“How do you know this person?” the woman asks me.
I hang up. I put the phone down and pick up a pillow and hug it to my knees.
If Sarah tells the police about me, the Instagram, they will dig. But they will dig further if she kills someone. Beyond that, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if she did something like that. I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, or any other night, knowing even a fraction of that was on my hands.
I don’t pray but I find myself praying tonight, to something, somewhere. Praying Sarah gets the help she needs. Praying the voices go away for her, one way or another.
She is not a bad person, she is a lost person. And I’m not going to be the one who is able to find her. Sometimes helping people comes in various forms, takes different shapes. Sometimes it comes in the form of a 911 call, outing a patient who trusted you. Patient confidentiality, I looked it up, trust me. Sometimes you have to break it so they can maybe make it out of this.
And it is nights like this that I am reminded I am not a therapist. It is nights like this that remind me I can’t help everyone. It is nights like this that remind me some people need more than someone to listen.
I walk to my window and look at the moon. It is nights like this when the sky is clear and the wind is blowing and I walk outside and look up at the stars and remind myself that I am a fraud, pretending to be someone who can help people. I can’t even help myself.
Fifteen
That night I dream of my own incident. Part of the reason that compelled me to make the page in the first place.
“What can I do for you?” she had asked me, after my unwillingness to cooperate.
Her white coat was almost iridescent in that lighting. The sleek, shiny room. The restraints on the bed I sat on. The phone plugged into the wall. The camera hanging from the corner. Everything so clean, so untouched. So clinical.
I looked at her, crossed my arms. “Go through my archives. Find the pain. And burn it.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” she said. “It’s not that simple.”
“Then you can’t help me.” I uncrossed my arms, turned over, rolled on my side.
“We only just started,” she reminded me.
“Well, we just ended,” I said to the wall.
“Do you want to tell me where the pain is? What it’s like? Where it comes from?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
I heard the sigh. The shuffling of her feet. Her getting up from the chair. The moving to the door. The click clack of the heels across the linoleum.
The door opened.
And then it shut.
And I was alone again. Taking one too many pills and downing almost a fifth of cheap vodka will land you in a place like this. Not padded walls, but hard white walls. Slick floors. Beds with white sheets, and restraints, in case you get out of line.
A telephone, tapped maybe, to make sure you aren’t making plans.
The door opened. Another patient coming in to try to steal my phone. He is restrained. Bear hugged. Medicated, I’m sure. Taken back to his room.
When I first woke up, I woke up in the hospital. In the emergency room. A curtain separated me from the outside world. The normal people visiting their loved ones all around me. I was still so drunk and high, so out of it. I couldn’t see clearly. Finally, I sat up. I realized where I was. I looked at my aunt, tired-eyed and sitting in the corner of the room.
She rushed to my bed. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”
“No, I’m okay. Let’s just go home,” I said.
“We can’t do that…”
“Why?” I sat up, irritation and confusion taking over. I needed a cigarette. I wanted to get out of there.
“They said they’re transporting you. That they have to in these cases.”
“What cases?” I asked.
She looked down. “Did I do something? Was it me?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
She sniffled. I think I remember her mumbling something about suicide and how she couldn’t make me happy. But this wasn’t a suicide attempt. At least, not a conscious one. I just wanted to numb myself. The more numb, the better. I didn’t think I tried to end my own life. Did I? I blacked out somewhere in between the Xanax and the shitty vodka.
Everyone wants to blame themselves when someone almost takes their own life, whether it’s intentional or not. When they try. When they fail. When they succeed. It’s always about what they could have done differently. Why is it never about the person involved? Why isn’t it about what they could have done differently? Why does everyone always have to point the finger at themselves? These are the patterns that lead to suicide to begin with. The vicious cycle. The blame. The shame. The hatred of oneself. The need to punish oneself.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “I’m so sorry. It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to do whatever you thought I did. Can we please just go home?” My voice was shaky, needy. Desperate, almost. Just to get out of there. To take it away. To make it so it had never happened at all. The wanting to take it back, here it was again.
Again. Again.
“We can’t, baby,” she said.
About a half hour later, after realizing I was awake, they came in with the stretcher. They came in with the medics. They came in with the tools they needed to transport me to the psych ward.
The psych ward.
As if I belonged there. As if I was crazy.
They said I needed to be on suicide watch. That it wasn’t safe to let me go just yet.
And I still remember feeling like screaming at them. That maybe the world isn’t fucking safe. Maybe we aren’t safe. Any of us. Them. Me. Anyone. Maybe people used things, drugs and alcohol and habits and each other, just to get by. That it was a problem. That we needed to get to the root of it, dig it out. Expose it. Discuss it. Make it better somehow.
And I still remember holding onto this heavy thing inside my chest. I think they call it anger. I think it’s like being inside a room, only the room is inside of you. And there isn’t enough space for it. And it takes up all of you. Fills you with its entirety. And you can’t see around it. Can’t see outside of it. Can’t get around it. And then at some point, it becomes you. And it’s all you know.
