Running for Home - 36. December 20, 2021

December 20 2021

Classes are finished until the New Year, thank god. I’m definitely ready for a break. I’m supposed to be going out for drinks to celebrate later, but I’m so exhausted that I’m questioning whether I should. I guess I’ll take a nap after I finish this entry.

So the drugs seem to have done what I needed them to do. I haven’t had any flashbacks since I went on them and my anxiety levels have been numbed. I still have some small spikes here and there, but they are manageable and I don’t feel paranoid. I think the paranoia was the part that worried me the most, so I can relax a bit. I’m going to stay on the medication until after the hearing with Dom in L.A. I figure I won’t really be able to let go of things until after I am finally rid of him, so I might as well take advantage of this crutch while Cecilia lets me. I haven’t told anyone else about being on them, though there have been a couple times where I am not sure I was discreet enough with my pills. Sigh. When it comes to the mental health side of things I really don’t like other people being all up in my business about it. There is literally not much people can do to help me with it unless I’m in a crisis, so there is no point in making a big deal out of it. Maybe, though, I’m more just avoiding having to answer questions because questions lead back to my past which leads into… that.

My friends already know enough. They don’t need to know what happened in that prison, what really went on. From what I can tell, Bobby hasn’t opened his mouth about it, either, so bonus points to him. Fucking bonus points for Drake. I… I hate how it makes me feel. I hate how it warms me up inside, because it’s just another thing leading back into that deep, dark hole that consumed my teenage years and left me vulnerable to Magneto’s manipulations. I can’t blame Bobby for my mistakes, but I can blame the feelings my friendship with him generated for putting me on that path.

I managed to finish my Christmas shopping with less hassle than I imagined. It helps that I asked Emma for an afternoon off and she granted it. I didn’t tell her why. She just looked at me for a second and then nodded. It didn’t feel like she had telepathically scanned me, but that woman is so goddamn powerful a telepath that I wouldn’t put it past her to be able to jump past any barriers I have without raising any alarm bells like they would have in the past. Then again, it’s not like I’ve been bothering with the old exercises that help resist telepaths and help you at least realize you are being probed. I’m not sure if Emma is quite as powerful as Xavier was, but from what I hear her finesse is probably best-in-the-world.

Anyway, I’m not going to write about what I got people. It’s not that I feel like any of them are somehow going to stumble upon this journal and read it - they aren’t Kitty, little Miss ‘What-Do-You-Mean-I-Invaded-Your-Privacy?’. I just… I feel like if I write about it, I will jinx it, doom them for failure. But… well, there is Bobby’s gift. I really didn’t know what to get him. I seriously struggled with it. That shouldn’t be all that surprising, given the ambivalence of my relationship with him. By ambivalence, I mean it in the classic sense of being pulled in two directions, not in the more modern apathetic sense. I couldn’t even really think about it, to be honest. That gift. Every time I thought about it, my thoughts were bringing me back to my teenage years, and I couldn’t handle that. Didn’t want to.

It’s unfair, really, that I was trying to do this now, to get a gift for him when I really haven’t known him for very long. The adult him. Seriously, we’ve only been on good terms for less than a month now. Is that long enough that I should be getting him a gift in the first place? Am I just doing this out of masochistic nostalgia? Would he even be giving me a gift, either? No, that doesn’t matter. I don’t expect anything from him. I don’t have a right to expect anything from him. Not after all this time.

But I did get him a gift. I did. I had finished shopping for everyone else, and the mall was starting to get busy because work had let out for the evening. I was stuck, contemplating what to get him and beating myself up about even thinking about getting him something in the first place as I walked around the mall. And then I saw it.

A 1909 Cy Young baseball card.

Cy Young, maybe the greatest pitcher of all time. Most wins, most innings played, all of that jazz. The eponymous Cy Young Award has been given out to the best pitcher of the previous year since the time he retired from pro baseball. The only reason I know anything about him is because he was Bobby’s idol back when he was a pitcher in Little League before his powers manifested and Xavier brought him to the School. There were a few times when Bobby got all excited about baseball, about a pitcher who was on the way to becoming another one of the greats and Cy Young’s name would come up and he wouldn’t shut up about him.

I paid $400 for that card.

I’m such an idiot.