Camp Recovery

№1

Camp Recovery was specifically designed to target happy emotions and entertain the physical eye. It reminded me of camping in the woods with my family when I was little, before people started calling me names and I started getting depressed.

            Dirt paths led off to different ‘villages’ of cabins. A lake sat right in the middle of the campsite, but life guards had to patrol it at all hours for obvious reasons. They didn’t want anyone killing themselves in the middle of the night or anything I guess. The cafeteria was large enough to fit five hundred kids, but some summers the camp gathered enough broken people to have to unload the extra tables stored in the massive shed behind the public bathrooms. Each cabin had its own bathroom, but there was still a small building for it. Other cabins, of much larger size, were used for activities. There was an activity for everybody, for every condition and disorder. Everyone could find something to fit into.

            I was anorexic and suicidal. I hated myself so much that I starved myself until I weighed seventy pounds. I’m 5’4, seventy pounds was not a good look for me, that much I could tell you. But even when I was skin and bones, I still hated myself. I wanted to just get rid of myself, save everyone else of my inconvenience. When my mom found me in my bedroom, a rope looped in my shaking hands, she took me out of school. For two months she home schooled me, sent me to therapy, slept in a cot in my room. When summer rolled around and she gave birth to my sister Sophie, she sent me to Camp Recovery, as recommended by my therapist. I was thirteen then. I’ve been coming to Camp Recovery for four years.

            This year however, I weighed 120 pounds, I had grown out my auburn colored hair, and was happy with who I was. I wasn’t here because I was in a desperate state of need, I was called in to be a counselor and to help those who were still broken.

            I lugged my suitcase behind me to my cabin. I was sharing it with Lucy, another counselor who used to be a camper. She was morbidly depressed when she was fifteen and her dad had had enough of it. I unlocked the door, glad that I was the first one there.

            I chose the smaller room by choice. I didn’t want to be surrounded by so much empty space. I opened the drawers of the dresser and took out my clothes, placing them into each drawer according to where they sat on my body, shirts in one drawer, shorts in the other, and under garments in the last of the tree drawers.  I hung up my summer dresses in the closet. One of the janitors would stop by and bring us soap, shampoo, and conditioner later tonight. I placed the books I had brought with me on top of the dresser, along with my Polaroid camera and all of the extra film I had brought with me. I put my cell phone on the nightstand and pulled my hair into a ponytail. I draped my quilt on the bottom of my bed.

            When I walked out thirty minutes later, my room set up to my liking, I saw Lucy struggling to pull her suitcase in whilst holding the door open. I grabbed the door and she smiled.

            “Winnie! You’re here, hi.” She smiled, dropping the suitcase once she got it inside and grabbed me in a hug, squeezing me to the point where I could hear my back crack. When she let me go, she grinned, bouncing on her feet, “When did you get here?”

            “About a half an hour ago,” I said. “So, how was the ride with your dad? Did he get all emotional like he usually does?”

            Lucy’s eyes went wide as she smiled, “No! He didn’t. I’m not sure if I should be glad or upset, but whatever.” She sat on the couch of our small makeshift living room, kicking her feet onto the wooden coffee table. She then turned to me, her blonde hair hitting her face, “Are you excited to be a counselor this year? You’ve been going here the longest out of the senior campers I think.”