Mentors - A Joshler Fic

Chapter 27

Tyler's P.O.V.

My therapist was really nice but sometimes her niceness annoyed me. I guess sometimes I just wanted someone to blow up at me and tell me what trash I was because that’s what I thought I deserved. She was always warm and reaffirming and well most of the time I appreciated it if I was in a bad mood it annoyed the hell out of me. Half of the time I didn’t know what I was feeling those days. I was living with my boyfriend and his amazing and kind family, I should have been so happy to be out of my depressing house and away from my father and brother. But I still felt the sadness, that ever present sadness wasn’t going away.

I thought it should be going away, my life was so much better now. I had my boyfriend. I had his family. I was in therapy and I was taking the medication. I thought I would be happy by now. But the longer time went on and I didn’t feel automatic happiness, the more despair I felt about myself and my mind. I figured my mind must be so fucked up that I wouldn’t ever get better. And if I could never get better than was it fair for me to stay with Josh and force my unhappiness on him? No. It wasn’t fair that he had to deal with it, or his family. They were so nice they would never be honest about it, but I knew it, I knew I would eventually get on their nerves.

I gave my therapist a smile as I walked out of her room and down the hallway back towards the waiting room. Josh wasn’t there yet so I took a seat in the corner of the room to wait for him. I stared down at my lap to avoid having to make eye contact with the other people in the room. Nothing was more uncomfortable than making eye contact with someone in the waiting room and wondering what the other was here for. It made me slightly uncomfortable that other people might be speculating what kind of crazy I was.

Ten minutes passed and I was growing kind of anxious but trying my best to reassure myself that Josh would be here any minute. He was doing school work so he probably had just lost track of time. That was understandable. I tried to flip through a magazine but it didn’t capture my attention at all and I found myself staring intently at the scar that just slightly poked out from underneath my longsleeve shirt. It was faced and white but it was still there, a permanent visual reminder of my fucked up brain. I hated them so much. I hated that there was this visual evidence on my skin for others to see. And I hated myself for putting them there.

Twenty minutes and he still wasn’t here. I was growing restless in the chair but I fought against my desire to move and remained still. I didn’t want to move at all because any movement would draw attention to myself. I wished for my favorite hoodie right then, when I wore my hoodie I felt like I was safe nestled in a cocoon like a butterfly. No one could see me and I couldn’t see anything else and in my cocoon I could construct my own reality like Plato did in The Cave. My constructed reality was always so much better than the actual one. And right then I longed so badly for it.

An hour passed and I had to get out of the room, everyone was staring at me I just knew it. They probably knew why I was here and pitied the boy with the scars all over his body. I jumped up from the chair and ran outside to the parking lot where I stopped and looked frantically around for any sight of Josh or his car. But there was nothing. He wasn’t there at all. I felt like all my worst fears were coming true. He’d abandoned me. He didn’t love me anymore.

I couldn’t stand still, I needed to walk. I needed to walk away from here. Away from everything and everyone. I wandered out of the parking lot and down the road. I don’t know how many miles exactly it was to town, about three or four. I made my way through town slowly my eyes wandering over everything and everyone around me but I didn’t really see them. Finally I was on the road heading out of town and I just kept walking.

This was when the tears began, they were quiet and soft at first. But they grew in intensity as I walked and I realized I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to leave my town, or Josh. I didn’t even want to leave them. Even if he didn’t love me anymore distance was a painful thought. By the time I stopped on the side of the road to ponder what I wanted to do night had fallen. It was dark out. The dark scared me. I turned around and started walking with my arms wrapped around myself, trying to feel some semblance of comfort in the unremitting darkness as I walked back towards town. Once I could see the faint glow of streetlights in the distance I felt a little better. The light alleviated some of my fright in the darkness.

In the glow of the streetlights I began to notice these three figures walking towards me. I didn’t think anything of it, they were just some strangers walking home for all I knew. I kept walking towards them and soon enough I was able to hear their voices but I couldn’t make out the words they were saying. But by the time I recognized who one of the voices belonged to it was too late for me to run. They’d seen me, they stopped in their tracks and I did the same. Kevin’s face broke into a grin, his eyes shone in delight. I could see them so clearly from where he stood directly under the streetlight. I was just on the edge of the light, still in the darkness.

“Hello Tyler, how are you?” He asked me in a sickly sweet voice that was dripping with condescension.

I didn’t say a word or move an inch and they walked towards me, where I stood in the darkness. In that moment I wished that the darkness would open up it’s great jaw and swallow me up. But here I remained frozen in place, like I always seemed to be.

“What? Not going to answer me. That’s rude.” He stopped right in front of me, the two others still stood behind him.

“You know I had the great pleasure of having a little chat with your boyfriend today. Seems like a nice guy, too bad we had to kick his face in.”

I let out a gasp when I heard what he said. “Y-y-you didn’t --” I stuttered in disbelief.”

“Oh we did though. We did it real good too.”

“No,” I cried out trying not to shake a waves of emotion washed over my body.

“Oh but don’t be jealous or anything. You’ll get your turn too.” At this I turned around and tried futilely to make a run for it. He grabbed me by the arms and yanked me backwards. The two other guys stepped forward and each one of them grabbed an arm and Kevin stood in front of me sadistically smiling and said ‘bye’ before punching me in the face so hard that I blacked out then and there.