After three long hours of driving they finally arrived to the house. Thomas felt his stomach drop, his heart speed up and his throat drying up. He hadn't been here since that night. Shakily he struggled with the cap to his bottle of Xanax, he popped two into his mouth and swallowed hard. He wasn't going to even hover his hand above his seat belt buckle till they kicked in. He felt his eyes fill up with an ocean's worth of tears and he started hyper ventilating. His mum pulled open his car door and held him close to her "you're safe. I promise." He felt the tears begin to flow as he sunk into her arms "I can't, I can't go in there mum. don't make me go in there." He repeated the same thing he had said that night when they got to the ward. His dad had already gone inside and was on his second pack of cigarettes'. "this kid can never get enough attention, can he?" He grumbled to himself while puffing away and watching them through the window.
Finally after half an hour of slowly stepping towards the door he was inside. He took a deep breath in through his nose. The smell of ugly and painful memories engulphed him like a flame. He starred down the hallway leading to his bedroom and swallowed his tears. "you replaced the carpet in the hallway." he said shakily. "we had to, the uh... stains, we couldn't get them out." Blood. She was talking about the blood. It became clear to him that he wasn't the only one left with scars from that night, his just happened to be physical. "we got rid of your blades. all of them." his father chimed in while standing behind him like a shadow. "I figured you would." Thomas replied sharply and began walking towards his bedroom.
"its so.." he said, unable to find the words to describe how he felt. All of his posters were gone. All of the photos of his friends were gone and so was his furniture. All that was left was a mattress with black sheets on the ground along side a pile of plain grey clothes with all the strings taken out of them. "do stupid shit, get stupid consequences" his father grumbled while gentle throwing his backpack onto the mattress. He got really close to Thomas's ear and whispered "you really fucked up your mother with all of your attention grabbing bullshit." Thomas slammed his door and slumped down onto his "bed", he plugged his new headphones into his iPod and pressed play.
He lay flat on his back and stared at his ceiling. Music was his only escape. He took his headphones off and pulled his book and charcoals out of his bag and began drawing. He could hear his mother making dinner and singing to herself while his father yelled at the TV over god knows what. He took another deep breath in through his nose and began drawing. He drew what he saw in his reflection outside of the ward, when his ugly deep scars were still open, bleeding wounds. He drew his father, specifically what his father's looked like when he had found him. Any normal parent would immediately call for help, not his father. He screamed at him and lifted him up by his collar "don't you dare do this to your mother". He drew all of the things he hallucinated in the ambulance on the way to the ward, all of the shadows and screaming. he set his charcoal down and gentle placed his drawings onto his wall with some old tape he had found.
"what the fuck are those?" his father said as he walked into Thomas's room to tell him dinner was ready. "nothing. ignore it, its what you do best." Thomas barged past his dad and into the kitchen, his mum had made his favorite chicken soup for dinner. He sat down and ate faster then he had ever eaten in his life, he had missed real food. All they served at the ward was bread, rice and black beans. "how are you feeling?" his mother asked while serving him more dinner. He could tell she really cared, the only problem was that he didn't. "like shit. soup helps though. thanks." His father abruptly stood up and disappeared into his work shop. "he hasn't been handling it very well, just give him time" His mum handed him an even bigger bowl of dinner and pulled her chair up next to his.
"how is he meant to handle it if he never cared in the first place?" Thomas said while slurping away at his soup. "the night you.. yeah. he spent the entire night researching the best place to send you, he called a million different places. He's never going to tell you this himself so I'm going to tell you for him. He hid in the bathroom and sobbed for hours. He spent the next day scrubbing the carpet and repeating how we had to make it look like nothing had happened so when you got home you'd be okay." Thomas felt the tears begin to form again. He stood up and walked into his father's workshop and hugged him "I'm sorry" he said through tears.
YOU ARE READING
wandering minds
Fiksi UmumA 20 year old man whose struggling with severe mental illness tries to navigate his adult life after being in a psych ward for two years while also trying not to succumb to his mental illnesses and forgive his father.
