Troubled Thoughts and the Self-Esteem to Match

Bill

I Told Mr. Way everything. I had been thinking of everything since the episode I had during the middle of the night when Gabe had been in ISO. I just…Got tired of holding it all in and decided “He’s my counselor. That’s what he’s here for.” I told him about how I was raped by a group of school bullies. How they had lured me into their trap at a party and I had foolishly accepted because I wanted to be friends. I told him about how they had given me a spiked drink and led me to an abandoned paper factory a few blocks down the road from where the party had been. They had threw me on the dock of an old machine and raped me and I hadn’t been able to do anything because the drugs coursing through my system had made me so defenseless, I told him.
I vented to Mr. Way for almost two hours about how after the horrendous experience of the three bigger teens sexually abusing me, they knocked me out and when I woke up, I was in a town ten miles from my house.
“I remember calling my friends big brother, Jason Siska, crying. I asked him to come pick me up and drive me home. He had implored what happened to me, but I remember telling him ‘I got drunk and picked a fight with a few of the football players from my school.’ I couldn’t force myself to tell him what happened because I hadn’t even really accepted it myself.”

I told my counselor, who was jotting notes onto his paper all the while, that in the next few weeks after the incident, I struggled with myself on whether I should tell anyone or not. I had finally come to the conclusion that no one would believe me over these super popular rich boys that couldn’t do anything wrong to the majority of adults who knew them. I confessed that I had actually believed I could go back to school without them bothering me, but I was wrong. They would always corner me in the halls and make exceedingly offensive and lewd remarks pertaining to it.
I revealed that they teased me to the point that I finally pulled the razor from a cheap handheld pencil sharpener and took it home with me. I had known my parents were both at work, so I had went into my room and opened up the veins in my arms. I had been just at the brink of unconsciousness when my friend Mike Carden had walked in on the site. He had apparently been coming over to ask if I could help him with some math homework, and called an ambulance.

After the first time, I went on to say, I was in the hospital for almost a month doing physical therapy for my hands. Doctors had suggested I be admitted to a mental ward, but my parents decided it wouldn’t be the best choice for me. We moved to another town soon after, to another school.
I had become withdrawn and shy, unable to make friends in the new school. I kept to myself completely, but my family didn’t realize. They thought I was getting better in our new location, and I wasn’t doing better, but I wasn’t doing worse either. It wasn’t for eight months that I tried anything again. I had taken my mother’s sleeping medicine and swallowed as many as I could. I was unsuccessful again because of a simple phone call.
After the first incident, my Grandmother would call the house every thirty minutes when she knew I was home alone. I missed her call, so she immediately called an ambulance and headed to our house. I was told by my sister later that by the time Grandma got there, I was being willed out on a gurney, only slightly conscious.

I went on to inform Mr. Way that I had my stomach pumped and was admitted to a mental ward for almost a month, and was released because I seemed to act better. I was going to a counselor two times a week, but never told her what had happened. It was October 3, 2008 before I tried for the third and final time.
I really had been doing much better until that day that I had ran to the store to buy a few groceries for Mom. Purely out of fate, it had seemed, I ran into one of the teens that started it all. He had cornered me in the canned food isle and said, like we had been friends, “Hey William! Long time no see. I heard you tried to kill yourself. Why?” As soon as he had saw there was no one else around us, he had grabbed me by my jacket and dragged me closer to whisper “Why don’t we have a repeat of what happened after the party?”

I went to my bathroom when I got home, locked the door, and cut myself from my wrists, all the way to the bends of my arms. The neighbor’s kid, Zachary, was beating at the door out of nowhere and yelling for me to let him in. I remembered yelling “I don’t need your help!” My life had been salvaged again, unfortunately to me. That was the last straw to my family. They had decided that they couldn’t help me. I had to go somewhere for my own good. My aunt had been the one to suggest here, I had explained to the raven haired man before me. “Within two months, I was here.”

I think he was more astounded that I had decided to tell him everything than he was horrified to hear what exactly happened to get me here. He was probably used to hearing things like this. “That’s pretty much it.” I sighed, numb from the thought that I had told him on such a whim. He nodded after several long seconds, and finally sat his pen down. “I’m glad you decided to tell me, William. It’s terrible how often these things actually occur. Can you believe an average of 683,280 rape incidents are reported yearly?”
I watched him pick his pen back up and jot something else down on the top of his page before folding it down and grumbling “It’s almost enough to make you lose hope in humanity when you think about it.”
I instinctively nodded in agreement, then settled into the silence that was swirling into the room. A sudden thought captivated me, and I decided to act on it too rather than thinking about it like I usually would.
“Is there any way I can get my hair cut? I’m tired of it.” I spoke, watching him nod with a pleasant attitude. To him, it must have signified that I was ‘moving on with myself and changing the things that I hold onto’…Or something like that.
“Of course. We have hired hands in the Administration building, and this is one of the days that the barber comes. We can go after lunch if you’d like.”

