Why was I always lied to?
All I knew was that I had been lied to and forcibly taken somewhere I didn't want to be. This was a room filled with those lies and betrayals of the people I trusted. Especially Nathan. I put the last small bit of trust I had left into him, I had believed that he wouldn't have told anyone where I was or what I had been doing with my life and my body. Yet, what happened? He shoved a knife into my back. Deep and certain. Precise and cold.
Nathan had been all I had left. When I needed to cry, he gave me his shoulder. When I needed a place to sleep, he gave me his bed. When I needed to hear someone else's voice, he talked to me. He made living with my horrible, disgusting self that much easier. He gave me oxygen to breathe with, even though I deserved to be dead. Nathan had become my one constant over that past year, he had been the one thing that I knew would be standing when the dust settled.
Then this happened. He helped my parents, and told them what I hadn't wanted them to know. Even if I had said all that shit, I still hadn't wanted them to see me that way. I didn't want to show them how much of a failure they raised, and that had partially been why I never went back home and spent my time with Nathan instead. I wasn't avoiding them, and I hadn't been mad at them. I was running from them. I was hiding from them.
Loser. You fail everyone and everything. How does it feel sucking the life out of the people around you? How does it feel knowing you'll never be enough for anyone ever again? You were given your chances, and you fucked them all up. You almost killed your best friend and girlfriend, now you've driven away the person you held close. It's not the world that doesn't recognize you, it the world that you don't recognize. You aren't worth anyone's time.
This room, it had been so empty. It was so quiet. This room had reminded me of so many things, but the biggest was that I was alone. I no longer had a soul in my life, and I no longer had someone to lean on while leeching them dry. If I was going to fall, then I was going to fall. I hadn't had Nathan there to catch me, I hadn't had Grace there to save me. Brian had been disgusted with me and left. Everyone left me. They just left me alone in this cold, dark storm. I felt it again, that feeling. . .I was scared.
I was terrified.
The silence had been destroyed by the door opening, and in came a woman. She had been a brunette with short, wavy hair and big, innocent eyes. If there had been a polar opposite of me in the world at that moment, it was her. She had been the spotlight and I was the cave, the light and the dark. This woman had carried a smile, as though she had no idea where she worked. I didn't want to see that kind of smile. Not in the mood I had been in.
"Good morning, Lynn." she fell into the chair and rolled over to the examination table my left hand had literally been attached to. She dropped her tablet down on the table and looked me before extending her hand. "I'm your doctor and counselor, Rebecca, but everyone calls me Becky. You can call me whatever works for you, though. Are you feeling okay?"
Aside from the brutal crash I'd been riding that whole morning? Awful.
"No." my heel tapped against the wooden cabinet beneath me.
Kicking herself away, she rolled back over to one of the drawers across the room and pulled out a stethoscope, where a pair of gloves soon followed it. Her movements had been loose, easygoing, and could have even been misconstrued for uncaring to some people. Clearly, she cared about helping people, otherwise she would have been in a different industry altogether. Yet, it had likely been that looseness she presented herself with that made everyone so comfortable.
"This is the Oregon Mental Health and Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Group." she slowly came back over this time around. "We mostly specialize in Dual-Diagnosis treatments in teenagers, but we also take on individual mental health disorders and addiction patients from all over."
Liar. They don't care about anyone. It's all for the money.
She reached into the cabinet beneath me and set some kind of wipes down next to me and then came up with a pair of scissors in her right hand. Rebecca had gotten out of the chair and approached the zip tie that held me where I was. Placing her full trust in me, she cut the tie and stepped back as she waited for a reaction. I stayed silent, and remained near motionless. What was I going to do, exactly? Run and leave? They probably had security everywhere.
Grabbing my wrist, she rolled my sleeve up to my shoulder and began to rotate my arm in circles. "Heroin? What else have you consistently taken?"
I nodded. "Usually K. Ice and a bar once in a while."
