There are statues in the waiting room. Sitting figures of wax hunched in on themselves and frozen in isolation. Three seats between each stranger. I walk by, eyes shifting, uncomfortable and self conscious. Don't notice me I feel. I am not staring. Don't stare at me. I am not here. I am nothing. I am no one. Generic figures of faceless beings are represented in the silent space. A woman with a chin length bob, slightly dry hair, wearing a blue cardigan has her face down to a Home magazine. A man, beer belly pushing hard against a tucked in pin striped button shirt, looks at his hands. An elderly man in a wheel chair creases a white handkerchief in halves. A hispanic woman reads a book with the cover folded back in navy business attire. I walk past - more forms going undistinguished at the edges of the room. Papers rustle, my feet step quietly on the carpet, general fidgeting and random movement are the only sounds. Beneath the Mental Health sign, I find my place taken.
A woman, thin brown hair that hits her shoulders sits in the corner seat. I sit on the visible side of the hall, near the male/female/handicapped restroom. The woman has a cell phone. It is talking to her in a mechanical female's voice, giving instructions on how to "import books" into some sort of virtual library. I am sitting still. I wonder if she knows how well I can hear the voice. I wonder if she would turn it down if she knew I could hear every word. I wonder, in the back of my mind, at the sort of confidence she has to make such noise in a silent place. Silence demands silence. I would not make such noise in this place. The attention - doesn't she feel the stares of all our minds? Mine - I listen to the words and think vaguely of what sort of books she would put on and that it is new because she has only two books already downloaded and that The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland must be an even more classic book than I'd thought if an instruction thing is using it in a demonstration. Can she really not feel the mental stares of all the wax figures in the waiting room? I feel them - even being half hidden behind the fake plant doesn't make me feel safe and alone and unself-conscious.
I stare at her too, lots of little glances that set together and spun would make a choppy-movement movie like the old cartoons. Her nose is long and strong like the tip of a pyramid supported by the four flat sides of her face - two cheeks, a square chin, and forehead. She has a black v-neck shirt on which must have been pulled funny when she took off her jacket because the tilted neckline reveals a bra strap on one side. The sleeves are three quarter. The brown jacket is set over crossed legs. It makes me feel… bad. Ashamed? Just… not good. Because I want to have on a jacket that I can take off too. I am shivering and sweating in my long sleeve shirt. I realize that just sitting here must look weird. I wonder why she sits beneath the Mental Health sign. I wonder what is wrong with her. What is her family like? What is her job like? How does she feel about herself? She makes such noise with her cell phone - surely she has self confidence enough. What is wrong with her?
I reach into my pocket and pull out my marble. I brought it specifically for the meeting today. For seeing Adam. I almost didn't. I'm not sure why… maybe because it is special. Maybe because it has a significance that me messing up might ruin. If I don't do it Right, I will ruin it. But, I brought it. That's what matters. I hold it in my fingers, and my mind starts the list without prompting. Green for Life. Blue for Truth. Orange for Cutting. Green for Life. Blue for Truth. Orange for Cutting. Green for Life. Blue for Truth. Orange for Cutting. Green for Life - I got it at faerieworlds. I remember the tent - light violet material on twisting branch supports. Children's garlands of fake flowers in bright summer yellow, red, pink, and blues hung up on my left above an array of hair trinkets and fun jewelry. In front of me was a table covered in white cloth upon which was a children's coloring book on pagan festivities and beliefs. The center of the memory is the basket of marbles.
Woven and plain, it was held by a man with a painted green face. He had ivy in his hair like the Green Man and a poets shirt with the cut v-collar strung loose with off-white string. Behind him his pregnant wife held her hand to her round stomach and her painted bird-face radiated happiness. He said to me "Take a faerie bubble" as mom stepped back behind me, her wish bubble in her own hand. I took it - a marble with a strand of color in the middle like a dream already caught and held. He told me "Make a wish" and waved his wand over my head.
I held it in my hand - skeptical because despite the beauty of belief… the gentle feeling of true heart-felt Faith alludes me. But in he is so ernest and his wife is smiling and my mom has a faerie bubble in her hand… just do it. The strings on the wand bounced before my eyes and the rattle sounded by my ear as he bopped his wand down on my shoulder - the thought came with the honesty that only the spontaneous idea can have. I want to tell him everything. The man bopped my other shoulder like a knight, and then tickled my nose for good measure. He said something about my wish now being in the faerie bubble and coming true, but I didn't pay attention. I was shocked Inside. What had I wished? Did I mean it? No, just stupid thoughts. But, I put the wish-bubble in my purse and later on my dresser, and then my wallet and glasses case and pocket… because there is a frighteningly large amount of truth in the spontaneous… and as much as I want to deny such a… scary thought, I can't lie to myself. The gist of it's true.
