by Chase Connor
“Why do you think…why do you think it was us, Tom?” Dally asked. “Why us? There were hundreds of boys in that fucking camp, and he chose to do this to us?”
“Will it make you feel better to have that answer?”
“No.”
“Good.” I said lowly. “Because I don’t have the answer.”
“Do you have trouble sleeping still?”
“Mmm.”
“I do, too.”
“They want to put me back in the hospital again.” I sniffed, pulling back tears. “Mom is worried because I’m so…I’m just not there anymore, Dally. There’s not a Tom anymore. It’s just the body Tom used to be inside of before. I want to tell someone what happened. I want to tell everyone.”
“They can’t put you back in the hospital!” Suddenly Dally was crouched before me, his hands on my knees. “Don’t let them do that, man.”
“It’s not really my choice.” I felt a tear slither out of my eye and roll down my cheek. “I didn’t let them do it last time, Dally.”
“Well, do anything you have to, Tom.” Dally’s eyes were filling with tears as well. “Anything you have to do to not go back into the hospital. I about lost my fucking shit while you were in there last time, man. I can’t do this without you, man. I’ll fucking flip shit and—”
“Why can’t we just tell someone?” I sobbed. “My mom? Your mom? The police? Principal Hoffman? Anyone? I don’t care. I just want the weight of…this…off of me, Dally. It’s pulling me down, man. Fuck. Walking…it feels like there’s fucking weights tied to my feet. Like the ground is trying to grab hold and pull me under. I can’t do this, man.”
“You can do this, Tom.” Dally said, leaning up and taking my face in his hands, his lips finding mine. “I can’t tell the truth, Tom. It’s too much.”
Dally kissed my lips, kissing me deeply, then he kissed me all over my face desperately, showering my face and neck in kisses like a lunatic. I just let him. What else could I do?
“Just…just feel nothing.” Dally said. “Feel nothing about it. We promised that we wouldn’t tell anyone. That we’d pretend it never happened, right? Well, it didn’t happen, did it? We can pretend that for long enough to get over it, right?”
That was Dally. His answer was to pretend. To forget. But he had been the one to say that he thought about camp sometimes. How could I even begin to forget…or even pretend to forget…if he kept bringing it up.
“I love you, Tom.” Dally kissed my lips again. “You know that, right?”
“Of course I do, Dally.” I responded. “I love you, too.”
“We can do this together, right?” Several more desperate, crazed kisses. “But we have to be together to do this together. You can’t go back into the hospital, Tom. Okay?”
I blew out a shaky breath and willed my tears to dry as I stared into Dally’s eyes as he held my face in his hands. Suddenly, I felt myself begin to nod, to agree to Dally’s request.
“Is there anything I can do, Tom?” Dally asked, his lips finding my lips, my cheeks, my nose, everywhere on my face, desperately trying to soothe me. “You know I’d do anything for you.”
“I just want to feel better, Dally.” I shook my head. “That’s all I want.”
So, Dally did his best to make me feel better as I sat there on the swing with him crouched before me in the dirt. For that night at least, it worked.
I Didn’t Fall, I Shuffled Slowly Downwards
Having an appointment with my counselor on a day that I also had to work always meant that a whole 24-hours was going to be utterly ruined. When I had first entered my counselor’s office, four hours before my shift at the convenience store would begin, I just wanted to get in and out. Do my talking, get my advice, promise to do my CBT and take my pills, then go home and nap it off until I went to work. After a counselor’s appointment, I was always mentally and emotionally exhausted. Not from revealing any shocking information or doing any real work towards getting better, but from avoiding giving too much information or the wrong information and doing my best to remain unemotional throughout the entire appointment.
Like always, when I entered the office and signed in at the receptionist’s desk, I realized that it was going to be a wait. My counselor was an okay guy and he seemed to know how to do his job, but he was also always running late. Once, I had tried showing up fifteen minutes late to my appointment so that I wouldn’t have to wait as long, but that just pissed his receptionist off. So, I just started showing up at my scheduled time and waiting patiently in the waiting room. It made the receptionist happy and kept me from having to listen to her bitch and moan even though I was always made to suffer for her boss’s clinical inability to be on time.
