The Key To A New World

Chapter 2

Dr. Baker introduced me to Shannon Grey (the red-headed girl I seen coming out of his office the other day). I shook her hand, put on my best smile, and said hi, she did the same. The session took two hours instead of one since it was two of us and sessions are usually an hour long. Her session being right before mine. We ended up sharing a lot of laughs, my goal was to help her have a better session this week than she obviously had last week, success.

By the end of it she and I exchanged phone numbers, I encouraged her to call me for whatever the reason, good, bad, or if she just needed a friend to be with. During the session, I found out she had lost her mother and father to a drunk driving maniac. Of course, she had depression before the accident, but things became a lot harder for her after losing them. As she spoke the story she had a blank expression while she glared at the ground in front of me; it was like she was having a flashback, the only thing was, she was not there when it happened so I assume she was picturing it as she told us the story. “It was their 30th wedding anniversary, they were going out to celebrate. They had reservations at a five-star restaurant, Kiko’s. My parents planned this five years in advance on their 25th wedding anniversary. I remember mom saying that for the 30th, three decades of pure bliss, they would treat themselves to a fancy dinner to celebrate. Unfortunately, they never made it to the restaurant.” She spoke slowly, a faint smile shined when she spoke of three decades of pure bliss, then disappeared back to a blank stare, her eyes never left the spot on the floor while speaking of her parents. We bounced around topics throughout our session, but every time  her parents came up her gaze met that spot again.

“I had just kissed my mom and dad goodbye, told them I loved them, and to have a good time. When they walked outside, I went to the window and watched them as they got into the car and pulled out of the driveway. When the car disappeared, I sat down on the couch and turned the tv on. I was bored really, just flipping through the channels and chewing my thumb nail, bad nasty habit I know. It had not been long since they left, maybe thirty minutes or so and a bad feeling irrupted in my chest. At first, I thought I was going to have a heart attack, and then I thought maybe my anxiety is kicking up. I dropped the remote and grabbed at my chest, it felt like something had stabbed me right through the heart. I did what I could to ignore it after thinking it was anxiety because if it was my anxiety the best thing I could do was try to calm myself down and ignore it; I was out of medicine so I had no other choice. So, I leaned back against the couch, took a deep breath, and continued to watch tv. The channel I stopped on just so happened to be interrupted by an emergency news cast. Lucky me, or not so lucky, I still have trouble deciding.

Anyway, the first thing they announced was that a news crew was on their way to the local prison (where an inmate had just escaped that morning) to interview the warden. The news anchor witnessed an accident and jumped out of the vehicle to try to save whoever it was in the burning cars; the camera man caught it all, they said he was recording the trip to the prison. A speeding vehicle was approaching fast and didn’t seem to care that it was coming to a red light and was going to be unable to stop in time at the speed it was traveling, the car veered from left to right, a beer bottle was tossed from the driver side window. The light turned green, my parents never seen it coming, their car was rammed head on, later on they said he was running at a speed of 85 mph, (the speed limit down that road was 40 mph) the front end of my parent’s car was smashed so badly that the motor ended up in the front seat on passenger side, where my mom was sitting. Her heart was impaled by a spark plug while one of the wires wrapped itself around my dad’s throat, both cars instantly burst into flames.

The news anchor could not save them or the drunk driver, all three of them died on impact. They played a clip from the video on the news, I was just so distraught when I recognized the car, I just could not make myself look away.”

The drunk driver was later identified as Larry Bergus, the convict that had escaped prison that morning. Shannon watched in horror as the car she knew belonged to her parent’s melted in the flames. The Camera man panned over the accident showing everything to the viewers at home. Last week marked three years since they were killed, and the first time Shannon had ever been to a psychiatrist.

Later that afternoon, Star dropped by and my head was somewhere else the whole time. The voices would not let me focus, I was trying to figure out how to help Shannon and visit with Star at the same time, it was not working very well. I went into a rage; I began throwing things around my house breaking my valuables and making a huge mess. I could not hear anything other than the voices downgrading me and telling me I could not do it, I couldn’t help Shannon, she was a lost soul and could not be saved, and the loud ringing sound to go along with the disappointing statements. I was not good enough to help her, they were talking about her as if she were dead already, as if saving her was pointless because she was already gone. “Sit down idiot you’re scaring your friend. Look at her!” The last and final voice called out. I stopped, my hair was a mess like I had just rolled out of bed, my clothes torn from who knows what (they weren’t torn before I started my rage), feathers from my pillows still floating down to the ground, things strewn all over the floor, the couch was flipped over and poor Star was just standing there in the corner shocked, she had never seen me act that way before. “Oh, Star I’m so sorry.” I said and threw myself down onto the floor burring my face in the torn pillow I still held in my hands and began to cry. Star raced to my side and practically threw herself on top of me as she wrapped her arms around me. “It’s ok. I didn’t mean to make you mad. I’m so sorry.”
“You did nothing wrong; it wasn’t your fault.” I tried to tell her, but it came out muffled and I wasn’t sure if she understood.
“I Just wanted to know where you were this morning, I stopped by and you weren’t here which is unusual because you are always here.”
“I was at my psychiatrist’s office.”
Star said nothing for a moment to process what I had told her. I never told her about my problems and she never knew.
“Your who?”
“No one, I had an errand to run.”
I guess she thought about my answer and decided to leave that one alone after seeing my outburst because she didn’t say anything else. She did however stay and help me clean up my mess.

After Star left my thoughts grew stronger, I felt stupid for exploding, I felt like a horrible friend for making her believe my outburst was her fault, and tears began to stream down my face again as I dropped to the floor once again. I didn’t want to cry anymore my face hurt and my tears were starting to sting my skin so I rolled over on my back, wiped my face with my shirt and stood up; I needed an escape so I grabbed a book.

