Fix Me [h.s]

3

Phoenix's POV

Unlike the rest of 'The Summerlea Rehabilitation and Treatment Centre For Young Adults', solitary confinement didn't have painted murals plastered on every wall, and there weren't motivational posters blasting quotes in your face every second. It was a room of nothingness really; the walls were white and there was nothing to do but reflect and sleep.

I lost count of the times I had been sent to solitary after the fifteenth time because the times seemed to blur into one, big, torturous event. Instead of helping me, I was shut away for a day or two until they thought I wouldn't be too much of a hassle. Like I would have 'learnt my lesson'.

Staring up at the ceiling, I sighed and lay back on the padded floor. They treated me like I was a madwoman, which was not strictly incorrect, but was insensitive all the same. Dr Smith would come in an hour or two to give me my medication, lecture me about how I was only 'hurting myself' (and my stepfather's wallet) before leaving me to the comfort of my own thoughts.

Solitary confinement had sounded so perfect at the start of my time at the centre; it was time I could spend away from the other lunatics and I could get peace and quiet. But being in a silent room with no distractions meant I had to confront things I had tried to suppress for so long.

Shutting my eyes, I daydreamed slightly to try and stop my brain digging up the past. I tried to picture the new guy, Harry, and his scared yet excited expression every time he saw me. He was a breath of fresh air, not just some rambling lunatic who you couldn't hold a conversation with. I could call the other patients 'lunatics' because I was one of them, some over-medicated fool whose future was about as bright as a blown out lightbulb.

"How did I even let myself get here?" I whispered to myself as if the answer to the question was unknown; of course I knew how I had ended up at the centre.

I was insane.

But who could blame me.

As far back as I could remember, I was surrounded by chaos. It spiralled around me, never fully touching me but coming close enough, and there was nothing I could do but watch in angst.

My parents were two beautifully messed up souls, and had once believed that together they would make the perfect couple. They believed that their own faults would compliment each other, creating one, jigsaw-like version of happiness.

But their idealistic views never fully worked out. My mother's multiple personality disorder strained the whole family, and it was disconcerting for both my father and I to not know who would wake up in my mother's body every morning. Would she be Kate, the loving and caring mother? Or would be she Heather, the paranoid and borderline psychotic bitch who believed that we were burglars in her home?

And my father's drug abuse did not help at all.

Whether he was high, suffering from withdrawal or completely sober, nothing was enough for him. He craved something more, he felt trapped by his own body. So the drugs got stronger, his mind wandered further and further from sanity, and eventually he was found dead in his own bathtub. By his five year old daughter, Phoenix Waters.

His skin was a ghostly pale, his eyeballs rolled back into his sockets, and his arm still had the needle that had killed him stuck in it. By then my mind had become desensitised to all this chaos around me, and his death was merely an addition to madness.

My mother's condition only became worse, she found herself marrying the next man she could find that would stand her and I was forced to call him my 'father'. This new man in my life was a heavy smoker, hoarding cigarette lighters all over the house.

Setting fire to things became my way to escape from the world around me, to seize some power that I had been stripped of. While my dolls melted into puddles of plastic, I would watch as the flames consumed them and often wished that I would be in the same position. Sometimes I would wish that I could disappear so easily, only leaving behind a faint memory of myself.

More times than not, my mother never noticed the burn marks on my bedroom floor or the fact that my barbie dolls had all gone. Then again, she never really noticed anything to do with me. Birthdays passed, the years rolled by, and eventually my poor, broken mother passed away. One of her personalities, called Ben who was eight years old, had made her jump of the roof of our house and she plummeted to her death while singing the theme tune to Ben 10.

I had never understood her illness more clearly than when I heard what had happened to her. It was almost like these people were in her head, and every now and then they would swap who was in charge of her body. At eleven years old, I found myself orphaned of my biological parents with only a semi-caring stepfather who was banker and refused to be called anything but 'father'.

By fifteen, I was charged with arson after setting fire to a church and was given a choice between jail or getting help from a treatment centre. And that was how I found myself outside the yellow-painted walls of the centre, alone, and with only a few possessions that I had not already burned.

I was insane. Or at least that's what they told me.

So this chapter was dedicated to Phoenix's extremely sad past which explains a lot about her character. What will happen next with Phoenix and Harry? When will you find out what has caused Harry's alcoholism?

Please vote and comment if you enjoyed :)