I turn it in my fingers, the light playing on the scratches on it's surface and make lights dance in it's glass interior like air bubbles under water. Blue for Truth - I don't want to lie. And Orange for Cutting…
I want to say it. I want the words that I write to myself to be more than secret, silent scratches of graphite held close and dear. I want to let it out - let these thoughts be Real. Let the words in my head sit in air like fat flies - present, seen, and acknowledged. I turn the marble over and over and over in my hands because even if I meant it, even if I want to tell… I'm not sure I can. The door opens. Adam says "Hey". I stand up to follow him. The marble is back in my pocket and he makes no comment. I can't feel it. So much for a reminder of courage or symbolic support. The door closes behind us loudly and Adam asks how I am. I nod my head. My voice is gone.
Silence can be golden but gold can sometimes suffocate
Like that girl in that James Bond film, too late to respirate
Tragedy can be plain to see with lights and sirens
But sometimes it ain't quite so clear, Domestic Silence
~Scroobius Pip
absolutly brilliant :D you have inspired me to both start writting again and to make paper cranes every time i feel triggered and manage not to si thank you som much for sharing
All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers. -Henry David Thoreau
The part I've got written next is really, really rambly and kind of stream-of-consciousness-ish. I don't think I captured a scene or book-likeness at all… I'll try to fix it, but would folks be okay with me posting this new part even though the style might read pretty differently? I don't want it to be too awkward to read. :(
Silence can be golden but gold can sometimes suffocate
Like that girl in that James Bond film, too late to respirate
Tragedy can be plain to see with lights and sirens
But sometimes it ain't quite so clear, Domestic Silence
~Scroobius Pip
I will be honest i haven't read it all yet but what i have read is just amazing Thanks for sharing it with us all.
"The body faught to survive, it evacuated toxins in any way it knew how. It made clots to stop the bleeding.Bones would find the quickest ways to heal themselves. It made scar tissue. In the face of violence towards it, it would become violent. It was amazing, yet excruciating. "
He looks at me, seriously. Looks at me in the eyes like he wants my attention, all of my attention, because he is going to say something very serious, very meant, and he wants me to really, really, listen and respond and be honest and truthful. I look at him. He speaks.
He says: "Do you think you would feel more comfortable speaking to a different counselor?"
I don't mean to look away. I am looking at the grey-blue boarder of the blurry painting that, for some reason, is propped up against the wall, on the ground, behind the computer desk. I look at the pale blue, pale pink, and pale purple smudges of paint and feel 'no' inside me. I feel 'I'm sorry' and 'No, no, no'. I tell him, "No," but I don't manage to explain it. I should say that I would talk less, and I do like him, and that I think a lot, and that I don't mean for the words to be stuck in my head, and that I like him, and that another person would scare me and make me more nervous and awkward and silent. I should start talking and explain it all and say more - say everything. Say every stupid little thing that comes to my mind. I should say what I am thinking when he says "what are you thinking about?" when I am too silent for too long - even if it is something dumb, or little, or repetitive, because he wants to know and I am supposed to say and I am supposed to talk more and I am being bad.
But I don't.
He says "it's just" that he thinks I don't feel comfortable sometimes with him and he thinks that there are things I don't feel comfortable telling him, that it is because of him, but I am thinking 'I'm sorry' and 'I am doing this wrong' because I am. It is not him - I am messing it up! I need to open my mouth and SPEAK. But I don't. My eyes dart back to him. I note what he is wearing - a black and grey and charcoal sweater with a light, light purple shirt poking out in sharp angles from beneath. He says "but maybe you are comfortable, I don't know," because he is careful with his words and delicate with what he says and thinks and he double checks things all of the time and wants to know what I think and if he is right about what I am thinking.
"It can be kind of nice, the silence I mean, sometimes," he says. And that's true - to an extent. My bag is still around my shoulder, like always, and it sits on my knee and makes a shshshshshshsh sounds against the arm of the chair as my knee vibrates up and down and up and down like a hummingbird. Nervous. Subconscious. Once I realize it I wonder if he realizes it and if I should stop - but it is comforting to move and move and move so I don't stop and the shshshshshshsh sounds continue light, light, lightly in the background of a silence he leaves for me. I am supposed to talk now.
I am supposed to say something.
He has been good. He tries.
I am not making this easy for him.
(I am sorry)
I am sorry, I am sorry. I am messing up. I need to talk. God. I am sorry. I'm doing this wrong! I'm not doing this right. I need to just speak to him. I need to say something. I need to - - -
But what? What do I say? That I haven't cut for 6 weeks? Can I just… say it? Like, suddenly, a sound from me that is abrupt and sudden and blunt saying "I've been good." or "It's been 6 weeks." or am I supposed to actually clarify? Do I have to… say the word? Because I don't say it. I don't say it much at all even though it is less Bad than it was four years ago. I still don't like it. It is… OutThere.
