The Counselor [OLD VERSION]

The roses

‘"A few months later my dads took me and my brothers to Andy's grave. I hadn't been there in a very long time, but my therapist said it could help. So on a Saturday morning, we went with all of us. The cemetery was completely abandoned when we arrived. Slowly we walked down the aisle, past all the graves of loved ones and who died and left their friends and family behind. I was carrying a peony from our garden. I remembered how we planted them when we just arrived in Amsterdam. Andy thought they were beautiful, but my other brothers thought they were "too girly" nevertheless I still planted them with Andy on a suny morning, years ago. 

Then we were there, Andy's grave, next to a very large and old oak tree. 

'Wait, why are there roses lying on his grave?' Liam asked. I snapped out of my thoughts and looked back at the grave, there were roses, seven red roses. 'Nobody had been to his grave lately, right?' Liam asked again. My dads looked curiously, we all were totally confused about who laid the roses down on his grave. 'Does it matter?' I then asked, 'they're beautiful, at least someone else outside our family cared about him.' I laid the peony next to the roses. I smiled a little, thinking about Andy. And then I just started crying, letting it all out. I couldn’t keep it in anymore, Stephen pulled me into a hug. I remember screaming and pounding my fists on his chests. All my anger towards Andy, because he left me behind like this, got out. And Stephen just held me. He rubbed my back and shushed me. This day helped a little, I got a little bit hope in getting better, not too much, just a little.           

But still, things weren’t looking really bright. I started to push Bree and Payton away, I didn’t mean to. But it still happened. I stopped telling them stuff and stopped hanging out with them every day. I wanted them to stop worrying about me, to let me go. Because I felt like sooner or later I would hurt them even more, by jumping off a roof perhaps. I still took the medicine, but not as often as I should be taking them. I was just a mess, I wanted to live without the pills, I wanted to jump off a roof, I wanted to keep Bree and Payton close to me, I wanted them to go away. Maybe it was better this way, they could just go on with their lives without giving a fuck about me, and I could go on with mine, trying to get better, trying to stop my head from being suicidal. But one day at school, I think a year maybe a half year ago, Bree was sick of my behavior.

‘Sky, come with me. Me, you and Payton have to talk,’ with those words she dragged me to our usual spot in our school’s cafeteria. ‘Why are you acting like you don’t give a fuck about us anymore?’ Payton asked directly, when I sat down. ‘I..’ I stuttered, but when I looked them in the eyes, I saw much hurt in Bree’s. Without knowing, I had hurt Bree with trying to protect her from getting hurt. So I tried to explain everything, why I tried to get them out of my life, and why I still wasn’t feeling well. They understood and promised to help me. Bree started to tear up once I told her about all the horrible thoughts in my head, she had known they were scary, but she hadn’t imagined them to be about death. '