Sit In My Chair

Episode One



The alarm clock rings.  Its 5am and she hears the alarm sounding off, ignoring it and hoping that it will just disappear so she can sleep the rest of the morning. On the other side of the bed her husband hears the alarm. Just as reluctant, rolls over to hit the snooze button. He rolls back to watch her sigh at him with an exasperated groan of disappointment.  “Well, good morning to you too Princess Charlotte,” he retaliates and like a child, she whines “I don’t want to get up!”  He gets close to her face and nudges her nose with a little touch of love. Charlotte then covers her face immediately. Preventing his affection she feels a sense of security with herself as she snuggles up under her soft down comforter. With her sassy little voice, she says “No!” Agitated he sighs, distraught and thinking to himself “Here we go.” rising up from the bed looking down at his wife shaking his head as he thinks, "worst thing I ever did was cheat on her" letting out a breath of regret he grabs his cell phone off the night stand, like always to listen to his music as he readies for the day. Giving into anger he looks back at Charlotte sulking under the covers, and says, “The world doesn’t stop you know, no matter how many times you bury yourself under those covers it will just keep turning, with or without you.” Hearing those words she is thinking silently to herself, “Well that was insensitive, asshole. If I took that vial of pills on the dresser it would stop for me. Then what would you do. You don’t even care about me” Charlotte covers her ears so she isn't bothered by the noise of him getting ready. Stabbing at him, “Go fuck yourself Xavier!” Firing back sarcastically “Yeah! Sure right now in the shower!” and walks away shaking his head. Barging in the bathroom he flicks the light switch and looks at himself in the mirror. Turning the water on and cupping his hands, dousing his face with cool water to wake himself up. He massages his face looking at his eyes wide open in the mirror. He thinks to himself “I hope today is a good day”



Xavier drags the shower curtain, mumbling under his breath “All she wants to do is sleep. I hate when she gets like this!” Zoning out for a minute, he recalls the last incident they had a few months back. Xavier was coming home from training at the dojo, which is a practice hall. He parked the car in the driveway while opening the garage door, like most days. He walks into the house from garage into the kitchen. Still in his gi, which is his Judo uniform, and sweaty from practice, he drops his bag down on his way in. Excited he had just gotten a promotion in rank which brought him to second degree black belt and was eager to tell her. “Babe! Charlotte? Where ya at?” Xavier takes notice of how quiet it is. He begins to walk into the living room looking around the living room. "BABE!" A bit confused he walks through the living room searching for Charlotte. He can’t seem to find her. Xavier gets nervous and thinks to himself, “She was acting weird this week.” She has these dark depressed moments. It’s helplessness to her emotions. Depression has a way of consuming who you are until there is nothing left. She kept ranting about what people would do if she just wasn’t around anymore. She brought up killing herself again, saying something about just being done with everyone. She told me she was tired of competing with my family and just never being good enough for anyone. She felt like a failure as a person. All of her siblings were successful and well into their lives while she felt stuck. At first  Xavier was in denial. She wouldn’t”, but as he walked through the living room he still didn’t see her. He was beyond concerned now. Rushing into their bedroom, he sees her face down in the bed with an empty vial of vicodin she had gotten from the doctor for a leg injury. He instinctively grabbed the vial and reads the label. “FUCK! Oh shit, she took the whole bottle...Shit shit shit! this was full, she always took the pain! Charlotte, what the fuck baby?!” He begins to try and wake her up desperately. Hysterical now, the tears begin to run down his face.. “No, no, no baby, WHY?”  He screams out, “WHY!!?” Frantically searching his pockets as he cradles her lifeless body. Hugging her and crying, he is upset he can’t find it, he coddles her like a baby in his arms. He wipes his face clear, still crying as he looks at her, “Baby I love you, please don’t leave me, not like this!” In that moment her eyes flutter. “Whoa, baby wake up, wake up honey” he finally reaches in the night stand for her cell phone.



