Stitches

I think everyone should almost drown at least once in their life.

Or at least have some kind of near death experience, because it really tells you a lot about yourself. I don’t remember how old I was or what pool I was at or even what state I was in (because I remember my aunt and cousins being there but they’re lived in Virginia since I was, like, six) but I remember being little and not being able to swim and going down. What’s more important is that I remember vividly the last thing I thought before I realized that I was in too deep. My older cousins were up on the edge of the pool with their feet swaying in the shallow water and I was so much farther out. They were the last thing I saw before I went under, realizing and almost accepting in a weird way that I was actually drowning, and thinking my last thought: They’re just going to let me die.

See? It says a lot about me and my attachment to people. Maybe it says that I feel that other people owe me something or are supposed to get me out of messes or that I’m just too dependent , but I’m not sure because I’m not a professional in psychology. But it meant a lot, I know it. And I know it wasn’t just the melodrama of my younger years because I almost drowned once again, a few years later (because I was practically a dwarf until freshman year who couldn’t swim) and I thought the same thing, watching my friend and my mom. I’m sure that some people start thinking of a plan when they’re in situations in which they think may be their demise, think of a what-to-do, some start praying to God that they don’t go this way, some think about their families- but not me.

I think that’s why I told Nick that I was going to kill myself. Because I didn’t want them to just let me die.

“I hope you’re happy,” she says. But not in that way that shows that a person truly cares for your wellbeing and success but in the much more popular bitter and patronizing way. And it’s kind of expected, from my mother- but I can’t help feeling the sharp hit of it that she always intends.

The elevator dings and the man steps on with my mom following, her glowering eyes never leaving mine but he stops me with a raise of his hand when I try to step on. He shakes his head, “Patients can’t come on the elevator.”

“Oh,” My face heats as I bite at my lip and look around the dimmed hall, thinking, wow, so I’m totally confined to this small floor. It doesn’t look any less creepy knowing that this is where I’ll be trapped for the next however many days. “So…I just wait here?”

“You’re not going to show him his room?” The woman at the front desk, Ms. Annie, asks. The man just shrugs, great, and the elevator doors separate us. I jump a little at the sound. My hands clench and unclench around the laundry basket they gave me, saying I should put my clothes in it every night and set them outside the door to be washed. I turn to look over at the woman, but she’s already beside me, nodding her head forward and I walk beside her. There are two men in chairs sitting in the halls but the room doors are closed. Except the second to the last door, she gestures in and I walk in to see a covered lump on one of the two beds. The light above the small, empty bed, I assume is for me. I set the empty basket in front of the empty cabinet and sit on the thin mattress. I slide under the thin blanket and the thin sheet, but can’t close my heavy eyes.

The walls are sea foam green and half the room is covered in hand drawn posters. I assume it’s their form of decorating. The mattress squeaks with my every move and the light stays on. The man from before, appears in the doorway and says, “Tristan, come say bye to your mother again.” I nearly jump up because it feels like a second chance, like I can redeem myself in her eyes or something because now that I think about, I didn’t even hug her and I don’t know the next time I’ll see her. It bothers me a little that I feel this way because she hasn’t exactly made this very eventful day any easier but…she’s my mom. This time when I get into the hall my mother looks more like a child, with her bottom lip jutted out and eyes red. “They won’t let you keep your boots,” she says with a trembling voice, as if that’s all she has to cry over. And then she starts bawling and for the first time, I regret opening my mouth to the shrink and the counselor and the hospital. I wrap my arms around her, my boots in the bag they put them in at the ER, but she doesn’t hug back, she just cries and cries and…I don’t. She finishes up with a few chocked, “It’s out of my hands now. There’s nothing I can do.”

I let go and don’t know what to say. I’m not really sad, so I still don’t cry. She composes herself within an inhale and asks about my room quickly- if I have a roommate or a TV in my room. I tell her I have both just because I don’t remember whether or not there was a TV but it seems like it’ll make her feel less like I’m caged. And then the man slides his card again and then the doors close for the last time and I shuffle back to my room, watching my socked feet and listening to the sound of the really thin scrubs rubbing together.

I close my eyes but can still tell when the light gets turned off. I keep them closed tight, even when I hear the creaking of the other bed and a gasp. A light turns on and I open my eyes to see the other bed empty.

“There is a boy in my room!” I hear a kid, who I assume is my new roommate, exclaim. I turn away from the door and just try to block out everything. But I can’t sleep. And I wait until I hear the click of the light switch, the creak, the shuffle, and the soft snores before reopening my eyes.

Staring up at the ceiling, I don’t regret telling Nick what I did- because I probably would’ve killed myself. I don’t know how or when or why exactly but I would’ve. I don’t even feel like doing it right now, though, at this very moment. And I don’t yet see how this is helping me because there’s no feeling that I can’t take my life as much a feeling of I don’t want to do it here, even if someone put a razor in my hand and a bottle of downers bedside. I do feel watched but the guilt is rolling through me like waves, churning up everything in my stomach. That’s what makes me cry, not the sadness or the depression but the guilt and shame. I force my eyes closed and try to just focus on the darkness of my closed lids because maybe if I trick myself to stop thinking for a few seconds, I can fall asleep. It works.

