Tap it Just Right

CW: Mental illness/self-harm

Tap it Just Right

The usual burden lurking in my bones is hung around my neck in the form of my mother's pearls. The thought that there are thirteen of them, and not twelve, consumes the space in my mind that I should be using to fasten my hair away from my face. But if I do, the matching set of earrings will make it fifteen pearls, and not fourteen, which is also unacceptable, so I wear my black hair long, even though it hides the white lace details on the back of my dress.

Alone in my childhood bedroom, the woman in the mirror glows–a glimpse of who I always assumed I would be on my wedding day. I look like her: soft-skinned, innocent-eyed, gently loved, but I am not innocent. In fact, I am the worst kind of person. The kind people live in fear of becoming.

The wedding planner calls up from the foyer. "We needed to start yesterday!"

The clock on the wall knows the lawn is busy with people checking watches, pulling cell phones from their pockets, so they can turn them back on to find places they'd rather be.

"I'm almost ready!" But I have been ready for an hour. The voice won't let me go.

Resisting the urge to touch my face, tense hands clutch the vanity to steady against a string of disturbing thoughts, and when I find my balance again, I choose red lipstick over the nearby bottle of pills.

Not today. I deserve to remember today.

Sticky lips blot a cream handkerchief as the inevitable evil springs forth from the depths, stealing my right to decipher her tongue from my own. If truth had a voice, it would sound like hers.

You deserve to die. How can you let Sam throw his life away? You're disgusting. Selfish. Everyone waiting outside would be better off without you. You're a burden. A worthless burden, she says to me from deep within the shaking walls of my mind.

Drawing on years of practice, I scroll through memories for one bright enough to cast out the stream of abuse. I find one of Sam. It's always Sam. Sam holding me, telling me this voice is a liar. That if I trust anything, trust him. Even when I can't trust myself. His words feel like a lie, but his golden eyes sit with me while I hope beyond reason that I truly am the woman he sees–not the one who wants me dead.

Crossing the threshold into the hallway, I resist the urge to knock on the door frame three times.

I just have to make it down the stairs and out the back door to the wedding. I make it to the landing with no problem. Not from the banister or the squeaking floorboard, crooked picture frames, or the letter opener in the oak hutch that threatens my wrists with violence. When my white dress lifts off my heels, exposing ankles that itch for a sensation I can't give them, I remind my skin that the process of getting downstairs won't allow it.

I mentally prepare to tap each step just right, using only my toes, scrunched together so there is an equal amount of pressure on all five— then I begin.

Tap it just right.

One step becomes two, then three, and by some miracle, I make it to step four, where I bravely step forward in the way a normal person would.

I don't have to live like this.

I land safely on step five, imagining my life with Sam, swimming in the Caribbean on our honeymoon just days from now. With a thud, an image of Sam drowning throws me back, expanding my ribcage, and I dry heave under the pressure. The voice is coming, wavering on the cusp of ruining everything.

If you don't make it downstairs and open the back door just right, Sam will die, the voice says.

"That's not true," I whisper. "People walk down the stairs every day, and no one dies."

The space in my chest where I keep my memories slams shut, leaving Sam on the other side of my madness, waiting in anguish, praying not to die. There are 13 steps, and my foot trembles, reaching for the sixth one.

Tap it just right. No. Try again. Tap it just right. No. Try again. Tap it just right. Tap it just right. Damn it!

I breathe three times to reset while Sam's face is blue in my mind, suffocating and panicked. "Sarah!" He garbles my name through soaked lungs.

I have to make it down the stairs just right, or he will die on our honeymoon. It has already been decided by a force greater than myself. All I can do now is try to prevent it. Back at the top, I begin again.

Tap it just right. No. Try again. Tap it just right. No. Try again.

Shredded and bumpy with wear, the blue carpet on the top steps holds years of failure. But if I can get to the eighth, I am usually home free. My feet are perfect, but loss of momentum sends me back to the top, again and again, while our chosen people are likely gathering their things, safe from what I know. Sam is already doomed, but if I can get downstairs to the back door, I can change that, and so I begin again.

Tap it just right. Tap it just right. I can save him. Tap it just right. We can have a life together. Even like this. Tap it just right.

I am in the zone and fight the urge to look down, to breathe wrong, to break pace.

Tap it just right.

The back door slams, and the steady clack of dress shoes crosses the foyer, breaking my concentration.

No! No! No! Not now! Tap it just right.

"Sarah?"

Fresh cologne wafts up from the landing.

"Are you stuck?" Sam says.

"I'm coming," I say, but I am stuck, paralyzed in the knowing that if he dies, we both die, because I won't have a reason to stay. I won't deserve to.

Tap it just right!

"How many times have you tried this time?"

"I don't know." More than I was supposed to.

Sam leaps up the stairs, skipping every other one until he's by my side, and I can breathe.

"Here, let me help you," he says.

"I'm so sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry about. Can I touch you?"

"Yes."

Trembling, my hands pull on my pleated silk bodice. "You're not supposed to see me before the wedding."

"I can see you whenever I want." A kiss lands on my forehead.

"But it's bad luck. You have no idea what that means for me."

He cradles my face in his hands. "Yes, I do."

"I don't deserve you."

"Yes, you do."

"You can't marry me."

"Yes, I can."

Sam searches my face the way he does right before he asks my least favorite question. "Did you take your meds?"

"I don't know," I lie.

He glides past me and returns with an orange pill bottle.

"It makes me foggy. I wanted to remember today," I say.

"Here." Sam presses the pill into my palm.

"I think if I can just make it down..." The sight of him in his black tuxedo settles in my chest like something true. In all my years, I never dreamed someone like him would be standing before me, ready to love me...even like this.

"Do you trust me?" he asks.

"Even when I can't trust myself."

"Then take the pill, Babe."

Eyes closed, I crunch it up with my front teeth, grateful for the bitter taste that precedes relief.

"Thank you," I say.

"I've got you. Always."

We sit down together on step seven, halfway between the past and the rest of our lives.

"Are you really ready for a life with this?" I ask.

"Are you really ready for a life with this?" He smiles and makes a sweeping motion across his body.

"Not the same thing. You're—"

"I ache for a life with this."

Pressured breath leaves my lips as I rest my forehead on his. "I don't deserve you."

A clang in the kitchen and the voices of caterers echo through the house, making my shoulders flinch. "You should go. Everyone is waiting."

"They'll wait."

"But..."

He hushes me. "Everyone will wait."

"My pill will take time to sink in."

"Then we wait as long as it takes."

It takes seventeen minutes to break through the wall between our opposing realities. Sam's voice fills most of it, recounting the reasons he loves me, the moment he knew for sure, the first time we kissed, the feeling he had when I said, "yes." He waits with me until I am ready, his words filling in the cracks in my broken thoughts.

"You still want to marry me?" I ask.

"Even more than I did this morning."

"I don't deserve–"

"Did you ever consider it's me that doesn't deserve you?"

A smile fights its way to the surface as Sam's hand finds mine, and he leads me down the remaining stairs to the back door. I am the woman in the mirror, the one filled with grace, perfect in her mother's pearls.

"Can you open the door?" he asks.

With a deep breath, I turn the knob. I don't turn it just right or knock on the door frame, I just open it and let the late afternoon sun light my face and set Sam's eyes aglow. I take the first step. I don't tap it just right. I just take it.