The sky is black outside. An odd, white beam of wall, thick and painted and very, very wall-like, stretches diagonally across the window. One end hits the bottom corner on Adam's side of the room. My end, the top end, falls short. It doesn't make it the whole way, but turns back into the normal-wall just past the center mark on my side. I wonder if it is there for looks or structure or something else…
Should I tell him about Isaiah who hit himself when he read to me? He is just a little kid and he didn't do it like I do it because he is good still and it was just a slightly goofy, light and not-painful thing… but it made me feel… weird inside. Because I wanted to grab his arms and look him in the face and say with a voice tinged with wild desperation and emotion: 'Don't do that!' I wanted to shake into him with sincerity the fact that 'You are good! You are a good reader and a good kid and a good person and just because you missed "and" again and you know you should know it does NOT mean that you are bad!' and I wanted to say 'It wont make you better; it wont make you learn. It wont make you a nicer person or a quicker thinker or a smarter student.' I wanted to tell him and stop him and just… stop. Just stop everything that moment and forget about the book and the class about to walk into the hall way and the fact that he is a little kid and didn't mean anything Real by it and that he is likely too little to understand what I am meaning and why in the world I would ever take it so seriously…
But I didn't tell him. He kept reading and I didn't do a single thing. Nothing at all.
But, what good is it to tell Adam this? So I stare at the corner of the desk by the window that is bare on top and I wonder if the bar-code stickers that are on the edge near me are pulled off the back of a book and I wonder who put them there and I want to touch them and press down the edges that are curled up on both ends and not lined up evenly with the flat sticker beneath it.
Adam sighs.
I am doing it wrong. I am messing it up. I need to speak. But I don't know what to say. My mind catches on the details that seem pointless to tell him. My mind runs circles around the things too big to say. I don't know how to start. I don't know where it will end. Open questions. A universe to speak from. I feel worse that when I stare at an essay prompt for something significant that has happened to me. Because there are a million things that have happened. And a million things that are too small and too much of 'nothings' for others to understand. And a million things too big for me to ever, ever say because they are heavy and unsay-able and bad and ugly.
Adam prompts me. He says, finally, "Do you remember our last session?"
I say yes.
"What do you remember?" he asks.
I remember asking 'Have you ever hurt yourself?' and him saying 'I have run too much before' and 'I used to be chubby' and 'I almost lost too much weight.' I remember trying to tell him how it feels so 'normal' sometimes and him not understanding because the words I found were all wrong. I remember 'Do you like the orchids?" and 'We get Great Grandma flowers. You know, now instead of after she kicks it' and hands flying to my mouth at my crude, crude way of phrasing that. I remember 'Why are you looking away?' and that Adam is afraid of blood: 'I faint'. But I don't say this. I should, I know. I have no excuse not to. He knows what happened. I know what happened. I can say it. I can say it.
But what if I remember wrong? What if I say something from the wrong session? What will what I remember mean? How can I just say a detail like 'Do you like the Orchids'? And what if I don't remember the most important things or the things he is thinking of? Or what if what I remember, in the phrases and wordings that I remember them, tell too much about me? That is stupid, I know, because he is nice and he knows I cut and he knows and is supposed to know and I am supposed to say.
I am messing this up.
But there are things I don't want him to know. It is embarrassing. He is can't know that he matters to me. It is scary. That is stupid. He is nice. I am supposed to like him. But he is leaving. I am a stupid teenager. I am no one. I am over dramatic. I am pathetic. I am messing this up.
He has waited a long time.
He says, "I think you remember but you don't want to tell me." He asks me why.
I don't know. I shrug. I really, really just don't know.
I am messing this up.
I am messing everything up.
God I am doing this wrong. Everything wrong. I am messing it up. I am not trying hard enough. He is trying, but I have to meet him half way. I am not trying. I need to try. I need to answer him. I need to say something. I need - I need -
"How is school going," he says. He's given up, he backs off. I say, "good".
He asks for clarification. I tell him that it's fine. That I passed math - got an A.
He smiles. I think he is happy I got an A, but maybe he is just relieved I spoke a full sentence. He asks how I feel about that. I tell him it doesn't really count. I explain how my teacher hadn't graded a big assignment so he put in 100% for anyone it would make a difference for. So, I don't really deserve the A, but I am glad I got it.
He asks if I have gotten any more letters from Mom. I haven't. He seems surprised. I am surprised too. I hadn't even really thought about it. He asks how I feel about that. I am glad. I wonder if he thought I would feel bad. The letters make me feel awful though. I am glad she hasn't given me any more. He asks how Mom has been.
I pause. Emotionally she has been okay… I tell him "She is going to have back surgery again." I tell him it hasn't been scheduled yet and that I don't quite understand all of it, but it has to do with bulging disks and fusing things. He says someone he knows has had similar things done. It is all very factual. He asks how I feel about it - am I worried? I say, "a little worried."
I should say "very frightened". I am terrified of anesthesia. I am terrified of hands and knives and masks and lights and how the surgeries we watch in Biology class are violent and rough and they rip and pull and move and touch and it is not gentle or careful, but forceful and sure and detached and uncaring and I don't think the surgeons see the square of flesh surrounded by medical blankets as part of a person. I should tell him this. Tell him how the idea of being so vulnerable and defenseless terrifies me deep, deep inside me until my bones shiver and I feel cold and my arm hurts. I don't.
I have talked. He leaves the safe questions. He asks how I have been cutting wise.
I tell him I have been good.
He asks “How good?”
I say, “Six weeks.”