X

Walking out of the doctor’s room or makeshift office or whatever- I don’t know, it was the room I had to change in front of that lady when I first arrived- I just feel kind of ripped off. She spent maybe two minutes talking to me and for about the tenth time I had to retell the story of why I was here. As if I don’t have a file. Hell, I’ve noticed that there is an entire four-inch binder dedicated to my case. So I’m still dancing around it, saying that my counselor said that I couldn’t come back to school until I had a psych evaluation- which is the truth but not what she wants to hear. The real story just seems kind of weak. I kind of wish I would’ve taken a bottle of something this time just to be able to say suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts just doesn’t seem like enough to be here. I feel like I haven’t earned the ‘crazy’ stigma.

“This is Tristan.” My head snaps up and Ms. Annie and three other adults at the nurse's station are looking at me.

“Hi,” I mutter, because I’m still anxious here.

“This is Ms. Kendra, she’s part of morning staff,” Ms. Annie says and I just repeat my previous greeting, awkwardly. She walks over to a rack and hands me two thin towels, I look down at the small station and see soap and toothbrushes and all that, as well. “I washed your clothes too,” she nods over at one of the baskets lining the opposite wall.

“Thanks,” I say and I recognize the boy whose room I share walking out of a door and drying his hair with a towel and shaking it frantically, like a dog, at the same time. When I was woken up this morning, he wasn’t in the other bed, but it was all made up, so I made mine too. I didn’t feel tired even though it had to be really early. Before sunrise even, I couldn’t see the sun behind the blinds of the single, barred window in our room.

She gestures to the door he just walked out of after I grab my basket and when I walk in I see that it’s a shower room. It’s tiny, narrow. There’s a bath tub on one side and a shower next to it, a half wall between them. There are scrubs all over the floor and I wince as I try to tip toe over the wet spots, a futile action.

When I get out the shower, I still feel dirty. And the clothes I was wearing at school aren’t exactly practical- the black jeans are way too tight and the sweatshirt was too big and my socks were mismatched blue and green.

“You scared the fuck out of me, man,” the kid, sprawled across his tiny bed says when I walk back in the room with my empty laundry basket.

“I noticed. Sorry,” I mutter, and slap on this stupid grin because I figure I better be nice to the kids who’ll be sleeping next to me. He’s short, I notice when he stands and extends his hand to shake, and a little stocky. His hair is brown and short and his eyes are gray and blue and his sweatpants are too long for him and have holes at the bottom like he’s been stepping on them for years. The design on his t-shirt is too faded to make out but there’s a whole at the top of that too.

“I’m Angel,” he says, voice rising a pitch on the last syllable.

“Tristan,” I reply.

“I freaked out a little, and the staff was just like oh that’s just you’re new roommate,” he laughs as he falls back onto his bed. I sit on the edge of mine.

“Yeah, I got in really early.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you anyways. This place isn’t too bad.” He notices my wondering eyes and continues, “These are all my posters- the kids are usually nice.”

It seems laughable, looking at the walls with the thought ‘the kids are usually nice’, it’s hypocritical, kind of- seeing as how I’m here, but it doesn’t seem true.

But with my double-take of the walls, I notice that most of them do have messages ‘To Angel’ on them. I’m half impressed and half shocked. Fuck, I didn’t want to be here long enough for that many people to be able to make me enough pictures to cover over half of my temporary room. I slide my socked foot over the gray linoleum and grip at the loose crochet of the blanket a little, wondering if I could get used to it like he so obviously has. I ask how long he’s been here.

“People make them for me before they leave,” he grins big, “I’m pretty popular. I got here uh…October seventh.”

I don’t add up the days, but I know it’s a long fucking time. So long, I realize that he doesn’t even know how long. My mouth almost drops and I look him over, the shirts short sleeve, no cuts, no scars that look blatantly self-inflicted so he can’t be in for suicide, and he’s too nice to be in for anger. I’m not even sure all the types of kids who come to this place. It was an awkwardly hot, long ride here in the ambulance, it had to be almost an hour but still, I didn’t know this place existed before I was wheeled into the registration office.

“But that’s just because of placement issues,” he says with a wave of his hand like it’s no big deal and I don’t really know if it is or not because I’m not even sure what placement issues are but if they cause you to be here for nearly a month then they can’t be too good.

There’s almost all too much I don’t know about this place, even after all of Angel’s talking- like he’s my own personal welcoming committee, four hours too late- I’m still at a loss. And there's much else to think about to try to figure out whether or not I truly want to kill myself anymore. My thoughts were too jumpy, too back and forth and blurry. I tried to focus everything and not seem so anxious though I was a bundle of nerves, and still in my anxious thought process of what to do next, what to do next, what to do next.

It sounds more simple than it should be, the want, my moods were on and off like a light switch I wasn’t controlling. The depression was like the switch idling for too long. The thoughts were me thinking that it’d never flip again.