Even I had caught how bad that sounded. Heroin? When I was a kid, I had seen all of those people on TV and was scared shitless of them. They were scary, just like Brian had always said. Yet, I had become one of those people, one those scary monsters I saw on the TV. Was that how Nathan saw me? What about when I was on Xanax and Ketamine? How had Nathan seen me? Had that been how I looked to Brian?
Giving me a slow nod, I hadn't been sure if she was judging me or not. What I was sure of was her hands moving around my stomach, putting pressure down on various areas. As the tips of her fingers made contact with my rib cage, she pressed down and looked at my eyes, where she was likely looking for a reaction - and this time, she had gotten one. It just wasn't the one she was looking for as I lightly jumped back.
"Does it hurt?" she asked.
"No." I looked away from her. "It just surprised me."
When she had been pressing down on my rib cage, the length of her pinky brushed my chest and I had just kind of jumped back without thinking. It had been purely subconscious and nothing more, like someone holding their breath when they watched a scary or suspenseful movie, I had done it without thinking. Her expression hadn't said anything either, it was something that rested in between belief and unsurety.
"I'm going to check your spine. Let me know if anything feels uncomfortable."
After another short nod, her hand fell downwards and circled around my waist, pressing around until her fingers began to slip under the hem of my shirt. Slowly, with as gentle of a touch as I had ever felt, her fingers traversed along my spine and followed along with every notch. What she hadn't realized, though, was the higher she went, the more out of breath I was beginning to feel.
"Damn."
I could only gasp, hunching, and then throwing myself forward as I tried to suck in any air I could. Choking on the oxygen that surrounded me, my heart pounded like a jackhammer as it tried to work itself out of me. It had been that night all over again, except I didn't have Nathan to hold me. I was alone and suffocating. I was alone and trembling. I was alone and nauseous. I had been alone. Purely, wholly, entirely alone.
Alone and unwanted. This had been the garbage I was thrown into and left in. In this place, nobody would have cared if I lost my mind or dropped dead. It would have been the same to them, another person dead and gone. I was just another statistic, that was simply what I thought of this place. I had only been there for the sake of making them money, and that was it. They really couldn't have cared less, as long as I was alive and barely breathing.
"Breath in deep for four seconds. Breath out for four seconds. Keep doing that." a pair of arms began to constrict around my shoulders, tightening softly. "It'll be over soon, just keep breathing and this'll be over before you know it."
"Go away." I tried to pull myself back from her. "I don't need you here. I don't need anyone."
Even if I had wanted to reject her, my mind and body hadn't rejected her words. I took in the deep breaths, just like she said to do and the effects began noticeably clear right away. All of the last year, these had come randomly and I never knew how to deal with them. Every time these things came, I thought I was dying. I was never able to breathe, and it felt like my heart was squirming it's way out of me. They had always been the same, and I had always reacted the same. It never changed. A predictable, vicious, dark circle.
The worst part? I had no idea what they were.
"I'm not going to leave, Lynn." her hands met my shoulders, softly speaking. "That would be the worst thing I could do right now."
Through the shaky breaths, through my trembling, a pair of hands stayed on my shoulders. A woman I had only met minutes ago was holding me like a child after a nightmare, and I had gone from rejecting it to accepting it. Why? Why had I been letting some stranger hold me like this? Only Nathan and Grace had ever held me like this doctor was, and I wasn't sure if I had been okay with her touching me like that. I was simply unsure, just like I was with everything.
Letting go, she opened the bag next to me and pulled out something that looked like moist paper. She moved my hair away and began to wipe the sweat that had formed around my forehead away, letting me further calm down on my own. I had always gone through these moments alone, when Grace or Nathan weren't been around, and I hadn't wanted my parents to know about these. It was so scary trying to stop them alone, and when they had finally stopped, I would pass out like nothing ever happened at all.
"Do you have panic attacks like this often?" she asked as she walked over to the garbage and dropped it into the can.
"Panic attacks?" I could feel my head tilt slightly. Had that been what I was going through over the past year?
"Oh, you don't know." she came back, sitting on the table this time. "Panic attacks are these moments where you suddenly fear everything so much that you feel it physically. Your heart may beat faster, you may start shaking or sweating, and some people might feel numbness. It doesn't really last super long for most people, but almost everyone feels fatigued after it."
