The Things We Couldn't Forget

Chapter 20.

It can't be empty.

I shove my hands down into the hole, feeling around but I can't find my boots or my jacket. They're just gone.

I know I put them back.

I'm so sure that I did.

But now I don't know.

I don't know if someone is messing with me, or if it's me...if I'm the one messing with myself.

I'd still been so dazed when I left I didn't even think to hide the little hole that was holding my secrets.

And the wall...

"I'm losing it." I whisper to myself. "I'm losing my fucking mind."

I don't know what to believe or trust anymore. Nothing makes any sense. It all just...

My hand slips into the pocket of my father's coat and I pull out the bottle of pills and stare at them.

I don't even know where they came from.

The police took mine. I remember checking. I remember being so broken that they were gone, but then here is a bottle right in my hand.

I didn't even care where they came from. I only cared that I had it. Only cared that the power to check out of my life and the feelings I don't want to feel was here.

The white noise in my head returns and I squeeze my head at the temples until the pressure is too much.

I curl into a ball in the floor and cry.

"I don't understand." I cry, holding myself. "I'm scared. I'm so scared." I wrap my arms around my body and cling to myself. Cling to the things I know. But I don't even trust my own mind anymore. I can't make any of the pieces fit. The puzzle is too much. Too many missing pieces to finish the full picture.

My phone rings in my pocket and I pull it out slowly, seeing Kelsea's name on the screen.

I accept the call and just cry into the phone.

"Woah, woah, what's wrong?" She sounds so concerned. So worried.

"I don't..." I cry. "I don't want to be like this anymore."

"Missy..."

"I don't want to be like this." I say again, the truth of the statement ringing through my whole body, shaking my soul loose from all of the corners and edges of me. Pulling back the carpet and exposing the black empty hole inside of myself. "I don't know how to not be this."

"You have to want it." She says back softly. "You have to want it so bad that nothing can shake it. You can't do it for me or for anyone else. It has to be you. It has to be you who wants to stop."

"I do!" I cry out.

"You have to mean it, Missy."

"I do mean it!" I rub at my eyes but the tears won't stop coming, won't stop blurring everything around me. "I mean it...I do... I'm so scared. I'm so scared, Kelsea."

"What are you afraid of?"

"Myself."

I'm afraid of this person I am. I don't even know who I am. I still feel like the same little girl who would come into this room seeking comfort. I still don't know how to get what I want. I don't even know what I want in the first place.

How much of my life have I spent trapped here. Even when my body physically left, I've always been here. I'm stuck in this place, in this body, in this mind.

I have so many secrets tucked inside of me I'm too afraid to look inside. I'm too afraid to look into a mirror and see myself reflected back.

All I see are all of the things I hate.

"You're a good person, Missy." She says, the phone dropped beside my head as I rock and cradle myself.

"I'm not!" I scream. I scream at the tops of my lungs. "I'm not a good person, Kelsea! I'm fucked up! I'm so fucked up!"

"Missy?" She calls out to me but I hit end on the call. She calls back over and over but I turn off the phone.

I roll myself over and look at the pill bottle lying beside my face.

I want to hate them.

I want to blame them.

I want it to be their fault.

I never wanted this. I never wanted to lose everything that meant anything to me.

It's my foster parent's fault for sending me to that psychiatrist. It's his fault for writing those scripts. It's Luke's fault for hurting me so badly that all I could do is sink. It's everyone else's fault.

My father, my mother, my brother...

They did this to me.

I shove the bottle away and stare up at the ceiling.

I didn't ask to be this way.

No one wants to be like this.

To not know what's happening to them. To not be able to control their own life, their own mind. Something I'm supposed to be in charge of.

Everyone has taken so much from me.

I want to blame the whole entire world.

I want to burn it all down while I lay here and let the bones of this cursed house fall down over me until I am nothing but part of the ashes.

I can't though.

My whole body shakes and convulses around the panic that burns through my veins but I don't believe it.

I don't believe it anymore.

I'm not a helpless child anymore.

I'm an adult and I have the power to change things. I always have. And I've always chosen the easy way. I tell myself I don't want to be this, but then why? Why do I continue to do it?

Why can't I just stop?

Why?

Why?

Why?

I led my life into this direction.

I knew I liked the feel of escaping it all.

I made the choice to keep doing it.

I made that choice over and over and over for years.

It's not the world's fault I'm here right now.

It's my fault.

And that's the toughest pill I've ever had to swallow.