“Okay, you’re all finished here.” The young brunette stated, running a comb through my freshly cut hair one last time before unsnapping the cloth from around my neck and telling me I was free to go. I rose from the chair and peered into the mirror to examine her work. I had told her to just cut it shorter but not too short. It had been easily long enough to touch my shoulders before I sat down in the chair. Now, it was just barely past my ears, not nearly as messy, and I had bangs that rested above my left brow. It was so much better, though it felt unbelievably strange after having it as long as it was for so many years. I ran my fingers through it several times, deciding that I liked it.

I thanked the girl and headed back to the block, Mr. Way making small talk during the walk there. I walked into the back door with Mr. Way and headed past his office. He walked inside and said a few words I didn’t catch before I heard bustling down the hall. “Is that you Bill?” Someone bellowed from the Living Room, followed immediately by a “Get in here! We were looking for-“ I noticed Brendon the same time as he noticed me, his head poking out the doorway and spotting me. “Oh My God, you didn’t!” He gasped, and stepped all the way into the hall. I could hear a few of the others asking what Brendon was talking about in the room. “Come here.” Brendon demanded to me with a whishing motion of his hands. “You have to show everyone.” I didn’t realize cutting my hair was a big deal, but then again, there wasn’t very much going on around here to get excited about. I proceeded to close in on him to do as he said, walking into the doorway behind him.
“You cut your hair!” Danny yelled like it was of any importance, and a collective gasp followed. “What in the world possessed you to do that?” Frank questioned. “Now Trav, Danny, and I are the only ones with long hair!”
Gabe pushed himself up from the couch and came over to meet me where I was, asking “What brought this about?” I shrugged while he lightly tousled the freshly cut locks. “Just got tired of it, I guess.”
He gave a quick smirk and declared “I think it looks good. It’s just gonna take some getting used to.”
From the end of the couch, Jack decided to throw in his input by concluding “I’m guessing long hair is like, a big thing in this block?”

Gabe wheeled back around with a chuckle and explained “No, Guillermo just loves to hide behind his hair, so it’s like ‘he can’t do that anymore’. We’ll be able to see his pretty little face.”

At 4:00, we were called to the Meeting Room for a group meet. Today’s topic was getting over challenges in your life that you’ve struggled with, and how to cope with them. We all had to describe something that’s happened in our lives and how we got over it and coped. Alex and Bob were the only ones who didn’t say anything. Brendon talked about losing his Grandmother, Ryan talked about when his dad was going through alcohol addiction, Gabe talked about when his step-dad came into his life and he had to deal with the abuse, and I mentioned having to live with what happened to me. Alex skipped, Jack talked about living with his condition, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, Danny talked about having to cope with the fact that his sister was killed by a drunk driver, and Travis mentioned that his brother was a drug addict and it was hard to deal with, and Frank mentioned bullying.

As soon as we were dismissed, we all went to our rooms to sit around until dinner. I stuck around in the meeting room to grab a book, picking one called The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey.
I had gotten comfortable on the bed and cracked open the book to begin, but I couldn’t concentrate. I tried to ignore it, but after twenty pages, put the book down and glanced toward Gabe. “What are you staring at, Gabe?” I huffed, frustrated, calling him out on his gaze. “You just look great Guillermo. Will you be my wife?” I rolled my eyes and he grinned, hopping up and coming to sit with me on my bed. “Why were you in there talking to Mr. Way so long today? Were you bragging to him about how drop dead gorgeous I am?” I ignored his last comment and went straight to seriousness. “I told him everything about the whole rape incident.”

He grew quiet for a moment to consider this. “Are you alright?” He inquired with a concern laced into his tone. “I’m fine. I actually feel a lot better after getting it out of my system.” He nodded with a quick “Good, cause I have a secret for you.” I raised an eyebrow in curiosity to the rather childish remark he had given, but waited.
"After we get back from the cafeteria, Mr. Way is going to have a ‘talk’ with us. He has plans to take us out as like, a Christmas gift soon, and he’s going to talk with us about it.” After sharing this information with another person, he flopped back into my bundle of blankets with a small yawn. “I could really use a break from this shit-hole.”
A break from this place sounded nice, but I didn’t want to think on that too much or I would start to lose my decent mood. I snuggled into the mattress and blankets before opening the book again, and listening to Gabe add “That’s a fucking awesome book.”