too young for this { harry styles }

Chapter 23.

Jo's POV.

~

It took a week after Ivy left the center for me to go insane. I was already insane, but having to get used to a new roommate drove me too insane.

The girl came in with her pills just like Ivy did, but this girl was different. She brought weed and her razors and I couldn't watch any of that. When my mother came to visit I just told her to take me out.

That's the bad thing with Ivy. Her stepfather and mother never wanted to take her out of that rehab center. The people said that she was free to go and they didn't want to tell them that they didn't want her. That's probably why she's gone to LA. She didn't have a choice.

Ivy was manageable. She'd yell at me and call me names and interrogate me with all her might, but she never meant it. She may not have ever really apologized or anything, but she was just as mental as all of us and that consumed her.

She was broken, just like the rest of us, but her brokeness was different. She can't admit she's in love because she doesn't realize it herself. She can't even try to remember the people who've died in her life because if she does, she'll die all over again.

Part of me want to know what she was like before all of the bad shit happened to her. Like what if her brother never commited suicide and her father never drunk his life away and died himself. Another bad thing about rehab: they don't let you tell people your story or hardships, he therapists do it for you because they want all of us to treat eachother with sympathy, but that's complete shit.

Another part of me is scared to see how she was because that's what other people want of me. Everyone wants the old Ivy back. I think everyone would want everyone to be the real then, but the thing about realism is that everyone expects it. But expecting doesn't mean it will happen.

My poor mother would give anything to have the old, happy Jo back, but the old Jo won't come back and I think that's why I have to try and care.

I don't know why I thought this time she would be different, but I did and that was a big mistake.

My mother told me to do all I could do to be happy. That's another thing about rehab, so many people will give you sympathy for "going through so much."

But us people who do go to rehab don't really deserve so much sympathy. We aren't special. We've been through hell, but in the end, everyone on this earth has been through hell.

People die everyday and get cancer everyday. People get their heartbroken everyday and go through crap and that's basically equivalent to hell. We use being mentally insane as an excuse to get away with pointless stuff when it really doesn't deserve to get excused at all. We blame a mental illness for our insanity when really we should be blaming ourselves.

Mental illness didn't put the razor in your hand and make you slice your skin, or make you skip a meal. That was you and your fault. Blaming mental illness is like blaming a gun for shooting someone and not the person pulling the trigger.

Us crazies don't deserve any sympathy because we failed at the easiest thing in life; we failed at life. We failed at being able to breathe and eat and sleep and poop and all of that is our fault.

Mental illness is just like any other sickness. It can be cured with medicine. If we take the medicine, it's supposed to be cured. But once you take the pills or whatever, you're still insane. You can have everything you need for sanity, but that won't make you sane.

"Jo."

"Mom." I replied, speaking into the phone she had given me a few days after she took me out of rehab.