When I finally got into my counselor’s office—Steve was his name, and he insisted that I actually call him Steve—I did my best to act like I wanted to be there. Like I believed in the power of CBT and prescription pharmaceuticals to make me not feel so…nothing. And Steven seemed to love how well I pretended to believe those things. I don’t know if he actually believed that I believed it, but he loved how well I could pretend. So, when I found myself seated in front of him again, fifteen minutes late like always, I was ready to lie to myself and to Steve once again.
“Let’s talk about your root today, Tom.” Steve settled into the arm chair in front of me in the middle of the room.
That was the set up. Two arm chairs facing each other in the middle of the room. Steve’s working desk in a corner. Everything comfy cozy and nonthreatening. Just what you’d expect. Non-descript.
“Okay.”
“Have you thought more about what you think your root is?”
“Remind me again…”
“The thing that caused your anxiety and depression.” Steve answered. “Do you think there was a defining event?”
“Honestly, no.” I shook my head minutely. “I haven’t really thought about it. I haven’t done my homework. Mostly because I never feel anything anymore, so I don’t know how I can decide what caused my anxiety and depression to begin.”
“You don’t feel anxious or depressed anymore?” He looked up at me as he jotted on his notepad.
I sucked at my cheek.
“They’re still there.” I said simply. “But the Paxil and Xanax kind of glaze them over, don’t they?”
“Even on your medication, do you ever feel anxious or depressed?” Steve asked. “Or even nervous or sad?”
“Are the pills supposed to make me not feel sad?” I frowned.
He just watched me.
“I would like to have a range of human emotions.” I added. “I don’t want to feel nothing. Which is what I feel. Is that the pills?”
“You tell me.” He said. “Did you feel that way before the pills?”
“Yes.” I nodded, then shook my head. “And no. I felt anxious and depressed before the pills—so at least I felt something. Now I feel nothing even more.”
“When you say you feel ‘nothing’ what do you mean?”
“I mean that I feel empty.”
Counselors loved that shit. Using deep phrases like “I feel empty.” They ate that shit up. I could always work through sessions quicker by saying stuff like that. The only bad part was when it wasn’t a lie. That really rubbed me raw when I told the truth by accident.
“Okay.” Steve nodded. “What makes you feel empty the most?”
I just stared at him.
“Can you pinpoint an event, Tom?”
“I didn’t wake up empty one day.” I said evenly. “Depression isn’t a fall, it’s a slow shuffle downwards, Steve.”
He frowned.
“You don’t see it coming or realize it at the time, but as days and months and years pass, it’s like ‘oh, yeah. That shit had been building up, hadn’t it?’ Ya’ know?”
Steve wrote something down.
“I didn’t wake up one day and feel the emptiness of everything inside of me.” I said again. “Little pieces of me were chipped away bit by bit
until there wasn’t enough left to make a whole anymore. Looking back, I see that it took a lot of time and effort to feel as empty as I do now.”
“Whose effort and time?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here, would I?” I shrugged. “I’d have solved my problem by now.”
“So, you accept that this isn’t your fault?”
“I’ve never said it was.” It was my turn to frown.
“You never feel like…Dally…like…”
“No.” I cut him off. “I never feel like Dally was my fault.”
Steve was frowning again.
“That answer won’t change.” I stated firmly. “That is the truth.”
“Do you ever feel like it’s your fault that John was never brought to justice for what he did, Tom?”
“He’s dead isn’t he?” I couldn’t help but snort. “I mean, there aren’t many punishments greater than that, right?”
“Is that what you think?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me why you think that.”
I blew air out forcefully. I was so sick of this. I was nearly six years sick of all of this.
