If You Love Me Let Me Go

As soon as I got out of the truck and Vic had driven away I crumbled. I fell on the sidewalk in front of the offices and held my head between my knees, hoping that I wouldn’t have a panic attack right here on the sidewalk. I don’t know why I came to see Dr. Andrews, but I needed to talk to someone; I knew there was no way of talking me out of it now, but maybe she could help me get my thoughts in check while I still had thoughts to think. I knew I couldn’t go in there like this though; I had to put myself together.

I tried to stop crying, I tried and I tried, but nothing was working. I tried counting my breaths but I was just exhaling. Trying to exhale until my lungs collapsed in on themselves, or until I shrunk down and someone would walk by on the sidewalk and step on me. I tried to snap the bracelets on my wrist so I would have something else to focus on but it wasn’t enough. I needed something more painful to distract myself. That’s when I saw it- a jagged rock laying just off the sidewalk. I reached my hand out for it and just touched the edge with my fingertips. It seemed sharp enough, and I was desperate. I thought about the first time I cut myself- I was 14 and I was so alone. Always alone. I took the razor off of my pencil sharpner and took it into the shower with me. I washed my hair and I was about to turn the water off when I grabbed it. I pressed it to my wrist right in the middle of my forearm and I just swished my wrist. It stung a little but focusing on the physical pain and the blood dripping down kept me from thinking about the emotional pain. I cut again and again until the floor of the tub was red and I felt light headed. I sat on the tub floor and looked at what I had done- my shredded wrist and red bathtub- and I thought about that rather than the bullies and the rumors and all the monsters in my head. I sat and bled and I was content. I needed that now as I grabbed the rock and brought it to my wrist. Just as I was about to push-

“Kellin?” A frantic voice came as I heard the jingle that meant the office door opened. It was the receptionist Cara. She ran over to me and grabbed the rock.

“No!” I screamed at her. “No! No! No! Give it back! I need it! I need to…” I trailed off, sobbing. I wrestled with her to try to get the rock back but my sobs were shaking me too violently. She threw the rock and wrapped her arms around me until I stopped crying and my breathing steadied.

“I’m going to take you to see Dr. Andrews.” She said pulling me into the office building. We went to Dr. Andrews’ office and she seemed appalled at my current state of hysteria. I sat in the big plush chair and looked around at the familiar room. It was beige with red furniture and a big mahogany desk. On the walls were certificates and pictures of Dr. Andrews’ family. There was one window that faced the road as if to remind you that even with all the problems you’re talking about and your own collapsing world, the rest of the population is still okay. The world keeps turning and lives go on; you aren’t that important.

While I was spacing out Dr. Andrews got out my file and Cara had told her the scene that unfolded on the sidewalk. They both just looked at me as I stared out the window, waiting for me to cry or scream or something. But I just felt empty, like I usually did. My episode was over and I was ready for the series finale.

“How are you feeling, Kellin?” Dr. Andrews asked when Cara left the room.

“I’m fine.” I replied.

“You may be fine, but that doesn’t mean you’re okay.” That was what I liked about Dr. Andrews; she knew how to read subtext and how to get people to open up. She didn’t try to sugar-coat anything or feed you the stereotypical ‘it will get better’ or ‘everything is going to be okay’ because she understood that no matter how many times she said it, you wouldn’t believe it. She told you the truth as long as you did the same.

“Alright, I’m not okay.” I said. “I had this… nightmare…” I explained, feeling like a little kid being afraid because of a nightmare. I told her all about it and she listened, she didn’t ask questions until I was finished.

“So the people that spoke up first, do they have any significance?” She asked first.

“No. I don’t think so. They’re just as mean as everyone else; pushing me in the halls, whispering about me, same old, same old.”

“I don’t think being bullied like that is ‘same old, same old’” She said. “Being bullied is a serious deal. I think that’s a big part of why you’re here.”

“That’s not true at all. I could care less about what those half-wits have to say about me. All they know about me is that I tried to kill myself. They think I’m insane. They think I’m dangerous. They don’t even care about me enough to effectively bully me.” I retorted. “My biggest bully is myself. I hate myself more than any of them ever could.”

“Okay.” She said writing some stuff in my already over-sized folder. “But Vic, he isn’t like everyone else right? He’s different. He mean’s something to you.”

I didn’t know what to say. Vic meant everything to me. Vic knew everything there was to know about me, he cared more than anyone I’d ever met; he actually wanted to help me for me and not for himself. He focused on me and didn’t make it about him or compare it to what he had been through. He actually cared about my life and not how I had affected his. Vic was like the ocean and I was like the shore- no matter how many times I pushed him away he kept coming back. He was like the sun and I was like the moon, he shined on his own, but he always made sure he had enough light to make me shine. Vic was the only thing keeping me alive right now. I couldn’t say all of this to Dr. Fuence though, she wouldn’t understand. So I just said-

“Yes.”

