Safe Travels

Promises To Keep

"Alaine!"

"Hey hon. I feel like I got hit with a ton of bricks."

I laughed, "you still look pretty hot."

She smiled and tried to sit up. Her smile fell and she winced.

"I hurt all over babe. Come here."

She beckoned me over and in two strides I was standing beside her bed. I lifted her chin with two fingers and gave her a light kiss. Well, I intended for it to be a light kiss, but Alaine tangled her fingers in my hair and slipped her tongue into my mouth. Suddenly I was straddling her and grinding on her thigh.

"Mmf- ow babe..." She giggled and pushed me to the side.

I looked at her worriedly, but she wasn't having it. She waved me off and muttered a half-hearted "I'm fine" before grasping my hand and smiling at me.

"Everything will be okay, you'll see."

I nodded, but I didn't really believe her. It was one thing after another, and my head was starting to spin. All this stress was getting under my skin, and I had the sudden urge to cut it all out.

Cut.

What a selfish thought, to want to harm myself when I was the only one not in a hospital bed. That made me hate myself a little more, and I turned away from Alaine. I was suddenly faced with a war in my mind, and I couldn't make it stop. It was one of those moments when I wanted to curl up and cry in a corner, or scream and hit something.

My world began to turn orange.  Most people say their world turns grey or black or blue, but orange was always my color. I hated the color intensely. I saw a movie once where the entire time the saturation levels were incredibly high, and it all looked orange. It made me want to vomit. My eyesight blurred a little, and I didn't notice the wetness running down my cheeks until it filled my mouth with a salty tang.

Alaine pulled me closer and started whispering things in my ear, but even the sweet melody of her voice couldn't break me out of this. I needed to get out, fast.

I registered Alaine and the doctors and nurses call my name, but I ignored it. My body was on autopilot. I didn't know where I was, where I was headed, or what I even planned to do. I just needed to go somewhere.

My heart was in my throat, beating rapidly and making me choke. I couldn't breath, and I wasn't sure I even wanted to. My head was whirling, running past me at a hundred miles per hour. If it didn't stop, it would crash and take me with it.

At one point, probably on the second day of living with him, Thomas made me swear that I wouldn't harm myself again. At the time I wanted to laugh. I had little to no hope that I would ever get better. Back then, my entire being was numb and nothing.

Now it is everything. I feel everything. I feel the electricity from the lights of the buildings around me. I feel the energy of the people I pass as I shove my way through the crowd. I feel the anxiety, like a white hot iron fresh from a blue flame making its way towards my heart. I feel all of it. I feel the sounds in my ears, banging against my eardrums like the sound of my heartbeat thumping somewhere in my body.

I couldn't stand any of it. I drowned in it. It suffocated me. With every thump of my feet against the concrete I wanted to cry out in anguish. This was a different kind of pain. Not the nothingness I felt before where the entire world was drained of color, but an explosion of everything that gave me whiplash and made me dizzy. I couldn't give it a name, but it was there and very real.

I had probably walked ten blocks by the time I found a little diner on the corner and collapses at one of the back tables. I ordered food but had no money on me. I didn't care what I had to do to pay them back, I was just starving. The waiter looked me up and down when I was done scarfing down my food, like I was some kind of vermin.

"We can't just waste food on good for nothing street rats." He growled  in a heavy accent.

I raised an eyebrow. I had a feeling they could spare a meal for a kid who just got out of the hospital, but I didn't say that. Instead I shrugged.

"Fine. How else can I pay?"

I wanted him to give me a reason to hurt myself. I needed it, that one last push to really make me go crazy. I stared him in the eyes, but his gaze softened. He put a hand on my shoulder and glanced down at my hospital bracelets.

Shit.

"I suppose one meal couldn't hurt. Go on kid, before my manager sees."

I nodded and stood up, a part of me relieved that he just let me go. I don't know what I expected, maybe for his true human nature to show and expect something explicit from me.

I sighed when I met the fresh air again. I didn't know where else to go or what to do. The startling realization that I had nothing on my but the clothes I was wearing hit me like a ton of bricks. I would have to go back to the hospital, back to the stress and anxiety and fear. Back to uncertainty and depression.

In hindsight, I'm very glad I did.