in your eyes

chapter sixteen

ara

i was never going to amount to anything. i was always too fatigued to even shower or brush my hair let alone study for some stupid test and be accepted into a dream university. i wanted a normal life. i wanted to go to school like a normal kid and come home like a normal kid and live and breathe like a normal kid. all i wanted was to live life without this constant shadow following me around. anywhere i went, anything i did, i could feel this weight on my shoulders, this darkness lurking everywhere. i thought about that shadow, those thoughts. how it had ruined my life, and how it had made me stress puke, and how that made me start thinking about drowning myself by shoving my head in a toilet bowl and flushing a few times until i was dead.

maybe that's why i tried to kill myself.

slowly i opened my eyes, being greeted by a very bright light that made my head hurt. that feeling felt awfully familiar. i looked around, seeing those same disgusting yellowish white walls and that horrible annoying beeping sound echoing through my brain. carefully i sat up, causing pain to shoot up my back. had i really survived a fall from that height? i was supposed to be dead. i wanted to be dead. but instead i was stuck in this cube box with this annoying beeping sound that was slowly driving me fucking insane.

the squeaking of a door caught my attention and when i looked over, a boy walked in. a boy with curly messy hair and a stubble. he was wearing sweats and his back hunched over revealing how vulnerable he was. then the boy turned to me. he stood up a little straighter, his eyes a little brighter, his lips a little parted. lorenz. he ran to me, hugging me tightly, a bit too tight. i let out a soft whimper, making him let go of me and lay me back down. my back was in so much pain. so were my legs. the throbbing pain caused tears to prick my eyes as i whimpered and groaned, causing lorenz look at me worriedly.

"i'm sorry, i'm sorry," lorenz whispered repeatedly, holding my face in his hands. "are you okay?"

soon the pain died down but my tears didn't.

"i failed," i whimpered, holding his hand tightly in mine.

he wiped my tears with his free hand. "no, no i'm happy you're here. i can't live without you. oh you don't know how relieved i am. i love you ara, i'm sorry i didn't tell you sooner."

i sobbed and hiccuped and shed all the tears i had left. i didn't want to be alive. i was such a failure i couldn't even end my own life, such a fucking failure i couldn't finish a simple task.

he wiped the tears off my face and then snot. he used his hands. he loved me that much.

"shh it's okay," he whispered, wrapping his arms around me, softly this time. i don't remember how long we stayed like that.

***

the hard chair hurt my butt and no matter how much i shifted from one cheek to the other, i couldn't make myself comfortable. a few weeks had passed since i was discharged from the hospital and life hadn't changed much, except for the fact that lorenz followed me everywhere i went. oh and my dad forced me to go to a recovery club. yes, a club for the mentally fucked up. either way, i was going to try again and again until I succeeded.

a man walked in, snapping me out of my thoughts. i assumed he was the leader. "alright everyone, for the first exercise, you're all going to pair up and tell each other why you're here."

everyone always told me i'm here if you need to talk or you should talk to someone about what you're going through. these people knew nothing about suicide, just like this guy. maybe it was just me, i don't know. but i do know that when i wanted to kill myself, i sure as fuck didn't want to talk to anyone about it. i wasn't enthused by the idea of sitting next to another kid like me and hear them awkwardly mumble about how they tried to hang themselves with shoe laces before it snapped and they fell on the floor and fuck it hurt.