Everything You Gave [Meddison/MerAdd]

The Beginning of Hell

Meredith

Saturday September 10th 1994,  05:34 am

I awake with a start when I feel the warm body next to me roll over in the bed and grunt a little.

'Right,' I think slowly, my brain making an almost futile attempt at waking up.

'My mother is sleeping right next to me. Wonderful. Just wonderful.' 

I roll my eyes and sigh as I try to noiselessly slip out of the bed and into the small bathroom that accompanies our hotel room at the Delamar West Hartford. I can feel my back aching for the warm touch of my mother's hands, for some sort of reassurance that everything is going to be okay, that I will survive this hell that I am currently living in. This makes me feel a strange sort of hollow, an eerie feeling that I can't quite seem to shake off.

I quietly slink into the bathroom, attempting to make as little noise as possible, so as to avoid any drilling questions from my mother about my current activities.

I slowly sink down to the cool linoleum floor of the bathroom, without bothering to turn the light on. I feel the cold of the floor start to seep through my body. It crawls slowly upwards, stretching its ugly fingers out and sending shivers down my spine. 

I scoot closer to the wall in some vain effort to seek comfort from it, in some sort of vain delusion that it would offer the love, comfort, and human contact I so desperately needed from my mother--- my mother, who is fundamentally incapable of providing her child with this very basic need.

The cold wall hits the bony ridge that is my spine and I wince, while leaning further into its touch. I can feel the cold of the wall through my threadbare, gray long-sleeved shirt, raising goosebumps up and down the plane of my back. 

As I sit there, in the black-hole of the hotel bathroom, air-conditioner buzzing, I feel virtually devoid of any emotion. But at the same time, I feel so much pain that just won't go away. It only goes away when I'm sleeping, or if I'm cutting, or when I'm deeply contemplating just how easy it would be to end my life, to just stop breathing, to cease to exist.

I desperately need something that will quell this pain--- something that could just make it go away, if just for a little while.

I just need some sort of respite.

'Is that too hard to ask for?' I think, frustrated with the world and whoever controls my fate.

In this moment, fed up with life and all the pain and suffering I've been dealt, I want to cry so badly. But, it seems as though I have lost the ability in the last twenty-four hours.

'Great,' I think.

'I can cry on the tarmac of an airport, all open and exposed, but I can't cry in the privacy of a dark hotel bathroom early in the morning?'

"Great," I mutter under my breath.

"Just fucking great!"

I blow a deep breath of air through my lips in a futile attempt to calm the churning of my mind.

I feel like I'm going crazy.

'Maybe I am going crazy?' I think to myself, obviously perplexed.

All of the sudden, a dozen and one horrible voices flood my brain.

"Your mother doesn't love you," one says.

"Why would she? You're a worthless, ugly, unintelligent piece of shit with no friends and a father who left you."

"Why would anyone want you?" the second voice says, adding to the blow of the previous words.

"You obviously don't matter. Your life doesn't matter. No one loves you!" a third one chimes in.

"You should just kill yourself. It's not like anyone would care if you did. No one would even notice you were gone," says a fourth.

"Do it!" eggs on a fifth.

"What do you have left anyway? You know your mother will never love you. No one will ever love you."

"Stop it." I mutter, finally frustrated.

"Stop it. Stop IT. StoP IT. STOP IT!" I shout, grabbing fistfuls of my ratty pink and dirty-blonde hair.

"STOP IT!" I scream again, starting to hyperventilate.

I can't seem to calm down. My chest is heaving up and down and it hurts to breathe.

Everything hurts.

The tears I've been unable to shed start rolling down my face and I begin sobbing uncontrollably. 

They're big sobs. Sobs that wrack every part of your body. Sobs that attack your whole being. Sobs that heave your chest and leave you helplessly screaming for air.

I wrap my arms around my small body as I pull my knees up to my chest. Curled in a little ball, I continue sobbing and gulping for air, making helpless noises, noises that convey my true pain.

Blinded by tears and intrusive thoughts, I fail to notice my mother storming into the bathroom.

"MEREDITH GREY!" howls my mother as she crosses the threshold of the door.

"What the hell are you doing? Do you realize how early it is? You woke me up!" she continues indignantly.

I try to respond, but it comes out as another groan of pure pain and suffering.

"What the hell, Meredith?!" she screams.

"What is going on?

I try to respond again, but my mother just interrupts me.

"Get up. Now!" she demands, as she pulls me up by my left arm, her hands wrapping around the tender spot that I had littered with cuts just the night before.

"Ow..." I manage to get out, although it sounds more like another sob as the pain from the pressure on my cuts travels down my every extremity.

Blood starts seeping through the thin sleeve of my shirt. My mother must have opened up the cuts with the force she grabbed me with. 

Fuck.

I'm standing there, shaking, barely able to stand up, when my mother notices the red liquid oozing from my shirt onto her hand.

"Meredith? What the hell?!" she bellows, clearly unaware of the fact that almost every occupant of our hotel was still sound asleep.

She starts to pull up my shirt sleeve. Too weak to resist, I let her.

That's when all hell breaks loose.