He notices the time gap. Last time we met it was three weeks. He knows there was a break in December. He asks what happened.
He gives me silence. I take a deep breath, think, and look at the second chair.
I tell him, "I - I'm not sure what happened, exactly." I tell him how I "felt bad". I mean that I felt wound up inside and sad in a weighty boulder-like sort of way. I mean that I felt twisted in a painful way that is grey and heavy and sharp. I mean that I felt tense and down and icky icky icky. I tell him that I put my tool in my wallet and then… "it was just there". There as in, in my wallet, in my backpack, in the stall after French class when I felt I needed it.
He clarifies what type of tool it was.
He asks if it is my only tool. "No."
He asks if I could get rid of them. I say, "I have. I've gotten rid of some of them."
He asks how it felt.
I am so embarrassed. I don't look at him at all. My fingers are playing with the string on my bag, braiding and tugging and straightening and flattening it out in a fan that I open and close, open and close on my fingertip. I tell the chair, "It felt like goodbye." I hurry forward, past the heavy, sinking, painful feeling in my chest and the image of a grey trash can at the curb with a small plastic baggy of my tools slipped inside it. I hurry past how I slammed myself shut on the sharp urge to pull them back out, to hold them close, to keep them - not to use, I would reassure myself. Just to… keep.
I don't tell him it felt like saying goodbye to a friend, because that is so cliché (even though it is the closest thing I can think of).
He asks if I think I can get rid of the last ones.
My face is hot with shame. I feel humiliated at my self. I say, "I know I should…" I am so uncomfortable. My knee is shaking it is moving so fast. My fingers fidget fidget fidget. He says he understands. He says you can't take something away without replacing it. But then he asks what I feel, what I am feeling when he suggests getting rid of my last tools.
I don't see the chair any more. I think of me in the white truck pulling out of the driveway. Passing the garbage can with a green flashing blinker and the words explaining my feelings just springing into my mind with a suddenness that is blunt, honest, and truthful.
My voice, when I speak again, is a whisper and frighteningly horse. "Worried." I say, and then run past the admission with an explanation. "Because I like knowing they're there, and… if I get rid of them, I can never get them back." It is incomplete. The words fail me, as they have time and time and time before. My words are short, sparse, they don't really say what I felt. They don't explain the feeling of… saying goodbye to a tool. They don't say how I feel… like the idea of getting rid of them punched a hole in my chest when he said it. How I feel cold and numb and tight Inside. How I feel crazy because my thoughts don't fit my feelings and I have mind-thoughts and heart-thoughts at war in my head and it makes me feel torn and scared and I want to hold myself tight but I am already so embarrassed and I am not alone so I sit still and I feel hollow because I don't let my arms press tight against my chest and make me feel more whole. It doesn't explain how off-balance the idea makes me feel. My words explain nothing.
He pauses for a moment before speaking and my eyes dart, real quick, back to him. He is looking at me.
And I think he understands.
Silence can be golden but gold can sometimes suffocate
Like that girl in that James Bond film, too late to respirate
Tragedy can be plain to see with lights and sirens
But sometimes it ain't quite so clear, Domestic Silence
~Scroobius Pip
I love how you write, i don't think you need to go back and 'fix' this at all, it's really good. You capture it all with a film-like quality and accuracy. And just so you know - you're not alone, i am like that too with my counsellor - it's like my mind is on a different time scale where i can have 100 thoughts in the space of a few seconds of what i should say and anything i do say is analyzed and formed im my mind before i allow it to slip past my lips and hang in the air between us.
I love how you write, i don't think you need to go back and 'fix' this at all, it's really good. You capture it all with a film-like quality and accuracy. And just so you know - you're not alone, i am like that too with my counsellor - it's like my mind is on a different time scale where i can have 100 thoughts in the space of a few seconds of what i should say and anything i do say is analyzed and formed im my mind before i allow it to slip past my lips and hang in the air between us.
Thanks. It really helps to hear back from folks and to hear that my feelings aren't unique. It's hard to post this stuff, you know? But the responses are worth it. I feel so much better when I can admit this stuff and know it's not crazy or stupid of me. Thanks for taking the time to reply to this. :)
Silence can be golden but gold can sometimes suffocate
Like that girl in that James Bond film, too late to respirate
Tragedy can be plain to see with lights and sirens
But sometimes it ain't quite so clear, Domestic Silence
~Scroobius Pip
This isn't my normal post, but I made this the other day and since it uses words from a little journal-y entry of mine about a time when Adam called to check in on me between sessions… I figured it would fit in with this story.
These are the writings I used words and phrases from in my drawing:
Somehow, even typed by a man I knew only through a pen-name and 100x100 icon, they are WARM words. They are… fuzzy, giddy feeling words. Words that defy physics as their weight is so, so, so much more than their mass. Words that mean infinitely more than they say and trail behind them like kites on a long string feelings that don't make sense. When he wrote that… it felt like he SAID it.
It was like he'd looked me in the eyes and reached for my hands and said, my hand held gentle in both of his, "Rynn, stay safe." Like he said, "Rynn, I care about you."
"Rynn, I worry about you."
