Anesthesia

Introduction

I didn't really start to lose it until after my parents died.

It was on their way home from getting takeout from my favorite Chinese place, when a semi lost control and drove into the right side of their car, killing my mother on impact, and my dad soon after due to extreme blood loss. It was the summer of my Senior year, I was so close to getting out of school and finally moving off to college and just overall, starting out somewhere new with no strings attached. Now, the only thing I can do is cling to the memories as long as I can.

With no siblings and my father being an only child like I am, my mother's sister, Luce, was deemed my next legal guardian. Thinking it would be easier on me, she opted to move in with me, so I wouldn't have to change schools or have to deal with selling the house. She knew me well enough to know that I couldn't handle either alone.

A week or two after the accident, Aunt Luce thought it would be best if I started going to therapy, as I had refused multiple times to open up to her about how I was coping. I didn't want to talk to anyone, quite frankly, but losing a sister is just as hard as it is to lose a mother. So I went with it.

Already off the bat, my therapist put me through a series of tests and trials to see if I had a form of depression, caused by the death of my family. And when the tests came back positive, I was quickly signed up for weekly meetings and prescribed two different kinds of medication; one for anxiety and one for the depression by itself.

With my last high school summer vacation consisting of office visits and my aunts failed attempts at coaxing me out of my room and trying to get me to socialize again, I decided to stick to myself for the remainder of the summer. I never seemed to sleep all that much, and when I did, it only lasted for a few hours before I woke. And I stopped running. Prior to my parents passing, I was on my schools varsity track team for long distance, and I loved it. Now, the treadmill and running shoes in my fathers home gym have gathered more dust then the unfinished books in my room.

Sometimes in the night when I'm mindlessly channel surfing in my living room and Luce is sound asleep in her room, it's like I can hear my mothers voice in my head, telling me to go and clean the bathroom or start making dinner because she'll be home soon and my father was going to be running late again. This started happening a month after the incident, and Luce tried to understand when I explained that mom was just asking me to do these simple tasks for her. But after awhile, she started to get fed up with being woken up at the early hours of the morning due to the running vacuum or the constant clanging of dishes being rewashed and rewashed again. Luce had told me that she was trying to move on, getting back to work and not letting her life leave her behind. She didn't understand, I was doing the same thing.

Aunt Luce works as an orthodontic assistant at an office nearly an hour away from where I live. Her apartment was closer, but she says the commute is relaxing, I don't buy it. With her being absent most of the the day and some of the night, her 'check-in' calls are more then frequent. Usually I don't mind them all that much, it's nice talking to someone other than myself all day.

Trying to pull myself together and move on in the three short months of summer that everyone is given isn't easy, considering the depressing fact that my parents are still on the news, neighbors and friends I haven't spoken to still send meals I never eat, and no matter which side of the road I hide my face from, I always end up seeing a tiny wooden cross stuck in the ground when Aunt Luce drives me somewhere.

I haven't eaten Chinese food since.

...

*Five months later*

"So, Ellen, how are we doing today?"

I'm sitting in a plastic chair in front of my therapist, Jude, while she sits behind her desk, typing away at either a work email or beginning her notes on todays session. Her office was very adult-like, many potted plants, no family pictures, the walls painted a deep shade of maroon, the works. But since I'm seventeen and not old enough to pick out my own therapist, Aunt Luce decided that my problems were adult ones, I should handle them in a more mature atmosphere.