MONEY TREES, gossip girl [DISCONTINUED]

01

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
CHAPTER ONE
THE HOMECOMING
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

"SOMETIMES I feel like I'm not real, like I'm just some mess that no one can explain or make sense of, you know? And I walk around, because this shapeless blob can somehow move and do things, and that's, like, an inconvenience to the world around me, or something. I don't even feel like a real person half the time."

"And the other half?"

CJ takes in a deep breath, furrowing his brows as he tries to find the right words to say. Words have never come easy to him, none of them fit how deeply he feels. Words are futile.

"The other half?" CJ ponders the four words, the string of letters that hold no meaning to his brain, "The other half of the time, I guess I do feel real. So, yeah, sometimes I feel like a person, just never the right one."

"What is the right person? What does that mean to you, Cristian?"

"They can say things and know how to say them. You know, they can make people understand and they can understand people. They can think without an accident. They're not distracted by shit like air vents or the person breathing beside them. They don't feel like they're dying when they their brain is so loud that they can't even read the test in front of them. The right person can just do everything the way the world wants them to. I can't be that. I want to, and I've tried, but I can't."

CJ's eyes move to the window to his right. As his therapist, Hanan, speaks in muffled sounds, he watches the cars of New York pass them by. He's the one that's high up and looking down for a change.

His mind drifts inside its calcium cage. CJ thinks of last year before everything went to shit. He didn't have to go to therapy, he still lived with his dad in the Bronx, and he wasn't happy but at least he wasn't like this.

"Cristian?" The sound of his name throws him off. He meets the gaze of his therapist, who softly sighs, "You seemed lost for a moment. Where did you go?"

He just shakes his head. CJ looks down into his lap, feeling her unwavering eyes on him. He had the urge to get something off his chest, but it feels like an itch he can't scratch.

"The only time I didn't care that I didn't feel real was when I was high," He admits within a murmur, but his voice sounds so loud to his own ears, "Nothing felt real then, it didn't matter that I wasn't."

"You are real, Cristian, and that matters."

"That's not—" He gives up on his attempt to make her understand, because he knows what follows couldn't be deciphered by any other mind, "I shouldn't have brought it up. Sorry."