"Rynn, I am not going to tell you not to cut, because I understand how horribly HARD this is, but please… what ever you do, be safe. Be careful. Because I care about you and I would miss you if you were gone. Because I like you and you are someone to me and you are important to me and you MATTER."
Like he said, "Rynn, I care."
Adam said it to me once, in more words, and not so exact. And it was… just like when he - my faceless, unknown internet 'friend' - wrote it, and yet it was SO MUCH MORE. Because I know Adam. I know his face and his voice and I have told him. Told him things I had only ever written of before. Little things too - details of nothings as well as big things of All. And sitting there in the storage room in the dark, holding the phone and rubbing fuzz of the rug, his words stilled me and hit me and filled me.
"Are you keeping safe?" he asks. And I pause. I double check. "Yes" I tell him. And he says: "You'd tell me if you weren't safe, right?" and I say: "Yeah." And long after the phone has been hung up and I have unlocked the door and snuck the phone back to it's place and done my homework and gotten ready for bed, it echoes in my head. You keeping safe? You safe? Safe? Safe? Safe? You'd tell me? Right? You'd tell me? And somehow, it feels very, very Good. I hug the words close and write them down to Keep and go to bed with them feeling big and fire-like in my chest. Fire-like in the way that the wood stove was last year when the power went out for three days and we all slept in the living room. Orange, and yellow, and warm. Smiling.
The floor is cracked cement. It's cold on my bare feet. I huddle in the dark amongst the boxes of christmas ornaments in the little storage room we have instead of an attic. A welcome mat with dog hair on it is beside me. I pull at the hair slowly. The phone is with me. It is dark in the room. I locked the door, pulling the door in tight until the bar fell softly into place. The window is blue with the transition of day to night. I am silent. Waiting.
It seems to take forever. The minutes on the phone's screen inch from 6:20 to 25, 27… Then I am checking three times a minute as it hits the assigned 6:30… and creeps by. It hits 6:40. I am fidgeting. I feel cold. My fingers shiver. He…
Maybe he's running late. Maybe I was too annoying. Maybe he forgot about me. Maybe he's not in the mood to hear my complaints. Maybe he's not calling. Maybe -
But I stay, just in case. Because if he calls and Mom picks up, that is worse than waiting here alone in the dark, worrying for another ten, twenty minutes. 6:45 comes to pass. I pick up the phone, set it down, pick it up, hold it… set it on the rug. Move it to the lid of a box. Set it on the ground. Touching it over and over and over. Waiting.
I don't want to think about it. I don't want to think about it. I wont think about it. Nothing Nothing Nothing. I am shaking. He isn't calling. I am such a looser! I am so… pathetic bugging him all the time as if I even DESERVE him. I don't. There's nothing wrong. It must be such a disappointment to him - getting handed me. I bet he thought I was actually a SI-er. Like, actually had issues that were Real. Real things. Not stupid, babyish, comp -
RING!
I snatch the phone. There on the screen flashed the clinic's name. My finger pressed on talk slowly, hesitatingly, but before it could ring again. "Hello?"
"This is Adam, is Rynn there?" he asks. I am half sitting, half kneeling, still in the position I jumped to when reaching for the phone which was, by that point, on the top of a second shelf.
"It's me," I say, quietly. I hold the phone with two hands as if it might fall. I am small. I sink back slowly until my back is against the wall and my knees are at my chin and I am listening to him.
"How are you?" he asks. I am loosing my voice. It is slipping away with my breaths like cold-day breaths of white clouds. It is twisting up and around and reaching dizzying heights across the ceiling before tiptoeing out of the cracks around the window. But there aren't any cracks in the window.
"Okay," I tell him, my eyes fixated on the edges of the window frame.
"What's been going on?" he prompts me. I am biting my lip, wide eyed and fidgeting. I move to sit cross leggedly and release the phone into one hand so my right can trace the crack in the cement floor.
"Uh…" I am trying to think up something to say. I picture many things, but nothing that makes a good answer. I think of wet brown leaves in the back of a white pickup truck. I think of a water-heavy tarp roof over the chicken coop. I think of a beautiful-feeling, red-inked comment on an English paper. Of a cold draft slipping in with the speed of Hermes' through the open window in French class. Of eating warm oatmeal breakfasts alone on the Kitchen floor from a dark green bowl. A pink-tiled bathroom stall pure-silent an hour before school starts and the sound of pencil on paper as I write. None of those are good answers of what I've been up to in the last week.
"I…" Why is my mind blank? The angry, annoyed thought pushes out the details, but replaces them with nothing more useful. Instead words that are angry at me fill the space in my skull and I am waiting. Waiting for it to calm down so I can pull up something - anything - that works.
"Uh, nothing much."
By the way, the symbols that aren't words by her hands in the picture - those are nordic runes. The first and third ones are Odin's Rune. It's Ansuz. Together they spell Adam. I've been meaning to explain the title in one of my writings, but it hasn't bothered to slip in any where yet …
Last edited by Rynn : 20-03-2011 at 08:45 AM.
