The Problem is Me [EDITED)

Chapter 14

November, 2014

For an endless array or years, I have been suffering.

Some could say this is my own personal purgatory, my punishment for daring to be different. The very reason I live more like a test subject than a human, shunted from therapy sessions to therapy sessions, from one doctor to another.

I have lost, which is unforgivable in itself but I have lost to my family, and I believe that to be the worst thing I have ever let happen. My family consists of a bunch of headstrong, violent, and completely infuriating assholes that punch first and ask questions later. I deserved to gain the upper hand on them; I should have been the one who had to address mail to a mental hospital. I should have run circles around them so fast their eyes would bulge out of their head.

I deserved a proper life, and that I think is the only thing I am sure of.

But of course, I didn’t get the apple pie life. Instead I failed.

Right from the door of the doctor’s office my mother took me to when I was seven years old, I had gone straight to Clifton Avenue Mental Unit. I begged and pleaded to my mother for just one more chance, just to give me that one last chance. Nevertheless, before I could even blink I got shoved into my first hospital, hoping that maybe someone would come to their senses and realize that I’m the only normal one left anymore.

It was humiliating, frustrating and most of all, frightening. I was seven years old and abandoned in a mental hospital, of fucking course I was going to be frightened. Although I was young, I knew how fucked up these places were. I knew this was the place where hopeless kids were dumped and drugged up to their eyeballs until they couldn’t even tell you their own name if their life depended on it. The people I had saw on movies were nothing more than empty shells, just moving and being held together by a tsunami of medication.

“Look what you’ve done to yourself,” I accused, looking at my reflection in the mirror. I had bags under my eyes and my skin was getting pale, I could have easily resembled a long lost cousin of Caspar the friendly ghost. “Fucked it right up, didn’t you?” I threaded my hand through my wet strands of hair and pinched the bridge of my nose.

I was running the events through my head again and again, from my dad being an abusive bastard to not being able to get myself out of a mental ward, no matter how hard I tried. All I was trying to do was figure out where I went wrong, which part of the act I have been neglecting to the point of inevitable failure. But then again, no matter how hard I tried to unravel the problem, I couldn’t figure it out.

Why can’t I get myself out of this one?

I can’t sleep. Now I don’t mean I have had a few restless nights either, I literally cannot sleep. The doctors have noticed that I haven’t slept, I guess I can’t really hide it when I look like I’ve got two black eyes. It’s only a certain amount of time before the nurses come in, their faces disappointed yet expectant, almost like they have given up on pretending to be surprised that I’m fucking myself up further. Surely they must know that is only a matter of time before I throw myself in it.

Their answer is always the same few words, ‘Do you feel you need more medication?’ And that was if they even asked me first, often they just upped the dosage without telling me. That’s what I think anyway.

Mostly I just get told to take part in more recreational activities and make friends, so other people would try and fix the broken teenager for them. Really, this was my fault, and that is not something I say often. Nor was it something I would ever admit.

I’ve exhausted their patience time after time again, but still the doctors were some of my first experiments. The ones who allowed me to become the person I am today.