He recalls calling 911 and the ambulance taking her defunct body away. He looked at her body as they raised her up on the gurney. Her body lightly bounces with the movement of the EMS guys, he thought “Why baby? Am I that fucked up you can’t stand to live with me?” They rolled her in the ambulance, fastened her down, and sounded the sirens as they pulled out. He trailed the ambulance until he got to the ER. She tried to kill herself. She was in the hospital for a week just to absolve the chemicals out of her body. After being admitted into the ER they had a nurse on standby. Xavier can remember walking into the room from the isle and he noticed that nurse, looking at him like he was crazy. The nurse had a look of detestation on her face as she glanced at Xavier walking in moving close to Charlotte. He thought to himself, ‘Why did she do it?” Snapping out of it, he lets out a sigh of relief that Charlotte is in the room and still here, miserable but still here. He reaches into the tub and turns on the showers. Reaching for his cell phone he checks the time “5:17am.” He searches for Pandora One and starts his “The Crystal Method” station and hops in the shower.



Charlotte begins to get anxious because all she wants to do is get 15 more minutes of rest but knows that it is going to be impossible. Getting aggravated quickly when her anxiety is high, she exclaims to herself, “oh my fucking god!” She storms up and out of the bed and pounds the bathroom door open. She screams at Xavier “Can you possibly get any louder?!” He was startled a bit. Already in the shower, he sucks his teeth at her and replies “Whatever! Get your ass up! You should hop in this shower with me...” He was halfway hoping she would take him up on his offer so he could get some of that morning “nook nook” But he quickly realized it wasn't happening. She responds defensively, “What are you trying to say? That I stink?”  Behind the curtain, he shakes his head and continues to wash himself down and lather up his chest. She immediately swipes the shower curtain open and in a very snarky tone says “Quit jerking off!”  That lit the fuse for Xavier. He comes back at her, “Well at least when I whack off you shut the hell up and take it like a champ for two minutes! Get your ass ready for work and let me finish my shower woman!” She barges out and makes her way over to her closet. After pacing back and forth a few times she starts ripping her clothes off the hangers. She begins to breathe quickly and heavy as she opens and closes her hands. It’s something she does when she finds herself in this state of mind. Her anxiety is really high at this point and she is pretty much helpless to emotion. There are no calming thoughts that can soothe the moment. She begins to cry in desperation. In her mind the situation has gotten way beyond her control. The one thing that Charlotte needs the most these days is to feel in control of her life. “What am I going to do? He doesn't care about me, he thinks that I stink!” Roughing through her clothes she thinks, “GOD! None of this shit fits me, I am so fucking fat!” The shower stops and he reaches for the towel to begin drying himself off. He walks out of the bathroom wrapping the towel around his waist. He walks out into their bedroom and looks up startled to see her ranting to herself and clearly upset. Noticing him standing there she immediately strikes “What the hell are you looking at, my fat?! You think I’m fat don’t you?” He replies “Babe I don’t think you’re fat!” In disbelief, “yeah right you think I am fat that you cheated on me!” He defends, “Charlotte, honey I love you. I am so sorry.” He has found himself having to say these words lately as his tone grows less than convincing.  Insecure she says “No you don’t, you don’t love me!” He know she is upset and there is no settling. He does the only thing he feels he can. He stays shut and gets dressed so he can just get out of the house. He looks at her like “Why is she being such a bitch? What the fuck did I do? I got up and took a shower...I didn’t even sleep with the girl”



The rest of that morning was an uncomfortable silence between them. Xavier has an anger issue. He tries to control it the best he can.. He walks out of the bedroom and goes to his closet. He grabs his heavy gi. “Someone is going to get it today!” Now that he is upset, he is slamming things around the house. “Why does she always think that about me?!  I know I fucked up, but she said she forgave me and is still with me” They just walked around each other avoiding eye contact and doing everything they can to not get in each other's way. He finally finishes getting ready and jets out the door. He gets in his car to drive off to the dojo for instructor training. He figures the sooner he can leave the sooner she can calm down and so can he. As he is pulling out the driveway she is opening her car door staring him down, then she screams “You’re not even going to kiss good bye?, you’re such an asshole!” He rolls down his window as he speeds off and yells out the window “Take your ass to work!” She shoves her bags in the back seat and settles into the driver’s seat. Closing the door she exhales. She puts her head down on the steering wheel and begins to cry. She lets it all out. The tears flow heavy. Xavier deals with things one way and she often finds herself needing to deal with them in another. He avoids her because he doesn’t want to stir the pot further and cause an even bigger fight, but she needs to make up and feel secure before they go their separate ways. She cannot control her emotion. She looks down at her cup holder. There it was, a bottle of painkillers, not the vicodin but a bottle of over the counter pain killers that she had picked up for her migraines.  It was a 50 count bottle of 500 mg tabs and there were at least 35 pills left in the bottle. She pounds the steering wheel with her fists hammering down in frustration. She grabs at the bottle and screams at it. “Ughhhhhhh! Fuck!” She holds the bottle pressed against her head, she is fighting the urge to down those pills.