“What do you want from me, Steve?” I held my hands up. “Do you want me to tell you that I wish he had died slowly and painfully? That he had suffered as much as he made Dally suffer? That I wanted to look him in the eyes while I choked the life out of him myself? To feel his blood gush over my hands as I drove a knife into his side over and over again like Dally did? Or do you want me to just say that I’m so scared and sad and lonely and all of that other crap that counselors and psychiatrists like to hear?”
Steve was writing a lot.
“Because I don’t feel any of that.” I continued. “I truly and honestly feel nothing. I feel hollow. I’m not suicidal. I don’t wish myself harm. I just feel hollow. I’ve felt that way for nearly three years. And it’s only gotten worse since I convinced Dally that we should tell someone about John so that this could all be over. When Dally died…it didn’t get worse or better. Because, by then…there was nothing left of me to hollow out. I was a shell. People call that depression or suicidal or even just sad. It’s none of that. It’s just apathy. I don’t care if I live or die. But I don’t wish for either. I’m not dangerous to myself or others, especially now that both Dally and John are dead. So…I don’t know why we meet bimonthly and talk about it.”
“Don’t you want to feel better, Tom?”
“I want Dally to not be dead, Steve.” I said evenly. “Can you do that? Because, that’s the only way that this could be fixed. And that’s one of the biggest truths I can give you, Steve.”
Steve watched me for a very long time, pen in hand, poised over his notepad before he finally spoke again.
“Do you feel like you failed Dally?” He asked gently. “Like you didn’t protect him?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t you think then, that you do feel responsible for Dally’s death?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“I didn’t cause Dally’s death.” I said. “I didn’t cause John to be the monster that he is…was. None of that is on me. Not a day goes by—no, not a second goes by that I don’t wish Dally was here and we could fix all of this, but I don’t feel responsible for any of it.”
Steve stared at me.
And the gravity of how much I knew this to be true settled into my gut.
“Do you think your medication is at the right dosage?” Steve asked.
“Dr. Renfro seems to think it’s perfect.”
“I asked what you thought, Tom.”
“I think it’s doing what it’s supposed to do.”
“And what’s that?”
“Well, it’s supposed to keep me from feeling anything. To not be depressed or anxious, at least.” I shrugged. “Because my mom, you, Dr. Renfro, Jeff—all the kids in group—they think that without the pills I will fall to pieces and put a rope around my neck or a knife to my wrist. Or maybe I’ll pull a Sylvia Plath and stick my head in an oven. I don’t know what first comes to people’s minds when they think about someone committing suicide, honestly. But feeling everything never made me suicidal. Feeling nothing has never made me suicidal. I’ve never been suicidal. Even though my mom committed me to a hospital, it wasn’t because I was suicidal. It’s because I wasn’t myself. I haven’t been myself. I’m not myself because my problem can’t be fixed. Some mistakes are made…some lies are told…and they can never be undone or taken back. I’ll never be Tom before summer camp, Steve. Tom two-point-oh is who I am now. Maybe we’ll get to three-point-oh or, hell, even two-point-one, but Original Recipe Tom is gone. He’s a ghost.”
Steve looked disturbed as he watched me.
“Maybe I’m saying it in a way that isn’t exactly normal or healthy, but I think you catch my drift.” I shrugged again. “Moving past trauma doesn’t return a person to their former glory. Things don’t go back to the way they were, but they can become something less horrible than they are. But that isn’t going to happen today. And honestly, I don’t see it happening tomorrow, the next day, week, month, this year…Dally is dead, Steve. That’s not something Paxil, Xanax, and a shit load of talk is going to fix.”
“Dr. Renfro, your parents…I’m worried about you, Tom.” He said. “We all feel like maybe it’s time for you to maybe just go inpatient again for a little…”
“I won’t do that.” I shook my head slowly. “I won’t sign myself back into the hospital.”
“Your mom—”
“I’m over eighteen.” I cut him off. “And unless you want to lie and say I’m a danger to myself or others, you can’t commit me. I will not go back in inpatient care ever again.”
