I remember things. Glimpses, but nothing more. It was strange. It was as if I had more certainty about my life and my surroundings as I entered the institution, than I did after I had stayed for a while. I remember much of my first three weeks with a strange dream-like clarity. The shame, the fear, and the indescribable emptiness. I remember it in the way that I remember Zac's wake. Vivid, but detached. As soon as I started to write, everything became confused. The following months are nothing to me but a muddled blur, the events bleeding so far into each other that the very differentiation between memory and illusion... reality and unreality... dream and life are so undefined that I cannot truly tell the facts without the facts changing - or the story without the story disappearing. It's impossible to describe. Impossible, until you've felt it yourself. All that I have that is tangible are my journals, my artwork, and the stories of the people who watched me. And really, the dependability of disconnected lines, half sentences and others' retelling of memory isn't much.
It had been nearly three months since her suicide, and I hadn't spoken a single word in that time. It amazes me now, how inconsequential time felt. How my hospital stay of six weeks may as well have been two days. How completely dead I really was. It took me a month to write a full paragraph, and it has taken me years to really and fully acknowledge what happened to me that fateful week. For four months, my mind had blocked out the entire thing. For four months, I sat with The Stripe and wondered and wondered and wondered and wondered what it was on the tip of my tongue. I had nothing with me that could jog my memory. Only a burn on my arm and a scar across my stomach that I chose not to look at if I could help it. I could no longer attach names to faces. Not even that of my own mother. All images. All conversation. All feeling. It was shut off and silenced. The darkness was enormous. If I was ever crazy, if I am crazy... that is the one thing that drove me to it. It is not the pain that truly causes the madness, it is the complete and utter silence. The rock that falls and never, ever hits the ground.
Still I wrote. I wrote every day because I had to. First, I couldn't write because my mind was too empty. Then, I couldn't write because I couldn't capture the thoughts fast enough. My head was racing all of the time, thoughts came and went haphazardly and never completely. They were nonlinear, inexpressible glimpses. It took hours of effort to string together a line of words. My handwriting was labored and childlike. I often scribbled in the margins of the page because the scribbles seemed to say all I wanted to, but couldn't.
He would ask me, "Do you feel better?" But I would always shake my head. I felt worse. I was frustrated, conflicted, and confused. At night, when I wrote, I got so angry that I would throw my notebook across the room and hit the concrete wall with my fists. Physical therapy exhausted me, and my art was stagnant. Lately I couldn't even fingerpaint how I felt. I spent art class tearing pages and slamming my paint covered palms onto the canvases. I felt suicidal. I felt dizzy. I felt stuck.
I started to have nightmares. I would wake up in the night, cold, sweating, and sick. I whimpered and cried. I threw up all over my bed sheets and I remember many nights sitting in the cafeteria with The Stripe as I calmed down. I never remembered the nightmares, I only feared them. Night after night I would force myself to stay awake until I couldn't sleep at all. Until I was sleeping at all of the wrong times and in the wrong places. Until the nightmares became real.
I looked for ways to hurt myself. When they watched me shave, I tried to cut my face. I got all of my privileges taken away. For the first time, I felt my life truly slipping away from me. For the first time, I felt out of control. Now, I could only write in front of The Stripe, who, once I started writing coherent sentences, started giving me assignments.
"I can't" were the third and fourth words I wrote in my journal. "Nothing nothing" were the fifth and sixth. And "Nothing nothing" again, the next day.
My first sentence was, "I cannot say what you want, why do you force me?"
One late night, when we were in the cafeteria, as I watched the table lurch in front of me he gave me my first assignment.
"Write about your day."
With a little bit of direction, my words began to come more freely. Gradually, I began to write more and more until I exhausted a topic. Soon I was writing paragraphs and pages of first grade descriptions of the people and things around me. I drew pictures and diagrams when I couldn't think of the words. And sometimes, I just drew. Boxes, patterns, people, body parts, eyes. Everything I wrote was about my direct surroundings and most recent experience. The words were devoid of emotion, and when I wrote about how I felt it was in the same way a child describes his/her unhappiness or joy. "Today I felt sad." I would write, but I never explained or expanded beyond that.
