**I awaken with a tight feeling around my wrists.My vision is blurred, my head throbbing and brain disoriented. I don't know where I am, and my last memories are a jumbled mess. The last thing I remember clearly is Isaac telling the guards to get me out of the car. Everything else, for the moment, is darkness. Bleak. Scrambled TV static.I open my eyes but remain completely still. I wait for sounds before I make any sudden movements; my vision is still getting back to me.I can hear muffled speech in another language. It takes a moment for me to realize that it's in Spanish. I can grasp the conversation—what I need from it:"You fucking idiots. Do you not know how to fo

** Today is Christmas, though I'm anything but festive. The house is empty and quiet when I wake up. I took the guestroom, which happens to be significantly larger than my own room at home. The sun comes in brightly through the large windows, illuminating the table that centers the room, the dresser, the TV and the large bed I can't seem to get out of. I refrain from touching my phone since Isaac suggested that engaging with social media or stressing myself out more with work is counter-intuitive. I reminded him that I still have a job—a career—that I have a commitment to. But my life (again, per Isaac's words) is more important than my career, and until this shitstorm is settled, I have to lay low. I didn't take it well; I'm still adjusting.

** I don't know how to feel about the sight in front of me. Alejandro being carried away. That's what I see, sitting on the ground with Sebastian's arms still wrapped around me. I watch Isaac and Claude lift his body up and haul him out of the room. His eyes are closed, hair hanging back to reveal more of the gash on his nose—the gash I created. I just stare, my body in a state of shock with my limbs frozen stiff. They struggle to haul Alejandro's mass through the door, but they succeed, the sounds of their laborious breathing being heard as they travel down the hall. When they're gone, I look around the room at the mess—the ceiling plaster scattered on the floor, the broken lamp, overturned furniture. None of it seems real when the images burn into my brain. Sebastian begins to remove his hold on me, slowly as if it's a danger to my wellbeing for him to break away. "I'll be right back," he assures me. His voice is certain and adamant

** I wait for the walls to cave in on themselves. I wait for the lights to go out and for everyone to disappear. Suddenly, I'll be free falling. And right before I hit the ground, I'll jolt myself awake; this is a dream. I want this to be a dream. I want to wake up right next to Leslie with the sunrays and the sheets and shit. I don't want this to be real. But after waiting for the end of the dream, it never comes. This is real life. What I'm seeing is one-hundred percent real. Claude, Isaac and Penny stand beside me, staring in the same direction that I am but wearing different facial expressions; I'm the only one whose expression isn't distinctive. Salvador continues to try and wake Alejandro up. There's a small groan that emanates from him, but he still remai

**JANUARYFor the last thirty days, I've been dealing with the most unbearable anxiety.Not because of everything that happened in December—I have been seeing a therapist for almost an entire month who has helped me tremendously with correctly channeling my feelings about everything that happened to me; Sebastian promised to talk to someone if I did, so we're both making weekly visits to shrinks.It isn't work, either. Work has been "relatively" normal ever since I returned to my apartment and eventually got back into my routine. The ideal reasons aren't the reasons at all. The real reason involves a man that I can't seem to get enough of—a man that seems to always spiral my life out of con