“And why do you think he would be the one that pushed you so much in this dream?”

I took a moment to think about it. I hadn’t focused on that so much because I really didn’t want to know, but when I did start thinking I did understand.

“Because it’s the people who mean the most to you that eventually do push you over the edge.” She gave me a puzzled look so I continued, “Before I tried to kill myself, I was just another person; just a son, just a friend, just a normal human being. Then when I tried to kill myself everyone started caring a whole lot more; I became the ‘only’ son, the ‘best’ friend, a troubled human being who needed more attention than normal. Why did I have to almost die to get people to notice that I existed? Why did I suddenly become someone so significant? The people that didn’t care about me still didn’t care about me, but the people that did started to care a lot more. That’s what really made me mad I guess; that the people who ‘loved’ me loved me more when I was almost gone.”

“Did Vic do that?” I could tell she really wanted me to open up about him, so I did.

“Vic? No. He always cared. Vic was there for me through everything and he never cared more or less about anything I was upset about. I could be upset about someone getting my Starbucks order wrong and he would act like I had to most justified reason to bite someone’s head off.” I said recalling a time this happened. I smiled a little before remembering why I was here. “He cared more about me than anyone.” I looked out of the window as a tear fell from my right eye. Luckily Dr. Andrews didn’t bring it up.

“In your dream, Vic was the last to leave. Why?”

“Because he was the last person I had left.” I said flatly.

“You don’t have anyone anymore?”

“No. I figure everyone, including Vic, will be okay without me. They all have someone that they can go to. Jenna has Jesse, my Mom can go to my Aunt, and Vic will find someone. I wasn’t a detrimental part in anyone’s life so I won’t be a detrimental ending. But for Vic, I feel like it will affect him more than anyone. He cares the most about me and so he’ll care the most about me when I die.”

“You talk about death like it’s no big deal.” She stated observingly.

“I don’t think that it is.” She asked why and I replied, “What is one thing that everyone does? Dies. No one lives forever. I don’t understand why people are afraid to die when so many people have done it before and so many people will do it after.”

“What are you afraid of, Kellin?”

“Me? I’m not afraid-” I was about to say that nothing scared me, but that wasn’t true at all, and Dr. Andrews knew that. “I’m afraid of fear itself; the idea that something can have so much power over me. Fear can keep you from living your dreams, from fulfilling your destiny, from living your life. Everyone’s fears are different too. Every single person has their own set of fears that keep them from doing something. Every single thing in the world scares one person or another. We literally live in one giant torture chamber. That scares me.”

She looked at me quizzically and asked me yet another question. “What do you believe in, Kellin; about life, about death, about anything.”

“I don’t know what I believe.” I said, never having thought about it. “I believe- I do believe in a ‘heaven’ or a ‘hell’. I don’t know if that’s what they’re called or if they’re really what they’re made out to be or if they’re really two different places, but I believe if you spend your entire life building up all this energy it can’t just disappear when you die. It goes somewhere. I believe that if there is a God, and I don’t want to offend him if there is one, that he doesn’t really care anymore. He’s been doing the same thing for thousands of years- creating people who are going to mess up and not believe in him and ruin everything he’s worked for- and now he’s sick of it. I think he stopped helping us like he did with Noah and all those other guys because we don’t deserve it anymore. I believe that Life is just like one big dream and eventually we are all going to have to wake up and realize we were in control of it the entire time, but we just went with the flow; and we’ll regret it. I believe that some people were put on this earth strictly to die- they were put here to show the world that what they’re doing is wrong and they need to change. I believe the world doesn’t care- they want to get their perfect society and the pawns that God sends to die for their realization are about as useful here as they are in a chess game- they aren’t. I believe that the world is such a terrible place that I would kill to get out of it, but I would only kill one person.”

There was silence for a minute while Dr. Andrews wrote on her notepad about my rampage. After a while she calmly put her notepad down and folded her hands across the top of it. She looked at me intrigued with her brown eyes and asked me calmly one question.

“Do you want to die, Kellin?” She asked me blankly. I was shocked, but I had to come up with a clever answer so that she didn’t send me back to an institute.

I thought about it. I really didn’t want to die, I wanted to stop being sad. I wanted to stop feeling empty. I wanted to stop hurting people. There was a battle going on inside my head and I was fighting like hell to win but I was losing. I was losing and there was no hope for victory. I was surrendering. I didn’t want to stop trying to win, I wanted to keep fighting; but I knew that the battle would eventually end and I would lose. So yes, I was in a sense giving up, and maybe I was weak and selfish like they said in my dream but one thing was absolutely and unarguable true-

“I don’t want to die, Dr. Andrews.” I told her. “I honestly do not.”