Chapter 44 - 2022

                                    

                                          
Content warning: mental health struggle/very brief reference to suicide
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I roll over again, pulling the bed sheet with me. It gets caught and frustration boils over inside me. I yank at it viciously, with much more force than is necessary, and it comes free suddenly, causing my arm to overshoot and hit the bedside table. 
'Ow! Fuck off!' I hiss at nothing and no one in particular, rubbing my arm angrily. 'Fuck this!' 
I swing my legs over the edge of my bed, standing up. Checking my phone, I find that it's only 2am. The sudden need to cry overtakes me, but I swallow the tears down. 
Before, when I couldn't sleep, I used to work, or train, or go for a walk, run, swim, anything at all. But since Dylan, I don't know. I can't bring myself to do anything. It's not that I'm scared, necessarily, but the idea of leaving the hotel room and going somewhere fills me with a buzzing anxiety that freezes me in place. 
But the annoying thing is that I can't sleep either. So I'm not sleeping, but I'm not doing anything either. I'm just paralysed, tossing and turning in my bed for hours on end. I get up in the morning feeling a million times worse than before. Last year, I could've not slept even an hour, yet I'd start the day feeling good. Now, even if I do sleep, I feel shit. I always feel shit. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, I just feel shit. 
In this moment, I wish that, if I manage to fall asleep, I don't wake up. 
I cross the hotel room to the balcony doors, sliding them open and going out into the night air. We're in Emilia Romagna this week, my favourite race location, my favourite circuit. And yet I don't feel anything. 
I just feel empty. 
There was another hearing this week, the start of the defence case. Dylan's lawyer brought in what felt like hundreds of witnesses, Dylan's friends and family, to give 'character testimonies.' It was basically hours and hours of people saying what a great guy he is, how caring he is, how he wouldn't hurt a fucking fly. The number of glares I got from people, fuckers who clearly think I made the whole thing up. It didn't help that his bastard lawyer has decided to make Charles and I his main defence point. Effectively, he told the whole court that I've framed Dylan so I can get rid of him and be with Charles. My lawyer said that it's just what the defence do, when they've got nothing. They make wild shit up, just in case it works. 
That doesn't make it feel any better. 
So, by the end, I basically just switched it all off. I left feeling absolutely nothing. I couldn't feel sad, or angry, I couldn't even feel tired. Just nothing. 
And I still feel nothing. Standing here, looking out over a place I love so much, knowing I have a weekend of doing something I love, with people I love, ahead of me, I feel nothing. 
In all my years, with everything I've overcome, I don't think I've ever felt so low. 
I'm on the fifth floor of the hotel. The ground disappears in darkness below me. 
Would it kill me? Probably. 
I wonder who would find me. I wonder who would cry when they heard the news. I wonder if my parents would come to my funeral. I wonder who would get my seat at Ferrari. I wonder if they would retire my number. 
I force myself back from the balcony railing, battling with my breathing and my thoughts. 
I'm not always like this. But it scares me so much, the way I think when I am. Because it only takes one time, one moment of hopelessness, and any possibility of a future is gone. For some reason, I still can't allow myself to cry.