"Why don't you speak?" He asked one day, as we sat together at lunch. "I've seen you try. Why do you stop?"
I looked down at my plate and shrugged. Now that could express the words, now that my head was no longer silent, I supposed there was no reason I couldn't speak them too. It was partially habit, it was partially fear. But I didn't know what I was afraid of. I put my hand to my throat and I made a croaking noise - as if I were sick with a sore throat and I was trying to tell someone that I could not speak.
"What does that mean?" He asked.
I looked at him miserably. He knew I could not tell him what I meant. I forked food into my mouth.
"Tell me, Taylor. Use the word you want to say."
I shook my head, growing embarrassed. Why couldn't he just leave me alone? I continued to eat my food, and stood with haste the moment I was finished.
"Taylor," He said to me, as I had my cigarette alone on the patio. "Did you know that you sing at night?"
I frowned at him. I had no reason to believe that he was lying to try and get a reaction out of me, but I felt as such anyway. I made sure that he knew I wasn't fooled.
"You have since you arrived." He continued, "You sing in your sleep."
How? I sucked on my cigarette. How? How could I sing when it hurts so much to talk? I checked him for sincerity, and I realized that he could not be lying. The news baffled and disturbed me. Before I knew it, I was crying.
"Do you remember your nightmares and panic attacks?" He said.
I shook my head. Fear of nightmares kept me up at night, but the panic attacks got me during the day when my insomnia caused me to imagine things. Like the sinks bleeding in the bathroom, or the voices of strangers right next to my ear. My panic attacks were terrifying black parts of my days. Lately, I felt helpless at the hands of my disease and my fear.
He nodded.
"Keep writing."
He brought me down to the stream that ran through the property. It was shallow and sprinkling. Hardly a stream at all. He let me stand in it.
It had been months since I'd seen water anywhere but coming from a faucet. I sat down in the water, soaking my clothes, and I cried.
Release.
"Write about your family," He said.
So I wrote.
"I have three brothers and three little sisters. My parents were high school sweet hearts, and they also come from large families. My grandmother, the one that is alive, can cook for fifty in less than three hours. I love my large family because when you travel the world for a living, they're often the only real solid thing I've got. Isaac and Zac are my best friends. Even though we fight, they're the only people on this earth worth trusting. We have never spent more than a few days apart in our whole lives and staying here is making me crazy. I don't even get it, anymore. I've forgotten the date, my age, and my identity. I've been here for so long and Isaac hasn't visited me in weeks. Why hasn't he come to see me? It hurts me. I want my mother."
A new kid came.
Within the ward, we knew each other's problems and circumstances. Disorders, tics, lapses... we knew who hated being touched, who had to be watched as they ate, and who might randomly break out in a fit of rage. A general history of each individual was gained through group therapy, though people mostly knew mine from the news. If you asked, generally, you were told. "That's --, he has --" Nobody pried or slandered, and as a result there were rarely conflicts. It was strange, but we all got along really well, or, at the very least, maintained civilarity. It was understood: Everybody had problems and you don't talk about them or degrade them.
He threw us off balance, this new kid. He was a sociopath and a bully. Nobody liked him, and he liked nobody.
His first and favorite target was Angel, the smallest boy in the ward. He knew why Angel was there and he flaunted it by frequently making comments and touching him in the locker room. Angel kept his chin up. Not once did he falter in front of the new kid. This only gave the new kid more determination, and his offenses became more frequent. He wanted him to crack. He was waiting for it.
I remember the day he broke open the words. As much as I hate the man, it was his antic that broke my silence.
He marched in the common room, and Angel was playing pool. I was memorizing poetry and smoking a cigarette. He kept talking. Talking and talking and talking. Angel ignored him for several minutes but finally he burst.
"Don't you have better things to do?"
"But Angel, I want to be your friend! I want to be your lover!"
"Well, I'm sorry, but your opportunity was lost, Steve! My friend slots are already full." Angel said, in response.
"I guess I'm not old enough for you." He spat back. "Or mute enough."
"Leave Taylor alone."
"Do you like him because he can't scream when you're fucking? Is that it?"
"He's not fucking deaf, you know."
"Great! Then maybe he'll understand me when I ask him about your treasure well."