And you know you are only inches away from the escape. From figuring it out. The how to get out of it. The way out. You know it must be right there in front of you. But you can’t see it. Can’t find it. And you either lie down and accept it, or you try to lift it. Try to move it.
That’s what they don’t tell you about depression. How to navigate around it, and through it. How to be the room, and not the body inside it.
Because there is no method that is guaranteed. You simply do or do not.
“Why did you do it?” they eventually asked.
I told them it was an accident. That I was partying a little too hard. Took one too many pills, drank a little too much. I was sixteen. It was believable. My partying hadn’t stuck to my face yet and I still looked youthful, fresh-faced, almost innocent. It wasn’t completely farfetched to believe that a young girl simply partied a little too hard. It wasn’t wrong to believe me.
Maybe I was just a good liar. I fooled them. Maybe I fooled myself.
The real story?
I ate four Xanax and took shots of vodka until I started drinking it straight from the bottle. I was hideously depressed, without even realizing it. Maybe some part of me just wanted to die. To die. To die. Maybe I wasn’t the same girl I was before my mother died. Maybe I was finding ways to inch closer to her, to that. But it wasn’t exactly conscious. It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t a suicide attempt. It was me, wanting to not feel. Wanting to drink myself into oblivion so I could just fall asleep and quiet the noise in my head.
I never knew it was something that wasn’t normal. I never knew other people didn’t feel the need to do that. I never knew.
And they never knew either. I never told them. How wou
ld I have gotten out of there had I told the truth? That it was hard to get up sometimes. That it was hard to look at myself in the mirror. They released me the same day. After the doctor interviewed me to determine my stability, he told my aunt that I was “a very smart girl”.
I collected my clothes I was brought there in. The vomit stains on my ripped jeans. My jewelry. The earrings I was wearing. Or, one at least. The other was lost, somewhere. I never did find it. I can’t say I ever missed it too much. My T-shirt. It was a warm spring day when I had my stomach pumped so I didn’t die from the overdose and alcohol poisoning. It was an even warmer day the day they let me leave the psych ward. And when I stepped outside, I felt like I escaped the room.
But I will never escape my aunt’s eyes, the way she looked at me. The guilt I felt, and would feel forever, for being so selfish and reckless. You don’t know what it means, until you see a loved one looking at you like that. Wondering what they did, how they could have saved you. How they could have helped you.
You don’t know self-preservation until you know your life means something to someone else. You don’t realize you have to live for other people until you try not to. You don’t want to know. This feeling, I think they call it regret. Shame. You learn to fucking grow up. That the seemingly easy way out is not easy at all. That it will leave devastation and destruction in its path. That you don’t want to be the cause of someone else’s room crushing them, becoming them. You don’t want to be the pain in their archives. The part they want to burn.
The part they want to forget.
The part they may eventually want to have never existed at all.
And then the sun hits your face again and you realize life can be beautiful if you let it. If you only knew what it was like to have your freedom taken away, even for an hour. A minute. A second. When you realize that the shit that hurt you is just that. Shit. Complete and utter shit. And none of it was ever worth it. The people who died, who left you, they didn’t choose to leave you. It was just part of life being cruel. Part of life being life, and death is part of life. But you don’t get to decide that. And you shouldn’t. As my stepmother would say, life isn’t here to serve you.
You simply go along, being the room, or being in the room.
I collected my things and went home, wondering how ignorant that doctor was. How foolish he was to let me go. If I did do it on purpose, I could have done it again that same day, if I felt like it. Maybe it scared me to know I was that convincing of a liar. But lucky for him, after coming close to death, I realized how much I wanted to live. To live. To live. To live.
I wanted to live. And I wanted to like it.
Sixteen
My MacBook is open on my lap and I am looking at Tracy’s pictures, studying. It was easy to find her. Too easy. You simply follow the trail, find the friends. Locate the people in common. I am on her page and I see there’s nothing mysterious about her. She’s always a blonde, a natural blonde. Her hair is golden, like the sunshine blessed her when she was born into this world and in a way, it has. Her life is picturesque, family photos littering her Facebook. There’s no room for sadness in her life and that much is obvious. Her days are filled with work, love, and laughter.
She has some sort of internship at a marketing firm and I can’t say I’m surprised that she’s smart, too. Because when you have it all, well, the brain just sort of comes with it, doesn’t it? Tracy Ellis. God, even her name is classy. It has the sort of ring to it that just lets you know how elegant she is. One day she will be the royal heir to her family’s luxurious estate. Their gorgeous summer house in wherever the hell it is. Her father is retired and naturally, that means her mother probably is, too—if she ever had to work at all.
Tracy was born with a silver spoon shoved in her mouth, but it looks like she’s choosing to work and build a life for herself, outside of what she was given. I can respect that, but it doesn’t make me hate her any less. She’s majoring in marketing with minors in finance and international studies. I know because her bio tells me so. She doesn’t just flaunt her body but her dreams, too. #Goals. College girl, book smart. Prim, proper Tracy Ellis. With her ironed clothes and business-like wardrobe. “Dress for the job you want,” she often captions. Her style is a self-proclaimed mix between Charlotte from Sex and the City and Elle Woods in Legally Blonde. So she’s into “classics” as she calls it, says she was born in the wrong era. She’s a sorority sister caught in a web, trapped from blooming into an actual adult because she’ll always be daddy’s little girl who gets whatever she wants.