She explained what it was that I had been feeling, going through for the past year. The only thing that had stopped them consistently was getting so high that I couldn't think, and they had still come through once in a while. It was as though she was trying to show me that she cared about my well-being, that she treated people more than just a number and dollar sign. Had I been wrong about this place, or her, at least?
"It seems like your back is a trigger for them." she rested her palm on my thigh as she stood up. "But we can talk about that tomorrow during our meeting. So, how about we take a little tour and meet who you'll be staying with for now?"
Standing up, I pulled my sleeve down and walked up to the door she had been waiting at. While my heart had still been beating quicker than normal, I felt okay. Even though I had still been trembling a little, I felt okay. Had it been her? Was she the reason, even if only a little, that I felt more comfortable? Or had this been something else I wanted to trick myself into believing was better than it actually was? Maybe it was. I hadn't been able to tell what was right or what was wrong anymore.
Had the drugs been right? Not at all, but they were right for me. Was being numb right? Maybe it wasn't, but it was for me. I was able to feel nothing, and when I felt nothing, I had been the best version of myself. Being numb had allowed me to pick up all the pieces I could and at least try to mend them. The only problem was that being numb had meant getting high, and getting high had meant doing drugs. If drugs weren't involved, would anyone have cared? Would they have cared just as much as they did with drugs being involved?
As Rebecca took me through the building, she had showed me the bathroom and showering facilities, where everyone ate, and then she finally pushed through some doors into what looked like a lounge room. There was a television and what looked like a couple tables, yet only two people were around. A boy with longer brownish-blonde hair stood with a puffed chest, glaring at the boy who stood across from him.
"Touch me like that again and I'll smash your fucking skull in." the blonde boy inched forward.
"Stop acting like children." Rebecca, as though she had long tamed them both, stated and seemingly caught their attention. "We have someone new joining us today. So stop making us look bad."
As the blonde boy looked at me, he had exposed himself and his identity. His identity was someone that a lot of people knew, a celebrity. He was Jay Ward. He had been all over the radio for a few months, releasing hit after hit, and then he had just disappeared from the charts for what seemed like no reason. It was obvious why he had been rising up the charts, though. His voice carried a pain that echoed like a scream from a mountaintop. It had been that very pain, mixed with his deep, sultry tone that connected with people. The most amazing part was that he had only been a teenager. If he kept going at that rate, he was going to make himself legendary.
I had a feeling that Grace would have been just as famous at this point. She would have been halfway across the world, singing to tens of thousands of people, making them smile and giving the world the enjoyment she exuded. Even if I was as selfish as they had come, I wasn't going to deny the world her talent - but I already had.
Jay scoffed and slowly, with an arrogant step, approached me. He bent himself at the waist, his hair falling over the sides of his head. "You look like shit."
I peeked around him and saw the lake on the other side of the doors. Why would answer to something like that, anyways? I hadn't wanted to talk to him anyways, and that had only further pushed that notion.
"I'm gonna tell you something, yeah? Don't act like you're better than any of us here. I don't give the slightest fuck about how rich you are or how famous you are. You're as equally fucked up as the rest of us. I don't like bitches like you, so just stay away from me and keep pretending that you're okay. Just know that nobody will be there for you when you de-"
"That's enough, Jay!" Rebecca held a finger in his face. "Get cleaning, like you're supposed to be doing."
He snickered, glaring at me with the coldest eyes I'd seen since I last looked at my own. Jay turned around, brushing his hair back as he walked passed the other boy and down a hallway where he soon disappeared from sight. The other boy nodded and then waved. Compared to Jay, he had looked like an angel. His features had been rounder, cleaner while Jay's had been sharper, more rough and seasoned.
That was when a familiar voice came out from the hall that Jay had just went down.
"What's with all the noi-" the brown-haired girl walked in, a blue pen stuck in between her teeth like some kind of plastic carrot. She turned and her eyes slightly widened. So did mine.
"Lynn?"
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