, when you got scared, instead of immediately deciding it was your job to go fix it, you said, ‘I’m scared,’ and reached out to one of them?” he asks. “Or even to him, with that vulnerability instead of just the action.”
My instinct is to reject it. “He doesn’t need my fear on top of his,” I say. “He’s already drowning. I’m the life raft.”
“What if the raft also needs support?” he asks.
I scowl at him. “That’s not how rafts work.”
“That’s exactly how humans work,” he says, unbothered. “You’re not a raft. You’re a person. You’re allowed to be afraid, too. And the burden of protecting him to the exclusion of your own needs… that’s not love. That’s martyrdom.”
The word lands and nothing about it feels steady.
“I’m not looking for gold stars,” I say. “I just don’t want him to die.”
“Of course you don’t,” he says. “That fear is valid. It’s based on real events. I’m not here to tell you to ‘chill out’ because everything will be fine. We both know that’s not how life works. What I am saying is that operating at a ten out of ten panic all the time?—”
“It’s not all the time,” I cut in. “Sometimes it’s only a six.”
He smiles slightly. “Six out of ten panic, then,” he corrects. “That level, constantly, is not sustainable. For your body. For your mind. For your relationship. You will burn out. And then you won’t be able to show up the way you want to.”