Her hair style may have changed since high school—it used to be long, but now it’s a sleek bob—but the girl underneath remembers what it’s like to have just hit puberty and kiss a boy for the first time. I can see it in the way her eyes still twinkle, the way she lights up a room. Life hasn’t sucked the innocence out of her and her parents love her, really love her, the way it goes when someone’s an only child. A golden child. With golden hair, full of beauty and passion and excitement for life.
Tracy likes to wear her hair half-up, half-down when she’s being casual in jeans and a T-shirt, lounging around with her friends. With Charlie. I look at the date on the photo and count back in my head. They’ve been together for about six months. An eternity at our age. How did Nikki not know this? They sip wine on Saturdays even though they’re underage—no one judges her for this—and frequent local bookstores and art galleries. He’s often wearing a suit when they go out on the town, or a button-up shirt. In one photo his tie is loose and his hair is messy and he looks like he’s just rolled out of bed with her, which he probably did.
I imagine they have a healthy and boisterous sex life, fully enjoying ripping each other’s clothes off after heated arguments. Because that’s what the pictures never show. The secrets. The actual lives behind the smiles and Instagram-worthy snapshots. This life is full of pretenders. You can either pretend right along with them or live in your truth. But no one likes to show the ugly in a world that teaches you just how important beauty is. We all apply ten different faces every day just to be noticed. But how many of us are ever really seen?
Tracy likes to wear A-line dresses and blouses with Peter Pan collars and I think she wants to believe she can save Charlie, like he’s one of the boys on the island, placed here just for her. I think she probably tries to save him in the only ways she knows how.
And it was a mistake thinking I could ever have someone like Charlie. I can’t wear stilettos to house parties and go to church on Sundays the way Tracy does. I can’t pretend to be a believer in the truth she lives. Religion will never make a home in me the way it has for her. Her brand of happiness will never wrap itself around my bones and keep me warm.
She wears pink. A lot. Too much. Different shades to represent different days and phases. She drinks fruity drinks and cocktails and it’s always from a straw. Her nails are always done. Her face is always on. Even when she hashtags #nomakeup I know she must be wearing some, at least a minimal amount. No one’s skin can be that good all the time, that tan and blemish free. Natural blush in her cheeks. No wrinkles, no hint of bags under her eyes. And I wonder if she does Botox and why she doesn’t post those pictures. The how in which she attains that level of beauty and glamour. She’s a liar, that’s what her hashtags tell me. That’s what I sit here and learn about the girl who has the boy I want.
Facebook is a trap, a dangerous portal into envying another’s life. Jealousy breeds ugly things inside of us, and those things multiply, rapidly. It leads to self-induced black magic, tricking yourself into believing you will never live a life as good as someone else. Creating the illusion of perfection, and goals, and ultimately, sadness at the inability to achieve what you determine is the perfect life that should be yours.
Tracy likes roses, and tulips, orchids and lilies. The list could go on. I click photo after photo in the album she created just for them. She’s attained them all, I imagine from various suitors. Maybe they could all be from Ch
arlie, one day, but for now the time stamps prove otherwise. Flowers existed in her life before Charlie ever did. Charlie was not a thought in her head when she was gifted with some of those petals. I can see the subtle changes in her once he came along. He brought a hint of darkness with him, but it’s cute to her.
They watch indie movies together and she started going to see actual bands, started posting less pop music. She got a pair of Converse and now she thinks she’s sort of hip, creeping more toward the edge than she ever ventured before. Her popular girl lifestyle is becoming more of a past than a present. She’s wearing a little less pink. In one photo she has one of Charlie’s T-shirts on and she’s actually drinking a beer.
Reset.
I check my timer. I told myself I would allow myself one hour of creeping. No, of learning.
I check my phone, log into Psychiatrists on the Gram, just to see if I missed anything from Sarah, or any of my other patients. People pay to subscribe to personal relationships with me. They pay me through Venmo that is also labeled after my IG account name. I try to remain as anonymous as possible while building relationships with some of these people. People who need me. Can Tracy say she helps people? Can she go to bed at night feeling even a little good about herself? Of course she can. She thinks she is inherently good. Born with it. But if I had a relationship with Charlie, if he would just open himself to the idea of it, I would carry on text conversations with him throughout every day of the week, and for free no less.
My patients pay for ten texts during the week, and the highest subscription cost covers scheduled phone calls. I wouldn’t charge him as much, maybe wouldn’t even transfer his money into my bank account. And there would be no limit placed upon him in my world. No max amount of characters. No restriction of times. No boundaries.
Tracy doesn’t do therapy. It’s not needed. That much is clear. Unless she hides that, too.
The Gorgeous Slaughter Page 6
