Post-traumatic

It's Wednesday morning and you're walking to the subway station near your house, on your way to work. It's a short walk, but you're running a little late, so you pull out your phone to see if you have any messages from your colleagues. There's one notification, from Gmail: you have a new e-mail. You open the app at the top of the stairs into the subway station, and it's from a friend in a different city who suffers from depression. The subject line reads "Sorry". [[Open the e-mail]]

Dear (print: $name), This e-mail was written on Sunday, the day I ended my life. (event: when time > 5s) [You stop at the top of the stairs to the subway.] (event: when time >8s)[(link:"Keep reading")[(show:?cloaked)]|cloaked)[(set: $email to "read")You finish reading the e-mail, a businesslike assemblage of instructions and information on how to proceed: who to call, who not to call, their address, the location of their spare key. "DO NOT CALL THE POLICE" stands out in one of the later paragraphs. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience," they write of their more detailed instructions. [[Call your friend | Call your friend (first)]] [[Call 9-1-1]] [[Go to work]] [[Contact their friends]]] or [[Remember the last time you saw them|The last hug (set)]]]

You call them, you get their voicemail, and you leave a message. (link-undo:"You have to do something else.")

You call 9-1-1, and the operator asks if you need police, fire, or ambulance. "Um, I'm not sure," you say. "I think this person is already dead." "Okay, we'll get you an ambluance. Patching you through to your city ambulance." "Oh," you say. "No. This person, they're not here. They're in another city." There is some confusion, but the operator is kind and they help you connect to emergency services in another city, a city in another province, a city with a different primary language. You have your friend's address, but you've never been there. You can describe the location of their spare key, but you can't describe the building. The operator, a new operator, is as kind as the first, is patient, sends an ambulance. "If you get any more details, just call back," they say. [[Call 9-1-1 again]] [[Call your friend]] (link-goto: "You remember the last time you saw them.", (either: "The last conversation", "The last text exchange", "The bus ticket", "The book"))

You're lucky enough to work in a small office with two of your best friends. You don't have anyone back at your apartment, and you need help figuring out what to do. It's almost 9am on a Wednesday: everyone you know is getting into work now, starting their days. It seems absurd to keep going on with your day, but you're not sure what else to do. You climb the stairs into the subway and start the 20-minute commute. [[Call 9-1-1]] [[Contact their friends|workfriends]] [[Call your friend]] (link-goto: "You remember the last time you saw them.", (either: "The last conversation", "The last text exchange", "The bus ticket", "The book"))

Post-traumatic: introduction and content warning This story revolves around suicide and trauma, and asks the reader to be both witness and victim. Please take care of yourself, take care in entering this story. If your brain or body isn't up for retraumatizing, let me send you a little love and encourage you to come back another day, if you want to. "Post-traumatic" is one person's intensely personal experience with depression, mental illness, suicide, and trauma, and should not be taken as a blanket statement of how these factors interact in everyone's own lives. Some people with depression die from it, and some don't. This is nothing other than a fact. Trauma manifests differently in everybody. Trauma creates an individual capacity for time travel, and this story is an attempt to share the feeling of being ripped out of your current timeline because for an instant, out of the corner of your eye, a stranger looked like a ghost. Thank you for sharing my ghosts with me. I love you. By the way, I'm Nicole. (link:"What's your name?")[(show:?cloaked)]|cloaked)[(set: $name to (prompt: "What's your name?", "")) Are you ready? Join me on [[Wednesday Morning, 8:30am]] ]

Beyond reason, time passes. You wake up and your friend is still dead. Your partner is still the executor of their will, and so you begin to make travel arrangements. Every day, you wake up. Every day, you wake up, and isn't it getting heavy? When you are on public transit, you wonder what your face looks like. Most days, you cry in public without warning. When you are not crying, you look at the people around you and for the first time in your life, you really understand that everyone is living a life that you know absolutely nothing about. You resolve to be kinder. For weeks, you dream over and over that another person you love has died. You call them every time and say, please be careful. You put a recurring event in your phone to happen once every three months: "Text everyone you love." For weeks, you cry at the small kindnesses of strangers: a held door, a kind word. Every day, you wake up, and isn't it getting heavy? [[Every day, you wake up —| Try to move forward (1)]]

The last time you saw your friend, they sat on your couch and you sat on the floor and you talked about dying. "Tell me how serious it is," you said, and they laughed and they looked away and you set down your phone and you looked at them until they stopped laughing and you said, "Tell me." And they told you. And together, you talked about dying, you talked about having to stay alive, you talked about how maybe it never gets better but maybe it does, too. Together, you talked about how it hurts. You talked about how it feels to be in a building on fire and not wanting to burn to death, and wanting to leave through the window instead.[[^^1^^|Resources]] You talked, you listened, they talked, they listened, and nobody cried because the stakes were too high. You said you would be devastated if they died, and they said they didn't want that, but you never did tell them how much you loved them. (link-undo:"You have to return to your current timeline.")

