Hope

Chapter 7

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2024

You destroy me and then you kiss me. You give me a reason to hate you and then you give me a reason to love you. Is this a lie or the truth? Is this a ploy or your heart reaching for me . I watch as you drift away, knowing you'll return in another life. I promise to be patient.

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It's April, and I can always count on some things staying the same. But first, the new. I have a girlfriend. She's pretty-- she's a year younger than me and has a bunch of piercings and stick and pokes. She's really cool, and my friends like her. My mom does, I think. I met her online while lounging on Sam's couch, and our first date was a concert which I think was very romantic of me. She hangs out with my friends, and I hang out with her family, and it's awesome. She's not a favourite person, either, which is possibly the greatest gift bestowed upon a human being.

Some things are where I left them.

Mrs Sweetmoor was evil incarnate. The maestro behind the destruction of my teenage life. Because who else could be so evil, then a woman in an unhappy marriage with a failing business?

She spearheaded the investigation into me to begin with. Controlled the Campbell's as well, like she the ring leader and they the freak show. I remember that disgusted look in her eye form the first day, when I hadn't even  done a thing. As though my existence was impertinent.

And then again when I had the misfortune of physically running into her at a store-- staring me down over the hilt of her grocery cart with such unbridled rage— all because she resented the fact her daughter could ever possibly be interested in another girl.

 I saw her never otherwise, but I always knew she had been at the school when I was called into the office. There would be packets upon packets on the table between Mr Greene and I. Screenshots of my private social media with captions that just had to be about her daughter, because of course I couldn't do anything without it being about her daughter. So, I stopped posting.

Mr Sweetmoor was a pushover of grand proportions. I don't think he's had an original thought since he married the bride of Hell. I didn't know him beyond seeing him outside waiting for Sarah on the few occasions he did, but he certainly did nothing to help me, either. He was the one to slide a smaller but equally as detrimental portfolio of bullshit google searches on how people with BPD were narcissists over to Greene, and was adamant that id grow to be violent later in life even given the fact id shown no such characteristics yet to deem such a title. Allegedly, I couldn't feel empathy as it presented as a symptom for people with Borderline, however I had always been a sensitive and empathetic person even on my worst days.

His wife must have never been prouder. I hadn't been spared a single harangue from Greene about any one of the topics they deigned ever so important, and each time I felt a little more likely to commit homicide having to sit surrounded by the red-faced man, a cop, and usually the vice principal that didn't like me. That must've been purposeful.

I never saw the terror twins when I would be called in, either. I just knew they had been there, by the way all the birds in the nearby tree flew like the harbinger of the apocalypse had passed. When they collectively weren't torturing me by stalking my posts or harassing my family at home with letters my mom used as kindling, I was expected to be grateful. Because it was fine if Mara texted me, or if Sarah took a photo from my social media and made it her profile picture because it's a public image there's nothing wrong with that. God forbid I use pronouns in a social media caption, or show any signs of a burgeoning mental health crisis. No, I was forced to stuff that down and pretend all was well, though my DBT skills taught me the opposite. I had my phone taken for two weeks, which resorted to me using email live chat on my laptop to talk to people.