Hopeless

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"There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope." – Bernard Williams

I could not do anything else but try to relax. So I did that. I started looking at my room. My room. I never felt like it was my room. It was so cold and so much different from my actual room back home. This one had tall, light blue walls. Or maybe they were grey. It was a weird mix of both colors, not very unique. Cold, distant, boring. A king sized bed with white blankets and cover ups and countless pillows, colored in the same shade as the walls was stuck on the wall next to the window, making the entire area feel almost suffocating. There was a big TV hung on the wall across from the bed, which was never open, and a silver colored desk that seemed to me completely useless was placed under it.

But my room back home in England was indeed something else. First of all, it had color. The walls were painted warm beige because my parents did not want to paint it pink which is supposed to be the girls' color. They wanted it to be neutral. My bed was not so big, but it was enough. It was made of iron and it had a rusty sort of texture that made it look super vintage and cozy. On my walls I had many paintings of mine; I loved to paint. I was not very brilliant at it, but it was my favorite thing to do. And then, there was my large wooden bookcase. Many, many books I had back home. New, old; some of them were my mom's from when she was at high school, some others were new, and my personal favorites; second-hand books that I had bought from a small, hidden bookstore I discovered one day walking from school, near my house. Like me, my mum used to read a lot of books all the time. So I had a big collection of books. All of them I had read and I had even more that my dad had put in the basement so they would not take up much space in my already crowded, little room. The ceiling was painted red. I remember getting this idea on my 14th birthday and telling my dad. He loved it, so we sneaked off the house without my mom noticing and went to the store to buy paint. Then we crawled up to my room from my window, we set everything up and while my mom was cleaning the house, my dad and I painted the ceiling.

Later that day, when it was my room that my mom had to clean, she noticed the painted red ceiling and started yelling to my dad for doing something so big to the house without asking her. Eventually, she got used to it. They bickered for days; well my mom did. My dad just listened to her while reading his paper and saying over and over again, 'The kid wanted a red ceiling, what is so bad about that?'

And with the thought of my parents, I finally fell asleep.

The first week of November was dull. I stayed in my room for most of the time, except from eight to nine p.m., when I was forced to go see my therapist. Hannah visited me a lot. Every morning, I woke up and after five minutes she would be outside my door with a big, warm smile painted on her face. We never talked about what happened; Gloria forbid Hannah to ask me any questions about that 'dreadful day'. I overheard her talking to Hannah and threatening her (as much as Gloria can threaten; she is too sweet) that if she asks or mentions anything about that day or about my time in the hospital, she will have to stop coming to see me.

So, Hannah and I talked about everything else; college, her mom that dyed her hair bright red and that her brother had gotten into a huge fight with their dad. Hannah told me she wishes her brother and their dad stopped talking so that he can stop sucking on his ass and realize how much of a shitty person he actually is. It was really entertaining listening to her problems; much because they distracted me from mine. And although I never even got a name for her brother, I knew he would not really appeal to me as a sympathetic person. Hannah's family drama was something that we never forgot to talk about whenever she visited. Angry, rich aunts and ungrateful fathers were our past time. Nonetheless, the drama reminded me that the only family I have is a heartless aunt with a toxic boyfriend and a brother who I had no idea of his whereabouts. It has been a very long time since I had talked with my brother, and since he was the older one I expected him to reach out to me. Something he never did.