Silence can be golden but gold can sometimes suffocate
Like that girl in that James Bond film, too late to respirate
Tragedy can be plain to see with lights and sirens
But sometimes it ain't quite so clear, Domestic Silence
~Scroobius Pip
In the orchid room with the cherry tree branches I sit after Adam does and I look around. He lets me settle for a moment, my eyes trailing along the corners of the ceiling, the stripped petals of plants and the new wall ornament - a blue glass square with six metal candle holders extending outwards against the wall from it, all empty, with a big sheet of computer paper writing out a reminder about using unscented candles. I wonder when they would use candles and why. It seems a very odd thing to bring into the little room.
Adam ask me how I am. Nod. He asks how thing's have been. Shrug, fine. I practiced these questions before hand. I thought of things to say so that I would be better and be good this time. But… these questions - they have an every-day history of being far too much of rushed nothings to feel right having a Truth as an answer. How can one really respond to "How are you?" by saying that they have spent most of their lunches in bathroom stalls alone because they feel slow and numb and alone? It feels so not-okay to respond with an attempted explanation of how it feels so hard to join others. It feels Wrong to say something direct and short like: I think I'm freaking Tom out with my moods. Because Tom says things like: 'you look happy today' which really say that I've not looked happy recently, or even more direct comments like: 'You've look glum'. And I know that the days I don't feel like speaking are not good and I need to toughen up - but silence is so nice and a closed mouth is such an effort to open and sound feels bad and when I come in too late to class and Louis is already there and he tries to help me take down the chairs -- I get so angry. I got triggered once I got so mad - because it is MY habit, my little ritual of taking down the chairs alone in the silence in a spiraling, counter-clock wise pattern and he yanks them down with metal on metal on floor and on table sounds that hurt me in the dead silence of the empty room. So I grab my bag and leave without speaking and I know I am rude which is bad because I like Louis just fine - but he is loud and interrupting and it is morning and I can't stand it.
So I say I'm fine. He asks how school is. My grades are less than stellar, but I say it's fine because I am not comfortable yet and my mouth speaks and head nods before my thoughts of three B's and how talking to my psychology teacher makes me feel worthless and bad can even fully form in my head. He asks how sports are - what I am currently doing.
"Track" I tell him. I tell him I run. He runs - he runs very long and very far and I run very short. I feel pathetic when I say I run short and he guesses the eight hundred. That shows how very long he runs. I say no, very very short for me: two hundred, one hundred meters. Oh.
He asks how it's been going. I say good. I throw too, I tell him I like Javelin practice. And then… I tell him I need to talk to coach. I lead into it, and he gets it and goes with it. I can't just say these things, but if I say a little, and he says a little and we inch there, then it is okay.
I say, "I need to ask him not to put me on the 4x1 again." I explain what a four by one hundred relay is - how each person runs one hundred meters and together the team goes around the whole track once.
"Why don't you want to be on the team?" he asks.
And I tell him, quietly and ashamed, "Because of the uniform." Track uniforms are small. Tiny red shorts and tank tops with thin straps and low necks that cover very little. But, unlike volleyball, you can wear under amour beneath them without any suspicion because here it rains almost all season long. On a relay though, you have to match. Completely match. And, when it DOES get sunny at the end of the season, the other girls will not wear under amour and if I am on the team I can't quit. And if the other girls do not wear leggings and long sleeves on ninety degree days, then I can't either and I have scars and I can't run a race in front of everyone and wait in a lane beside strangers and cross the finish line before timers, in tiny outfits that cover virtually none of my scars.
"Why is this different from the volleyball uniform?" he asks. And I realize I haven't even thought about that - how I'd worn such little clothes all fall. It is different because it is a later time now, and I stare out the window at the trees and deepening blue sky. What if I am overreacting? What if they aren't as visible as they feel? I asked him once before this fall, I said: can I ask you something? and he said yes. and I said, can I show you? and he said yes. And I asked how many he could see, and he said none because I needed to pull up my sleeve to show him if he was supposed to see any (he smiled at this, joking nicely with me) and I pulled up my sleeve, and he said he saw two. Two. Just two. And I can see more because I am closer I guess and I know they are there. I can see the little dents of scars that are thin like young wrinkles. What if these are nothings too and I am being pathetic and worrying over nothing and being attention seeking with all this? I am silent for a long time as I look for the strength in me to say how I have more cuts than before. I can't meet his eye when I remind him of what we've just barely discussed: "I wasn't very good this Christmas."
He asks in a statement: "They're too new?" and I nod.
"Where did you cut?" he asks.
"My arm." Which is bad, because I told him before that I would try to just cut my thighs and shoulders where it is 'safe', but once I started cutting my arms again - well, other places aren't the same.
"When did you last cut?"
"The twenty fourth."
I am telling him so much. I tell him and tell him. I tell him that my last one, I chuckle as I speak, my last one "kinda freaked me out" and I am laughing a little bit but without any humor because I am embarrassed.
"What freaked you out?"