' I always used reading as my escape method, through the books I could get away from my own reality and enter someone else’s. I would always go for an adventure or a comedy just to give myself something to laugh about. This time was a little more challenging though, the voices interrupted, breaking my concentration for their own fun. They weren’t always saying bad things, sometimes I enjoyed having them. I was never bored. To anyone else it would seem like I was simply staring at the wall, but to me, I was lost in my own world surrounded by friends, laughing and cutting up.

I live alone, no kids, no spouse or boyfriend, no pets, nothing, just me, and this is the main reason I refuse to talk about my mental state; I never feel lonely, the voices are the reason I never feel alone, I don’t want medication in fear of it making them go away, yes they can be horribly mean sometimes, but most of the time we get along just fine. Sure, I was on medication when I was younger, but I convinced everyone I didn’t need them anymore, but I still had to go to a psychiatrist and probably would for the rest of my life, maybe, maybe not, we shall see.

The phone rang pulling me out of my own head, it was Shannon. “Am I disturbing you?” She asked calmly with a little splash of nervousness. “No, not at all!” I answered. “Can I come to your house for a little while? I really don’t want to be alone right now.” She asked. My heart dropped in fear of what to do or what to say to help her through whatever it was that was bothering her, but I accepted anyway. “Absolutely! Come on over!”

When she arrived, she had tears streaming down her face and fresh cuts on her wrist that she was trying to cover up with her sleeve, but I was able to sneak a peek at them before she could get them covered. I didn’t say anything about them because obviously it was not intended for me to see them. She sat on the couch and leaned forward to bury her face in her lap, I went straight to the kitchen to get some milk and cookies. It was my go-to snack when I was down and out and it had become a natural reaction when I see someone else feeling down, I didn’t think about getting them I just did it.

I placed the milk and cookies down on the coffee table in front of her, sat down beside her, and rubbed her back trying to sooth her without speaking. From what I was able to read before my outburst was that sometimes a person’s presence and acknowledgement can be more helpful than words. She looked up and began to giggle, at that point I was confused. What could she possibly be laughing at? Or is this some kind of psycho thing, you know like when dangerous people start laughing viciously before they strike?

I swallowed my slight fear of what was going to happen and asked her, “What is it?” I regretted it almost instantly. She leaned back and began laughing louder, she placed one hand on my shoulder (I shuddered) and the other on her chest over her heart. “I’m sorry!” She managed to say between gasps of air and laughter. I waited another couple of minutes for her to stop laughing and catch her breath and I asked again feeling a little angry this time. “What are you laughing at? One minute you are crying and the next minute you are laughing uncontrollably.” She caught her breath and began to explain. “I wanted to come over because I didn’t want to be alone. I manage to do horrible things to myself when I am alone, and my depression is pounding away at me. So then, I come over and you bring out Oreos and milk! My mom used to do the same thing for me! I just thought about how ironic it was!”
My anger immediately slipped away. “Really?”
“Yes! I don’t mean to laugh but, I couldn’t imagine having this done for me again. How did you know?”
“Well, honestly I didn’t know. This is just what I do when I’m down. Oreos and milk are my favorite go-to snack when I’m feeling down, because I mean what is better than milk and milk’s favorite cookie?”
“Nothing that I can think of!” She answered. We laughed until our pain was back in it’s hiding place in the back of our minds and shared more about ourselves.
“So, if you don’t mind me asking, what else do you do when you are down to try and come out of it?” I asked trying to hint around at the cuts on her arm.
“I put most of my feelings away with songs.” She said.
“What do you mean?”
“I drown them out. When I start feeling depressed, I pull out my phone and earbuds and start listening to songs that help me feel better.”
“Which songs?” I asked, I was curious if we had the same playlist as well as depression snack.
“Like, Under Your Scars by Godsmack, A Reason to Fight by Disturbed, Get Up by Shinedown,  Come Around by Papa Roach, The Mountain by Three Days Grace or an old one like Never too Late, even though that last one makes me cry but it still helps. Mainly to remind myself that I’m going to be ok and not to give up.” She explained. It was true, the more we talked the more I could see myself in her. We had a lot of similarities, which also helped me see that I didn’t need to study anything, I just needed to be there for her, listen, be a shoulder for her to cry on, and show her that she can reach out for help because nobody is perfect, all the things I knew that I was in need of.

We leaned back and watched a couple of couple of comedy movies together to shake us both out of depression mode because by the end of the conversation, even though we felt relieved to know that we could talk to each other in confidence, we were both in tears and needed some cheering up. Star stopped by at the end of the third movie which was great because Star was my light in the dark spaces so I figured maybe she would be able to shed some of that light on Shannon as well.

“Hey sweets! How are you two doing this fine evening?” Star asked and threw herself down on the couch acting as if she has known Shannon for as long as she has known me. “We are great! How are you?” Shannon responded shining the biggest smile I think I have ever seen come across her face since I met her. “Oh, I’m marvelous now that I’m here!” Star said dramatically flipping her hair and batting her eyes at us. “I’m starving. Would you two care to join me for dinner?” Star asked. “Sure! Do you have any specific place in mind?” I answered. Sure, Shannon and I were munching on popcorn while watching our movies, but I was in the mood for some real food!

“I think either Chili’s or Applebee’s.” Star and I looked at each other for a second and said, “Applebee’s!”, at the same time and began laughing. Shannon was new to our mini click, so she really didn’t get the joke. I explained to her that Applebee’s was our favorite. We tried to change things up and go somewhere else, but it never worked out for us. We always ended up choosing Applebee’s over anywhere else. Then it struck me that I haven’t introduced Star and Shannon, so I made sure to do so before we left.