I woke up to a bright lit room and a pretty face looking down at me.
“oh you're awake” she said. The lady looking at me had dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. She had her hair in a tight bun at the back of her head and wore an elegant skirt with a matching blazer.
“ I'm doctor Lite, and I would like to ask you a few questions, is that alright?”
I nodded thinking, she would probably ask them even if I said it wasn’t alright.
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“ what was the last thing you remember?”
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I thought for a bit before answering.
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“ I think I was back in my house the night my parents died”
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My answer seemed to worry doctor Lite a bit, because she furrowed her eyebrows and asked,
“ are you certain that's the last thing you remember?”
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I thought really hard and then nodded again, it really was the last thing I remembered.
“ please wait here then, I'll be right back.”
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And with that she left the room, leaving only the smell of her sweet perfume and the sound of her heels clicking down the long hallway.
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When doctor Lite returns, she continues asking me questions and write notes in a little blue book while I'm answering them. After a few minutes I feel like she's not even paying attention to me. When the questioning is over, she explains that the last thing that happened to me before I fainted was, that I was talking about my parents death to my class, and I went into shock and fainted. Apparently when my parents died 2 years ago, I never fully recovered. I just slowly began to numb the feeling. The numbing worked for a bit, but it came back. It came back like it always does.
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“ what am I supposed to do?” I asked doctor Lite, slightly annoyed.
“ I couldn't recover the first time, how do you expect me to do it this time?”
“ this time, we'll be here to help you.” She said calmly.
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I didn't say anything after that. After all what could I have said, that would convince them that healing me was hopeless. My parents were a part of me that were supposed to fade away slowly, and heal with time. They were not supposed to be taken so abruptly and with out warning. I still remember the night they died so clearly. I heard a loud smash, as the door was broken down, splintering into three big, uneven pieces. Next came loud stomping footsteps from the entry room. The door to my parents room slammed open, and I heard my mother scream. The last word I remember hearing was my name, before the gun fired twice and the house went silent. I thought whoever had fired the gun would come for me too, but they didn't. They left without another sound.
When I was sure there was no one left behind, I slowly made my way to my parents bedroom, only to find them both laying on the ground, in a puddle of their own blood. My fathers arms were wrapped tightly around my mom, who had a gaping hole in her chest. I cried then. Not loudly, just silently to myself, because if the murderer was still in earshot I didn't think they should deserve to hear my sobs. Shortly after that, the police showed up and the bodies were taken away. Bodies. That all they were now. Soulless corpses never to be heard from again. They would never breathe, laugh, smile, cry or frown ever again. They would be buried and eventually forgotten, obliterated by time.
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For the next few days, I stayed in the room, and slowly began to feel the numbness creep it's way back into my mind. I wish I could tell you that I made an effort to keep it out, but I didn't. I just let it come, grateful for the little relief that it brought. Doctor Lite came back several times a day to check on me, and I guess she saw that I was getting worse, because one day she brought some pills with her and told me to drink them. I didn't. I knew what these pills were, and they were supposed to make me feel happy again, but to tell you the truth, I didn't want to. I felt like if I took the pills, I wouldn't really be happy. I'd be under an illusion of happiness. And even if it really did make me happy, it would feel like betrayal. Like I would be going against everything my parents ever taught me.
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“ never take the easy way out,” My mother once said to me. “ it never works.”
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So I didn't do it now. I didn't take this pill of happiness, because it wasn't really happiness that I had achieved. I was beginning to get sadder and sadder everyday, and I was getting so used to the melancholy feeling inside of me, that I actually began to enjoy it. It felt calming and relaxing and... Freeing in a way. I don't exactly know how to explain the feeling, but it felt a bit like this:
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Imagine having a 100 pound weight on you back and trying to stand. When you're happy, it's like the weight has been lifted off of you and you feel as if you could fly. This feeling was the exact opposite. It was like you gave up and you let the weight fall right in top of you, and although it still hurt the pain was slowly getting less and less painful, because it wasn't worsening, like it was when you were trying to stand. It just crushed you once then began to fade.
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I imagine I was in that room for about a week, before they finally let me out, and I was taken to a cafeteria with a whole bunch of other people who were suffering of depression. Like me. Until the nurse had told me, I had never once thought that what I was feeling was depression. But what else could it have been. As I looked around the room I saw some people walking around and grabbing some food. I saw others sitting down eating. Some were talking amongst themselves, while others sat alone, looking down at their food. Not touching it.
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I decided that I was hungry, so I quietly sat an empty table. Several minutes later, a girl came up to me and plopped her tray in the seat next to mine. She introduced herself as Chloe and told me she was 15 years old. I introduced myself, and told her that I was 15 too. We talked for a bit, before she pulled out a book and started to read.
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I looked around the room and saw that there were people talking, but the conversations didn’t last long. After a few minutes of small talk people would go silent and start playing on they're phones, or start reading books.
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For some reason, I found this reassuring. Probably because I saw that this was a room entirely filled with antisocial people, and for once in 2 years, I wasn't the only one that didn't feel like talking.
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About an hour later doctor Lite came over to my table and asked me if I wanted a tour of the rehab centre today, or if I just wanted to go back to my room. I told her that I would rather go back into my room, and look around myself tomorrow. Doctor Lite nodded then took me to my room.
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The next morning when I woke up, a realization hit me like a brick to the stomach. Why the hell was I in a rehab centre? I understood that I didn't talk to people very often anymore, and that I spent most of my free time alone, but I liked it. It made me happy, or as happy as I could get. Before my parents passed away, I had hung out with my friends everyday, and I’d loved being around other people. After they died though, I felt like being around my old friends, was like putting a burden on them. It wasn't even a decision to slowly step back, and be forgotten, letting them live their lives again. Originally my plan was to make new friends and not tell them of the fate of my parents, and the plan would have worked, if I had actually put in an effort to make new friends. But I didn't.
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When doctor Lite came back, I told her that I was fine and that I just wanted to go home. She told me that I was sick and that I couldn't go home. We argued. In the end I told her that she had no right to keep me in this rehab centre, because I have never shown any signs of self harm, and that if I did stay in that centre my condition would only get worse. I was out the next day.
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I slowly got back into my normal routine. I went to school and did all of my homework. I reread my favourite books and marathoned my favourite shows. About a week after I had left the rehab centre, doctor Lite called me and told me to get in touch with some of my old friends. I didn't want to, but my aunt insisted.
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My aunt is one of the few people I actually talked to voluntarily. Technically she's the only person, because the rest of the people I talked to didn't talk back. Don't worry, there weren't any voices in my head other than mine, but I would send letters to fake addresses, addressed to book, television or movie characters. Sometimes I'd send them to historical figures that I thought were important.
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I didn't write my ' deepest thoughts' in these letters or anything. I just wrote to them as if they were real people, and I would tell them how they have made an impact on my life. When I told my aunt about my letters, she laughed and asked, why not tell these opinions to actual people? After some thought I answered her very seriously.
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Because real people should have their own opinions, and if mine change theirs, it's not really their opinion anymore. I don't want to take that away from someone, even if they don't really know it. My aunt was stunned, but she quickly regained her composure and said something that I will never forget.
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“ sharing your opinion is important, but not sharing it is too. You just have to know when it’s the right time to do which.”
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Since that day, I've seen my aunt as one of the smartest people I know. So when she told me to call my old friends, I did it.
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