“Do you ever just get that feeling where you don't want to talk to anybody? You don't want to smile, and you don't want to fake being happy. But at the same time, you don't know exactly what is wrong either. There isn't a way to explain it to someone who doesn't already understand. If you could want anything in the world it would be to be alone. People have stopped being comforting... and being alone never was. At least when you're alone no one constantly asks you what is wrong and there isn't anyone who won’t take 'I don't know' for an answer. You feel the way you do just BECAUSE. You hope the feeling will pass soon and that you will be able to be yourself again, but until then all you can do is wait.” Anonymous
Elizabeth parked the white Jeep Wrangler in front of her house. Kate Mason was sitting on the front steps with her Carmel Macchiato from Starbucks. She drank one every morning and every afternoon seven days a week. Kate had some depression problems of her own, but easily over compensated by shopping and being impulsive.
“Missed you in school, betch.”
“Yeah?” asked Elizabeth sitting down next to her blond, curly haired friend. “That’s because we don’t have any classes together.”
“You were hiding again during lunch, weren’t you?” Elizabeth yanked her skirt over her knees careful not to let the gauze wrap show. “Come on; tell me what’s going on with you.”
“Nothing, I’m fine.”
“Okay, you’re fine. Now tell me what’s going on with you.”
“I’m just stressed out, okay?” She tugged her straight brown hair into a tight pony tail.
Kate pulled out a cigarette out of her Marc Jacobs leather bag and lit it with her palm tree lighter. “Stressed out about what?” she asked as she exhaled.
“Kate, you can’t smoke right now, my mom’s home!” snapped Elizabeth frustrated that her friend would be so careless.
“My psychiatrist says it’s therapeutic.” Elizabeth looked at her friend stunned that a medical doctor would actually tell a patient to smoke. “Fine, I told her it’s therapeutic. You should really take up smoking.”
“I’ve smoked before.”
“With your mom behind a frosted glass door that could open up any second?” Kate was taunting her. Elizabeth held out her hand. Kate lit the cigarette and handed it over to her friend. Elizabeth looked at it, so small between her fingers. She took a long drag and felt her body ease. How was it that something so small could take her stress away for a moment? She wondered what hurt her body worse, smoking or cutting.
“How is therapy going?” asked Elizabeth. Deep down she knew that she needed to be in therapy but she didn’t have the strength to ask anyone, including her friends for help. Therapy was frowned upon in her family. She had an uncle that became severely depressed after he caught his wife cheating. Her mother had used several negative adjectives such as crazy and psychotic to describe
his depression. Elizabeth feared she would be talked about in that same way.
Kate sprawled herself on the wood porch and rested her long legs against the railing. “It’s just an excuse,” she answered before taking another drag off her cigarette, “to be like forever stupid and not get in trouble for it. I can stay out all night and blame it on the fact that I’m bi-polar.”
“Yeah, well my parents would never understand. My mom doesn’t believe in depression.”
Jack Bennett pulled up in front of his house in his black Jeep Wrangler, same year and model as Elizabeth’s. He pulled his backpack and his football bag out of the back of his car and started walking up the sidewalk to his house. He was still wearing his football pants and a white sleeveless undershirt.
“Look at his arms,” gasped Kate. “I can’t believe you’re his neighbor and you never talk to him.”
“Correction, he doesn’t talk to me. He doesn’t even know I exist.”
“Hi, Jack!” shouted Kate. Jack looked up and nodded at the girls before entering his house. “See, that wasn’t so hard. He nodded.”
“Betch!” exclaimed Elizabeth. “We are both perfectly fine co-existing in our own separate worlds.” That wasn’t entirely true, Elizabeth had always known there was something special, something different about Jack Bennett. Being neighbors with Jack had given her the opportunity to see things and learn a lot about him. Elizabeth had been paying attention for years. Jack was mild mannered. He was close with his parents, he worked hard when it came to football, and he was a good friend to those he cared about.
Kate stood up. “I have to get going. Tons of homework to do. But, ummm, I know you’re going through a lot so if you ever want to talk, I’m always here for you. I love you betch.” She tossed Elizabeth the almost full pack of cigarettes and lighter. “Use them.”
“Love you too, betch.”
Elizabeth walked inside and started up the cedar stairs to her bedroom. “Beth?” she heard her mother call before she was able to make it to the top.
“Yeah, mom.”
“I need you to unload and load the dishwasher.” Elizabeth dropped her back pack on the stairs and headed down towards the kitchen. “And, Beth, I think last time you loaded the dishwasher you loaded it with the forks down and it’s really hard for them to get really clean that way, so I need you to load them up.”
“Okay, mom.” Elizabeth did as she was told. Less than a month earlier she had been loading the forks face up until her mom asked her to load them face down so they would get cleaner. It was as if there were multiple people living in her mother’s mind always finding ways to control Elizabeth, even if it was something she had said the opposite of before. She almost expected to find a video camera only to figure out the last eighteen years of her life were made a living hell as part of a comedy show.
Elizabeth was cursing to herself when her younger brother Colby drove his riding fire truck into Elizabeth’s leg. “Fire!” he shouted enthusiastically as he squirted his fire hose up at her face. She looked back at her mom, who was laughing at the kitchen table, and wondered if Colby would suffer the same hell when he was older or if her mom would wear down and relinquish her controlling power in the next sixteen years.
“Olivia is coming home this weekend.”
“Really?” asked Elizabeth stunned.
Her older sister Olivia had come home only on Christmas Vacation since going to Yale two years earlier. As a life science major hoping to become a doctor one day, she told her family that it was crucial for her to stay in New Haven, Connecticut year round. Olivia had secretly confided in her before she left, apologizing for leaving Elizabeth to deal with their mother on her own. “If I don’t get out and stay out, I’m going to end up in an institution as a patient, not a doctor.”
Elizabeth prayed the focus would remain on her sister this weekend. When she finished the dishes, she locked her bedroom door and took off her uniform skirt. The morning’s cut on her leg had almost bled straight through the gauze again. Part of her routine of not getting caught was to never let her cuts get infected. She always made sure she properly cleaned each wound. She gradually unwrapped the gauze and attempted to gently pull the white cotton pad off her leg. The non-stick pad wasn’t so non-stick friendly as the blood was now dried to it. She tugged a little harder and felt part of the drying scab come off her leg. Biting her lower lip in pain, she limped to the bathroom and put her leg up on the counter. With a washcloth and warm water, she tenderly cleaned the wound she had caused herself earlier in the day. There was something comforting about being able to take care of herself.
She pulled her memory box out from under her bed. It used to contain pictures and accessories of her growing up. Over the last year, she had stopped putting memories in the box and replaced it instead with everything she needed to hurt and fix herself. She took a cue-tip and dipped it in the bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide. The wound didn’t bubble, which was a good sign no bacteria had gotten in there. After
covering the deep cut with Neosporin she put another gauze pad on her thigh and wrapped the tape around to hold the pad in place. She picked up a dried carnation out of the box. It had been given to her by Jeremy Tucker, right before her first kiss the summer before seventh grade. Those were the days when everything seemed so easy.
After moving the box back in place, Elizabeth crawled in her bed, still in her white polyester school blouse. She turned on the fan on the highest speed that rested on her nightstand. The constant air flow was calming and helped with her anxiety. Before she had a chance to close her eyes, she felt he vibration of her cell phone on the comforter next to her. Without even looking to see who it was, she threw her phone against the wall and rolled over. All she wanted to do was disappear. Disappear to anywhere.