The following content has been hidden - Reason : Triggering SI
"I, uh -" I think of the little half bathroom's yellow light and my knees on cold linoleum. The little rug has been shoved to the side like it always is ever since the first time I dripped on it. My sleeve is up, my blade held as naturally as a pencil across my arm that I hold out a bit above the toilet paper that catches blood as it drips off my arm and onto the floor. I think of the anger that pulses through me and tilts my head with storming thoughts and swirling words and a huge, capital-letter phrase that jumps before my mind at that last, desperate cut: I CHOOSE. And the tingle of fear that shivers though my bones as this cut goes too deep and I am watching blood fill to the surface of a cut from pin-prick starts of red dots at the bottom of a white slice. It looks like I drug the blade sideways and scrapped off a wide top layer of skin, but I know I pulled down. I don't understand.
I am trembling as I pull more toilet paper to press at the sides of the cut so I can stand without leaving a trail. I don't have to hold the paper long, the blood lets it stick on its own. My mind is quiet though. It is peaceful as I put neosporin on the non-stick gauze pad and it is nice and calm in my head now as I fold the pad and put it on my arm and wipe away the blood that has run on the other side of my arm and started to thicken. My mind is so calm, though the startling red capital letters chant in the background like a hypnotic drum: I choose, I choose, I choose.
I think too of when I changed the bandage - six hours later in the bathroom again I gently eased off the gauze pad with warm water and casual routine - only to shiver in gross horror at the cut. Yellow bubbles risen to the surface of what was once a simple, red wound. Bubbling they seem to burst from my inside like the cut set it free - removed prison bars that had just barely kept it pressed down beneath the surface. My stomach churns and clenches uncomfortably and icy shivers tingle down my spine and limbs. I am disgusted. I am afraid.
I look it up on the internet. Try to find what is wrong. Fat, I think. I think it was fat - but how can I tell Adam? What if I am wrong? I self-diagnosed on the internet, I am probably wrong. Probably over-dramatic. Maybe nothing was wrong. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe, maybe, maybe…
He is waiting. I look at him. Despite everything, somehow I meet his eyes today. He is calm. He is so calm and relaxed and his right ankle is crossed over his left knee and he has on black shiny shoes and is relaxed.
I tell him, "It was fine at first." I let my eyes rest upon the one open orchid blossom - white with dark pink stripes. It looks like tiger stripes, but in memory it looks like its hurt. "But when I went to change it," I continue nervously in a voice that sounds too normal and every-day for this sort of topic; this sort of self-revealing. "It had bubbled up. It's fine though," I hasten to add, looking back at him, but not quite meeting his eyes. I tell his green sweater that "it's all okay now."
"Bubbled?" he asks me to explain.
"Uh…" what if I'm wrong? I risk it after hesitation and pausing, "The fat" I spit the word out with a bit too much force and can't stop the little smile that twists my face at the feeling in me - fat. I feel fat, a lot. Fat. I feel disgusting. "Kinda of bubbled up to the surface."
"Is it healed?"
"Yeah," I don't really understand this question. How could it NOT be healed? It's been almost three months. Maybe it wasn't deep enough. I don't like that stupid thought. Of course it was deep enough. The goal isn't to go deeper. It's not pathetic. It's good that it is healed.
"Do you ever feel like it's not worth it?" he asks me. I'm not sure I understand his question. He clarifies: "Do you ever feel that the temporary relief you get from cutting isn't worth the difficulties it causes later?"
"Yes." He wants examples. "Grandma was going to teach me how to make bread," I told him, thinking of how stupidly I'd said I'd love to learn and that I'd love to come over early on Wednesday and help out. "But, then I realized she'd ask why I'm not pushing up my sleeves and it'd be suspicious." I didn't ever make the bread. "Or, at the Kindergarten we were painting and we all had paint shirts on," Old t-shirts several sizes too big for the little children and splattered with a few years worth of spills and mistakes with awkwardly held paint brushes, knocked over water cups, and complete obliviousness to the wet paint at the bottom of the page that they drug their arm through while painting at the top… "And Cooper reminded me to push up my sleeves… I just distracted him, but… what do you say to that?" My examples are so small. They are nothings really, but they are little nothings that mean so much to me. Cooper's face when he reminded me to push up my sleeves - - and the cold that swamped through me from scalp to fingertips… I want to be able to push up my sleeves and paint again some day. I want my scars to fade and fade and fade.
But sometimes I want more scars too. Deeper ones. And it can be hard to care about Coopers expression when I want to cut like that.
"Can I tell you my fear?" he asks me. I look at him, surprised. This is different. I nod a bit, slowly. He tells me how, at seventeen, I am in an odd place legally. I am in charge of my medical care, but still a minor in all other legal matters. He says how it is my choice to get help, my choice to come to therapy (I am surprised at the word therapy, I had thought counseling and therapy were different, but really my understanding of the technical details has never been any good) and he throws in the side comment of how he's impressed that I've come to every appointment (I wish he wouldn't say that. He is being nice, I know, but… it feels so uncomfortable. I would never make an appointment and not keep it. It would be so RUDE. And, when he says how it is "your choice" I feel… exposed. Strangely vulnerable, because, if it's my choice, it's also my pathetic-ness and my over-dramatic nature and me me me that is to blame if he thinks, like I worry he should think sometimes, that I am just pathetic and weak and annoying and that Nothing Is Wrong.).