“Don’t you think it might help?”
“Did it help Dally?”
Steve had no answer for that.
Because there wasn’t one.
Not even a lie.
And the timer went off.
Behind the Walls
The walls in an inpatient mental health facility are usually painted a color that the person who painted them think is cheerful. Like a semi-bright green or yellow or even a blue. At least the dorm rooms are painted those colors. If you’re confined to a nice one, anyway. County and state-run mental health facilities are probably more utilitarian beige or gray. But the hospital they stuck me in was private and, well, nice, I guess. It had those cheerful, pleasing colors and friendly staff and only patients who were just slightly off—not dangerous or psychotic.
Eating disorders, depression, anxiety, some BPD, a few schizophrenics who were just not quite managing appropriately, things that were not severe enough for a maximum-security hospital. Sometimes there would be screaming and hollering and night terrors in the middle of the night. Lots of cussing and threats, but nothing that I ever took too seriously. One of the other patients, a schizophrenic, told me he was going to stab me in the neck. But he was also paraplegic and confined to a wheelchair, so I couldn’t really take him too seriously. Just don’t get too close, right?
I had other BPD patients offer to have sex with me when they were in one of their episodes of mania and eating disorder patients offer the same for more food or for help in hiding their problems. For the most part, I just kept to myself and answered most questions and offers from other patients with a blank stare. That usually got the point across. It quickly became common knowledge in the hospital that I wasn’t one of the patients that other patients should bother with. One, I wouldn’t take the bait, and two, I’m pretty sure that I started putting off the impression that I had nothing left to lose. People tend to steer clear of those folks.
The hospital wasn’t so bad. I mean, it was clean and orderly and the staff were never unkind or did anything that I thought was incredibly unfair. Sure, there were rules and structure that didn’t necessarily make me happy since I was used to doing what I wanted when I wanted. But they were nice to me and helped me learn how to adjust to being in the hospital. Severa
l of the orderlies let me outside to walk even when they weren’t supposed to because I never gave them any trouble. They always watched me closely, but I was afforded a lot of luxuries that other patients weren’t. Probably because all of them screamed and yelled and offered sexual favors for practically nothing. I stayed quiet, spoke when spoken to, kept my room clean, took showers every day like I was supposed to, went to my appointments and groups, and was never rude to the staff.
Of course, unlike my mother, I didn’t look at the hospital as a way to get treatment for my depression and anxiety. I thought of it as a vacation from my life. When I was in the hospital, I was always told by the therapists and counselors inside that I was doing so well. That they liked me and thought they I was going to do very well in the future. Of course they thought that. When I was in the hospital, I was my real self. I didn’t have to lie or deal with other people’s problems. I could just eat, sleep, bathe, watch T.V., and just take a fucking breath for a minute.
I guess it seems like me not wanting to go back into the hospital sounds like one of my lies that I tell myself. It isn’t. The hospital was great for me. Coming out of the hospital wasn’t.
When I first entered the hospital, I had the first experience of really hating Dally. Like, really, truly, deeply hating him.
Is that callous or cruel? Maybe. But the web of lies we had put together to avoid talking about John is what had led to my anxiety and depression. Well, maybe it wasn’t the only reason…but it was a big part of it. Having to remember what I said and how I said it and who I said it to every day was a weight on my heart that grew heavier and heavier each day. Dally’s constant need of physical, emotional, and psychological support was wearing me down, too. It was all becoming too much and Dally couldn’t see that he was an anchor to me. He didn’t see that he was an impediment to himself.
Dally made truly forgetting John impossible.
Even though he insisted that that is what we would do.
We would act like it never happened and forget all of it.
Unless we were alone. He hadn’t mentioned that caveat to the agreement. Whenever we were alone, he became unbearable because John would come up at least a handful of times. Dally would flip shit and I would talk him down. He would need hugs, reassurance, other methods of comfort.
