The Boy Who Wore Boat Shoes

19⎜The Clinic

19⎜The Clinic

I stared up at the boxy building, apprehension practically coursing through my veins like it was blood. There wasn’t a single cell in my body that wanted to be here, yet I was. I would’ve much rather spent another two hours enduring one of my math teacher’s random anecdotes that had nothing to do with math, like I had been doing a mere fifteen minutes before. That lady could talk, and I always found it odd how she would spiral into tales about her first three marriages, when she should’ve been addressing numbers. I had never had a math teacher who was so easily sidetracked, so it was definitely a new experience for me.

           The structure before me was practically taunting me with the words engraved at the top: Stanford Student Counseling Clinic. People were passing by me, too wrapped up in their own problems to even give me a second glance. I could see the doors clearly—they were right in front of me, yet they felt so far away. I didn’t want to be here.

           After briefly weighing out all the plausible pros and cons to either leaving or staying, my feet made the decision for me, remaining glued to the stairs before the clinic. With heavy steps, I somehow found myself facing the door, and opened it, walking in with an immediate sense of dread. I hated this. I really did.

           I dragged my legs over to the reception desk, a woman in maybe her mid twenties or so sitting behind a window that didn’t have glass in it. She was dully picking at her nails, uninterested in all that was occurring around her, and didn’t notice me as I walked up. I forced a cough, grasping her attention. Her head shot up and she stared at me with the same tedium that she had possessed moments prior, only now she actually knew that I existed.

           “Can I help you?” she said the phrase in a way that probably wasn’t supposed to sound as depressing as it did.

           “Uh, I called earlier. I just needed someone to talk to. I was told to show up here around now,” I gulped, scratching the back of my neck in unease.

           “Name?” she sighed, glancing down at something.

           “Eric. Eric Wilson.”

           “Well, Eric, just take a seat in the waiting area, and then someone should be available shortly,” she told me, pointing over to a collection of cushioned seats where an assemblage of Stanford students were seated, all in their own worlds.

           “Thanks,” I nodded at her, and then mutely approached the seating area. Unfortunately, there were no seats next to unoccupied ones, so I ended up sitting beside a girl who was biting her nails nervously, and a relatively safe-looking dude. He had headphones on, and his eyes were shut.

           I allowed my eyes to wander around the space, taking in everyone. There were about twelve chairs or so, arranged in an upside-down U, so that there were sets of four chairs parallel to each other, and a row of three chairs at the top. All but about two chairs were now filled, and it was a diverse group of people that were here, as should’ve been expected at a mental health clinic.

           Anxious minutes passed by, and people got called, the occupiers of the seats rotating every few minutes. I was on edge, for I didn’t even want to be here in the first place. After the meeting with Grant a few days ago, I hadn’t really been doing too well from a mental standpoint. Seeing the pot and having it so close to me was a scary thing. Most addicts if put in the same situation would gladly accept the weed, completely overlooking how far they had come. For a split second it had crossed my mind to try it once again, but then I remembered how blatantly not fun rehab was, and it reminded me of why I had quit in the first place: I wanted to get my life back together.