He tells me more, a lengthy inching introduction to a 'fear' that I am waiting to hear. He tells me that he worries about me and I realize that he is saying this because I said I freaked myself out. He says he knows I want to stop ("don't you?", "yes") but that he knows it is hard and that he worries about me. And then…
then he said how he thought that maybe, maybe - because he worries about me and wants me to be safe and knows that I am trying but that it is hard… maybe he should talk to my parents.
Talk to my parents.
Talk
Talk
Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk
And I am freezing cold. I recoil from him in my chair, I can't help it. My eyes are wide and frozen and I can't breath and all I can think is that he is like the Asian woman and that I trusted him. I TRUSTED HIM! And now…
Now he wants to tell mom that I cut deep and scared myself and that I am still cutting and she'd know and it'd be said and everything would be Wrong and - and what if he told Beth and grandma and grandpa found out and then Emma - telling telling telling. He wants to tell and I said too much. I should never have said anything. I think of Mom sitting beside me on a rock hard maroon cushion in a room with the asian woman and a clip board and my repeated lies and truths told in one bundle, indistinguishable, to my mother who took them and heard them and they hurt her and hurt me and we never spoke of it and left it in the air to weigh heavily upon conversations in which allusions and references are made when in private, but are never acknowledged by either of us and it is ugly and painful and horrible between and above us.
And he wants to tell.
I feel trapped.
There is nothing I can do. He wants to tell. He can do that. He knows things. He has words and truths and admitted secrets and fears and details and thoughts to share. He has more than the asian lady had, and worse - what he has is all Truth. I have not lied, not on purpose really. What he knows is virtually all true. And he has shown he remembers things well because he has referenced things I thought he didn't even listen to. And he wants to tell.
He realizes I am worried. Ha. Worried. Try terrified, mortified, trapped, betrayed. There's some words to fill the mind hungry for explanation and detail. Betrayed. But, as I begin to let him go, to realize I should never have trusted him and that he is just like her and that I was so STUPID…
he says that he's not sure about it, about telling. That, from what he has heard from me about my relationship with mom, that maybe it's not a good idea to tell her.
He says he doesn't want to make things worse for me at home.
I take a breath. I am still tense, but my thoughts quiet down enough for me to hear him. He's not sure. That's good. Maybe he wont tell.
He told me how he worries though, because I'd been trying but I still cut and I cut worse in January - and I realize I miscommunicated. "December 24th" I tell him. "Not January. I haven't cut since December." Oh. He is glad about this miscommunication. But, he is still worried.
He asks about medication. "What do you think about trying some medication?" he asks me.
"No." I tell him.
"For anxiety or depression," he says, "I think they would help."
"No." I tell him.
He asks me, hypothetically, if the meds could fix everything some how, would I take them then?
"No." I say again and I don't pause with these answers. These are simple answers. These are ones I know for sure, even if I'm not sure why.
"Why?" he asks, and I pause.
I think of mom, who takes meds for bipolar stuff and for back pain and allergies and headaches and cramps and hormone things and iron supplements and on and on and on… and how if she feels bad, she takes meds. And if she feels too good, she takes meds. And if other folks don't feel good, she has meds to advise. Her purse rattles with pills in pill bottles and the mail comes with little packages of bottles and she sends me to grandpa to borrow pills for her if her depression ones run out before the new ones come because they share the same prescription and I hate it. I hate it. I hate pills and reliance and the idea of changing what I feel -
Adam is waiting for my response, but I can't say this stuff. It's not Right. I can't say that 'I don't want to be like my mom' and really, that's not it any ways it's --
And I realize what it is.
"I donno. I don't want to - I - it's… It's stupid," I stammer out as my mind catches up with a mouth that started to speak too early. "I shouldn't need them." I tell him finally. "It's weak. I shouldn't need them. It just feels Bad - it's not right."
Adam asks me what Strong is. He says, "You seem to know what Weak and Stupid are quite well. What do you think Strength is?"
I don't have an answer. Adam takes out a piece of paper and makes me brainstorm four examples. Four: the number for Earth, and a square and stability. I do that, in a slow, painfully slow, brainstorm. At the end of the session he hands me the paper and tells me to work on it, look at it, add to it. I take it, fold it up, and put it in my bag. In the parking lot the tension of the meeting catches up with me. I finger the rough edge of my key and push up my sleeve as soon as I shut the door of my truck. I press the metal to my arm so hard it leaves blue imprints - - but I don't drag it. I don't cut. He isn't telling my parents. I haven't cut in three months. And I do want to paint again sometime with my sleeves rolled up. I don't cut.
And Self-Control will be the fifth bullet point on my list of things that show Strength.
Silence can be golden but gold can sometimes suffocate
Like that girl in that James Bond film, too late to respirate
Tragedy can be plain to see with lights and sirens
But sometimes it ain't quite so clear, Domestic Silence
~Scroobius Pip