A few weeks before they died, you texted them: "Hey, I can finally book your bus ticket for your trip in September, do you know the date of the show you wanted to come to the city for?" They didn't respond. Several days later, you wrote: "I booked it and sent you the ticket, so just let me know if you need to change the dates or anything, it's not a problem." They responded: "Dude, no, I don't want to come." You didn't reply. (link-undo:"You have to return to your current timeline.")

The day they are set to leave your house and return home, the last day of the last time you saw them, you open your computer to book them another trip to visit you. You mark their arrival date in your agenda, in your phone calendar, on your wall valendar. They are dead when the notification pops up that their bus will arrive soon. (link-undo:"You have to return to your current timeline.")

Before they left your apartment for the last time, you set the stage so that they have to come back: a bus ticket for their next visit, and a book. "Honestly it changed my life," you told them, handing over Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties . "There's a novella-length short story loosely related to Law & Order SVU but mostly to do with ghosts." There is a tentative light in their eyes when you talk about books, hope, the future. They try to refuse the book. "Just bring in back in September when you're here next," and the room is filled with the weight of it. Instead, it comes back to you in August, with a dress and a bag they wanted you to have, with a bus ticket tucked into the second story of the book. The book and the bus ticket sit on your shelf, untouched. (link-undo:"You have to return to your current timeline.")

You don't know many of their friends, but you recognize a few names scrolling through their Instagram posts. You message them to ask if they've heard anything, and nobody responds. It is, after all, not even 9am. [[Call 9-1-1 |Friends911]] [[Go to work |FriendsWork]] [[Call your friend]] (link-goto: "You remember the last time you saw them.", (either: "The last conversation", "The last text exchange", "The bus ticket", "The book"))

The last time you saw each other, they sat on your couch and you sat on the floor and you talked, and talked, and talked. The last time you saw each other, you asked "Can I give you a hug?" and you hugged them, you bore your love down into them you hugged them so tightly and they hugged you back just the same and they said, "Dude, it's not like it's the last time or anything." And they laughed, and you didn't really, and you both knew that maybe they were lying. (link-undo:"You have to return to the current timeline.")

Beyond reason, time passes. A dying person would be on their way to a hospital. Only a body needs a doctor, in this case. Your friend is dead. Beyond reason, life is not stopped by death: You have to tell your partner that their best friend is dead, and that they have been named as the executor of the will. You have to tell the people you contacted that their friend is dead. You have to understand: your friend is dead. You have to talk to the police. You have to talk to the coroner. You have to talk to the detective. You have to understand: your friend is dead. [[The first day, after.]]

You wake up. Your friend is still dead. It is another day. You wake up and you still have a job, you still have a partner, you still have a family. (link-goto: "You go about your life.", (either: "The last hug (flashback)", "The last conversation", "The last text exchange", "The bus ticket", "The book", "A good day (2)", "A good day (3)")) [[(link:"This is the end of the game")[(show:?cloaked)]|cloaked)[ This is the end. You can keep clicking the link above, if you want: you can keep going about your life, and sometimes you will be stuck in a memory of the last time you saw your friend, and sometimes you will have a good day, and sometimes you will cry, and cry, and cry, and that's okay too. But this is it. It doesn't resolve. It never gets better. There is no other side. Thank you for playing Post-traumatic. I love you. ]]]

On your way to the subway, someone has stopped at the top of the stairs to check their phone, and the force of a memory nearly buckles your knees: stopping, checking your phone. Subject line: Sorry. The usual numbness of your body is replaced instantly by a hot and painful rush: your skin feels like it's on fire, and you feel like you're going to throw up. You almost, almost drop to your knees, but you clutch your chest instead and try to deepen the shallow, frantic breaths that are wracking your body. You have to return to your current timeline. You survive another day. [[You carry on. |Try to move forward (2)]]

Today is a good day: You only cry in public once. Most of the day passes without reminding you of them. Your work day passed quickly. You remembered to bring lunch. You made it to the gym. You fall asleep with only a moderate weight pressing deep into your heart, your bones. [[You carry on.|Try to move forward (final)]]

You wake up. Your friend is still dead. It is another day. You wake up and you still have a job, you still have a partner, you still have a family. [[You go about your day|A good day (1)]]

Today is a good day: You sleep in, and it is a relief. You don't have to leave your house today, so you don't, but you clean, you do your laundry, you catch up on your e-mail. You do a workout video. You make a grocery list and plan your meals for the week. You carefully tend to the plant they left you. You cry intermittently, and it is a relief. You only flinch at your incoming message tone some of the time. You order dinner and tip generously, eat liberally, and you cry and it is a relief to be so sad and to not have to do anything about it. You cry yourself to sleep, and nobody cares, and it is a relief. [[You carry on.|Try to move forward (final)]]