"Go to hell."
I tried to bury my thoughts further inside the words I was reading. I repeated the verses in my head like a chant to block out his malicious words to my friend. When he stood in front of me, I bravely disregarded him. My hands were shaking, though, as I reached in my jacket pocket, desperate for a cigarette. I wished right then that I still had my long hair. I wasn't threatened by him - to me he was just an imbecile, and I knew he couldn't hurt me. But still his mere proximity to me made me feel on edge.
"So what's wrong with you, anyway? You don't talk to people? Too many drugs? Washed up? Didn't your brother kill himself?" I went on reading. "Hello, can you hear me? Are you sure he's not deaf? Hey nod if you're in there. Fucking wack job. Hello!?"
The man pranced around the room like a lunatic, shouting my name over and over, imitating a teenybopper fan girl. Fed up, I stood and began walking towards the door. It was then that he grabbed Angel and pushed him over the pool table, pretending to hump him from behind. The Stripe and some other's ran to pull him away, as he laughed manically. Humiliated, Angel left the room before he boiled over. I followed him quietly.
"Taylor, listen... it's okay..." He said, not facing me as we approached the bathroom. "It's nothing new."
I was stunned he was so apathetic. I suppose it was his defense. We stood in silence for a moment. Always silence. I wanted to say something so bad. I waited and waited to gather courage. I waited and waited for the words. I wanted to express that I was there for him, and that I understood, and that it was okay. Because I knew. I knew that it didn't matter how many doctors, or family members, or friends you had, their consolation could only reach so far. It is not until the words come from someone who knows. Someone who really, really knows, before you can say to yourself that it is, in fact, okay.
He turned to walk away from me, and in a moment of sheer panic, I grabbed him and I said as loud as I could, "Me too."
He stopped short. "Taylor, you're talking?" All of the worry and sadness disappeared from his face and he began smiling, "You can talk? Did you really just talk?"
I nodded, I was so desperate to speak to him. I didn't know why. I opened my mouth several times and moaned, my voice was barely audible. It had been so long. So long since I'd spoken a single word. And what was the last word I said? Was it her name?
"Say something again, Taylor. What do you want to say?"
"I'm like you." I said, finally, and then pointed to myself. "Me too."
"You're gay?"
I smiled and shook my head, but my smile faltered as a rush of tears approached me without warning. "I wish."
"Taylor... I was gang raped in juvie." He said, like he was sure I was wrong.
"I know." I said, though I didn't. There was a tightening in my chest as he scrutinized me. My heart exploded with every beat. The sound of her sad desperate voice was playing like a broken record in my ear. I started hearing music and slowly the room seemed to be slipping away from me. I shook my head, but suddenly things got darker. I couldn't stop it. I stepped back against the wall.
"Taylor...?"
"Help..."
I felt him help me to the floor and I covered my mouth to stop the screaming as I blindly recalled the scene of her suicide. Reliving every detail. It takes all of my strength - biting my finger until it bleeds - to not sing along to those words that I had so mindlessly been mouthing in my slow walk down that hallway, and behind that door...
When it is black and silent, I know it is bad. When I feel in a lull it's when I scream the most.
The sickness shot through me like fire, my hands feeling cold reality beneath them.
I go through all this...
My vision is blurry and I see figures around me. Closer I see smears of blood on my arm... my hands fly up to my face in fear of opening my eyes. Voices begin to cut through my consciousness.
"Taylor, this is The Stripe. Taylor... If you hear me count with me."
I screamed, "She's dead. She's dead. And you want me to count? Dead dead dead dead dead. I don't know what it means."
"There's nothing you can do, Taylor. It's over."
"No." I said, "I made a mistake."
"What happened was out of your hands."
"Because I let go." I began to crawl away, and there came a firm hold around my waist, which set my muscles rigid. I froze. The hands let go. For a few moments I sat perfectly still. Silent, waiting. When I was sure I could, I jumped and ran full speed into a mass of hands which grabbed at me ravenously. I pushed roughly through, shaking with the fear adrenaline my nightmare granted. Hands and hands by the thousands and I couldn't get away. Sick. I was sick. My skin was hot and my face damp.