Charlotte recalls that she has been here before and throws them in the floorboard.  She remembers downing those vicodin pills and waiting for the medicine turned poison to run its course. She recalls also what drove her to such an extreme. 9 months prior, she just happened to pick up Xavier’s phone while he was in the shower and searched it because something just felt “off” about their relationship. They had not always been this way. Since the moment they first met they had just clicked and understood each other faults. There was some invisible chain that just kept pulling them together and there was no hiding the happiness that radiated when they were together. That day she found text messages from a coworker of his. Based on what she was reading, they were flirtatious and insinuating they had some relationship going on. It was almost like they were setting something up or at least talking about it. She confronted him and sure enough he was caught red handed. In tears, he had no words. He was caught and couldn’t lie his way out of it. With great regret he pleaded with Charlotte to give him a second chance. He immediately severed all ties and cut that girl off for good. He vowed never to hurt Charlotte ever again. The day she took the pills was a day she would never forget. Charlotte wanted so badly to have never have picked his phone up. She loved him so much and just knowing that she wasn’t “enough” for him made it more than she could bear.  If it weren’t for Xavier coming home early she might have died. It was then that she was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. She has been doing great for about 8 months but she hasn’t been taking her medication lately. Right now she wants to just end it. She just wants this pain inside her to just go away. She feels like a fool for taking Xavier back. She would never forgive herself if he did that to her again. She wants to believe him but can’t because he betrayed her and their love. She is scared and doesn’t know how to handle it. Suddenly her cell phone rings, It’s Xavier “Hey, I am sorry I left like that I was just pissed off. I know how you get and I don’t like to see you like that.” She replies in anger “Whatever, ‘you know how I get’ what the fuck is that supposed mean? Don’t act like you care about me! Why did you call, to make sure I wasn’t killing myself? You don’t even love me!” He answers hurt from her words, “Honey that is not true! I love you, I love you so much” she counters “Yeah, that’s why I caught you texting another girl right Xavier?” He replies, “I didn’t do anything with that woman!” She comes back at him, “Only because you got caught before you had the chance Xavier, you would have fucked that slut if I hadn’t caught those messages on your phone” She hangs up on him and tries to shake it off. She turns on her car and heads out to work. She ignores his calls the whole ride to work.



She pulls into the parking lot and finds a spot away from the front of her salon. She doesn't want people to know she has been crying. Her face is still swollen from her hysterical episode. Slamming her fist on the steering wheel she is angry for allowing herself to get so upset. She pulls down the vanity mirror to see her face. Stricken by the reflection she shoves the mirror up. She inhales and exhales letting it all out in a deep breath trying to calm herself down. She finally regains control of her emotions. She pops open the center console and takes out her makeup bag to puts on her face. She can’t the world see how she is now. She applies the foundation on her face in an effort to try to disguise the swells from her tears. She spreads it evenly throughout her face safely concealing her depression behind every swipe. She screws the cap on the foundation and takes out her blush. She swooshes the brush lightly applying it to her face. Finally she applies a couple of coats of waterproof mascara and neutral lip gloss to finish her look. She pouts, thinking about everything that has happened. Looking up into the vanity mirror she says out loud, “There all better.” She ruined her morning and Xavier is furious. Now all she can think of is that she has to go into the salon and get through the rest of this day. She wishes she could just die and it would all go away. Getting a hold of herself she takes a deep breath, “Here we go! You can do this...”