Today is a good day: You wake up and you're okay with it. You make a healthy breakfast and eat the whole thing. You leave on time, and you walk down the stairs to the subway without thinking about it. At work, you are patient and productive. You laugh, and it feels good. Almost the entire day passes before your body seizes with the sudden fear that someone else you love will die. It only takes you an hour to unknot the panic in your chest and fall asleep for the night. [[You carry on.|Try to move forward (final)]]

An hour has passed since you first checked your e-mail. You've been unable to reach your friend, their landlord, or their friends. You haven't heard from anyone. When you call 9-1-1 back, you don't know what to ask: "I, uh--I called earlier, about my friend in another city. They said to call back if I...?" You are not family; you are not anyone, and nobody can figure out how you're connected to this case. The 9-1-1 dispatcher can't provide you with any details, but they tell you a doctor is on the way to the scene. A doctor is on the way, and you know this means the emergency is over. [[A doctor is on the way, and you wonder if now, you will finally throw up.|You confirm you friend has died]]

The last time you saw each other, they sat on your couch and you sat on the floor and you talked, and talked, and talked. (event: when time > 3s)[The last time you saw each other, you asked "Can I give you a hug?" and you hugged them, you bore your love down into them you hugged them so tightly and they hugged you back just the same and they said,] (event: when time > 8s)["Dude, it's not like it's the last time or anything."] (event: when time > 11s)[And they laughed, and you didn't really, and you both knew that maybe they were lying.] {(if: $email is "read")[(event: when time > 13s)[ You have do to something: [[Call 9-1-1]] [[Contact their friends]] [[Go to work]] [[Call your friend | Call your friend (first)]] ]] (else:)[ (event: when time > 13s)[[[Keep reading the e-mail|Keep reading the e-mail]]] ] }

At the top of the stairs to the subway, you are staring at the dark screen of your phone. (link:"You unlock the screen to keep reading")[(show:?cloaked)]|cloaked)[You finish reading the e-mail, a businesslike assemblage of instructions and information on how to proceed: who to call, who not to call, their address, the location of their spare key. "DO NOT CALL THE POLICE" stands out in one of the later paragraphs. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience," they write of their more detailed instructions. [[Call your friend]] [[Call 9-1-1]] [[Go to work]] [[Contact their friends]]]

(link-undo:"Head back to the story.") 1. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/200381-the-so-called-psychotically-depressed-person-who-tries-to-kill-herself"> David Foster Wallace's quote from Infinite Jest comparing the plight of a psychotically depressed person to that of a person trapped in a burning high-rise, </a> one of my absolute favourite ways to try to contextualize depression to folks unfamiliar with it.

(set: $friends911 to "yes") You call 9-1-1, and the operator asks if you need police, fire, or ambulance. "Um, I'm not sure," you say. "I think this person is already dead." "Okay, we'll get you an ambluance. Patching you through to your city ambulance." "Oh," you say. "No. This person, they're not here. They're in another city." There is some confusion, but the operator is kind and they help you connect to emergency services in another city, a city in another province, a city with a different primary language. You have your friend's address, but you've never been there. You can describe the location of their spare key, but you can't describe the building. The operator, a new operator, is as kind as the first, is patient, sends an ambulance. "If you get any more details, just call back," they say. [[Call 9-1-1 again]] [[Call your friend]] (link-goto: "You remember the last time you saw them.", (either: "The last conversation", "The last text exchange", "The bus ticket", "The book"))

(set: $friendswork to "yes") You're lucky enough to work in a small office with two of your best friends. You don't have anyone back at your apartment, and you need help figuring out what to do. It's almost 9am on a Wednesday: everyone you know is getting into work now, starting their days. It seems absurd to keep going on with your day, but you're not sure what else to do. You climb the stairs into the subway and start the 20-minute commute. When you arrive at the office, you have to do something: {(if: $friends911 is "yes") [ [[Call 9-1-1 again]] [[Call your friend]] ] (else:) [ [[Friends911]] [[Call your friend]] ] } (link-goto: "You remember the last time you saw them.", (either: "The last conversation", "The last text exchange", "The bus ticket", "The book"))

You don't know many of their friends, but you recognize a few names scrolling through their Instagram posts. You message them to ask if they've heard anything, and nobody responds. It is, after all, not even 9am. [[Call 9-1-1]] [[Call your friend]] (link-goto: "You remember the last time you saw them.", (either: "The last conversation", "The last text exchange", "The bus ticket", "The book"))

You call them, you get their voicemail, and you leave a message. You have to do something: [[Go to work]] [[Contact their friends]] [[Call 9-1-1]]

You wake up. Your friend is still dead. It is another day. You wake up and you still have a job, you still have a partner, you still have a family. [[You have to go about your day|Flashback: opening the e-mail]]