Mental

Chapter One

 

I felt trapped. I was inside a dark room, not knowing where I was. My hands were tied to a chair, and my feet to the floor. I was having a panic attack, immensely shaking. There was a man standing behind me, with a knife to my throat. I began to cry, and shout. All of a sudden, I woke up.

As I awoke, I was lying in a hospital bed. I had and IV and a Heart Monitor attached to me. The nurse was standing next to my bed, along with my best friend, Chris.

“Chris-”

I could barely speak. My throat was extremely scratchy, and I had an unusual, but familiar pain in my stomach.

“Blair, thank god you’re okay.”

“Why am I in here?” I was so confused. I don’t remember doing anything to end up in a hospital.

“Blair, you did it again.”

The ‘it’ in that sentence became extremely clear to me. I had overdosed on my pills. I began to cry, tears streaming down my face, and losing my breath as I began to cry harder and harder. This was the 5th time I’ve been in the hospital for this. The familiar pain was from the stomach pump.

I began to shake, my eyes began to blur, and my skin began to feel cold. Before I knew it, I had fainted out of fear.

About 3 days later, I was back in my home, which was way worse than the hospital. My mother was rarely home. She works as a teacher, making an extremely small salary. My father, on the other hand, makes absolutely no money. He is an alcoholic, and a drug addict. He spends most of his time drinking, shooting up, and chain smoking. When he isn’t doing that, he is busy abusing me or my mother.

I am constantly terrified of returning home. As soon as I had walked through the door, I saw the one person I did not want to see, which was my father. The first that he says to me is, “What the hell did you do this time?”. I told him what had happened.

He slaps my face, and says the one thing I constantly hear him say. “You worthless piece of shit.”. I’ve gotten so used to it by now, that those words don’t seem to even affect me anymore, considering I now believe that it’s true.

As I walk in to my room, I lay in my bed, and curl up in a ball. I begin to cry, which appeared to be a daily thing. I reach across the wooden end table, next to my bed, and grab the broken and beaten iPhone that I’ve had for 2 years.

As soon as I open it, I read the texts from my father. “Where the fuck are you?”, “Get your ass home.”, and a countless number of other extremely discourteous text messages. It was so obvious that my father felt lackadaisical towards me, and that he wouldn’t even care if I actually died.

I throw my phone at the wall, and get up to look in the mirror.

I’m not happy with the way I look. I’m not thin enough, and you can see the pain in my eyes. I have a constant battle with my own self image. I walk in to the bathroom, and slowly bend down in front of the toilet. My eyes begin to water, as I carefully push my fingers to the back of my throat, causing myself to throw up. I do this a few times, and then I get into the shower.

I sit on the shower ground for a few minutes before I actually begin to cleanse myself. As I turn the water to a hotter temperature, I hear the door downstair slam. It was quite abrupt. I inferred that my mother was home. The next thing I hear is a giant ‘thump’.

My father had hit my mother.

I quickly jump out of the shower, and wrap the towel around my body. I run down the stairs, and into the kitchen. “Dad, what are you doing?”

My mother has a look of fear in her eyes, as my father’s fist is clenched in front of her face. I step in between them, holding out my hands in front of me. “Mom, are you okay?”.

She turns to me and says the same thing she always does, “He’s just a little drunk honey, just go upstairs.”. I absolutely could not stand when she said this, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. I sprint up the stairs, almost falling on my face a couple times, and run in to my room.

I grab my phone and text Chris:

 Can you please come get me?

Knowing Chris, as soon as he got this text, he ran out to his car. He was at my house within 20 minutes.

 

As soon as I get into the car, I reach into the console and grab a cigarette out of the box. I then reach into the glove compartment and pull out lighter. This was a normal routine for Chris and I.

Chris has been my best friend since the second grade, and that’s when my dad became an alcoholic. I practically live at his house. He lives alone in an apartment, in the city of Chicago. Chris is tall and lanky, but his body is still defined. He has dark hair, and tattoos. He’s in a band, and is the sweetest person anybody could ever meet.

“Chris, why are you friends with me?” I constantly ask this question, only because I feel so useless, and I have only 2 friends.

“Because, you’re an amazing person, regardless of anything you’re going through.”

I look at him and smile. We finally arrive at his apartement, where I go straight into his room, and fall asleep on the bed.

As I am asleep, I have the reoccuring nightmare I’ve had since I was 13. I’m in some type of body of water. It seems more like a lake. I’m drowning, and there’s nobody around to help me. I look up, and there is a knife falling into the water. It eventually transitions into someone’s basement, where I’m tied up, and the person is holding a knife to my throat.

I scream at the top of my lungs for help, but nobody is coming. I am trapped.

Because of this dream, I am terrified to go to bed at night.

Chris comes rushing into the bedroom, hold me in his arms, and tells me it's okay.

The truth is, it's not okay. I'm terrified.