I run. Free air comes and I run. I hear my name loud.. reverberating through my spine. Heart in my head and I keep running.
I feel I am seven years old again, running from my mother and people I didn't know of care to know because of my painful shyness. I opened every door in the corridor until I found a closet and locked myself inside. It was silent and safe. In the darkness I didn't need to see or look at anything, it was just black, sans the crack beneath the door spilling light in from the hallway. As my heartbeat slowed, I felt fear nausea rising. Sick and dizzy with confusion, I felt around and discovered a bucket, which was empty and smelled like pinesol. I held it protectively and waited, trying to will it back.
"Calm... calm..." I said to myself, but the more I chanted and breathed, more the stress of the words hurt me. Black rocks were stuck in my throat, and my head felt throbbing and swollen. My whole body was covered with pins and needles. The sensation was too much. The sound of my sickness falling splat splat onto the plastic made my head spin with more nausea. I cried because it was hurting me. I wrapped my hands around my rib cage, and all I wanted was for it to stop. The pain in my stomach, my throat, my heart, my head, everywhere. I could not halt the sickness or the hot red fear. The vomiting was continuous until I was just drooling and hanging my face over the bucket. They found me like that. Drool dripping off of my chin with a bucket full of vomit. I was much calmer when they found me. Concentrated on the silence. Numb.
The Stripe helped walk me down the hallway to my room with my doctor at my side. Steve, among other people who had witnessed my attack, was standing on the edge of the hallway, staring at me with wide eyes.
"Fuck you!" I shouted, waving my middle finger and lunging. The Stripe holding me back with a fair amount of ease. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!"
"Taylor..." The Stripe said, coercing me down the hall. Steve just looked shocked, and continued staring.
"You piece of shit! Don't you dare look at me! Fuck you!"
Before he was too far I spit in his face, and The Stripe grabbed me forcefully. "Taylor! What's gotten into you?"
I growled and drooled, and finally grew exhausted. My feet were literally dragging across the floor. I was helpless. Helpless. Helpless.
Today I showed the new kid what it is to live in a ward.
He was forcing me to verbalize my thoughts now. Two days passed and we had our very first conversation.
"I failed." I said, words coming easier with practice, though my voice was still strained and raspy. "I let you down." Still, even with the words, I rarely used them. I didn't trust even my smallest thoughts. Every vibration in my throat felt like a lie. My life, as I had known it all of my life, was nothing.
"How?"
"All that hard work. I threw it all up..."
"Is eating hard work?"
I nodded.
"Answer."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I'm not hungry."
"You aren't? Do you feel that you aren't hungry for much? Aside from food, that is."
"Yes"
"Does that bother you?"
"No, it's quieter now."
"What's quieter?"
"My mind. Not as many things rattling around in my head. Just the task at hand."
"What usually is the task at hand?"
"Lately I've been memorizing poetry." I said, "But usually reminding myself to inhale every time I put a cigarette to my lips and analyzing the sensations."
"Do you desire anything?"
"Nope. It's just to pass time."
"You say you miss your family. They haven't visited. You seem upset by this."
I stared ahead blankly. The words sounded so foreign to me. I tried to think or talk about them as a response and all that came was a blank space.
"You say you have three brothers and three sisters but neglect to mention that your brother passed away this year. You talk about them as if you are speaking in the distant past. Do you ever think about them?"
Of course I thought about them. They were my family! I never thought about anyone else. I had no one else. "He's still my brother." I said, "Even though he died."
"Where were you when he died?" He asked. I was suddenly angry with him for mentioning it. It wasn't any of his business. Like he even understood what it was like.
"Right fucking next to him."
"And how did that make you feel?"
"How do you think?"
"Why don't you tell me?"
"Like having my legs torn off."
"Do you perceive your connection to your family members as like a connection to your body?"
"Who doesn’t?" I said, family was the most important bond in life. I knew of no other that mattered so much. Love ends in family, right?
"A lot of people." He said. "Is there anyone else aside from family that you have ever felt was that important?"
I nodded.
"Who?"
"A girl.."
"What was her name?"
I couldn’t say it. Every time I was about to I was violently held back by an image shooting through my mind. I covered my face with my hands and began to cry.
"It's okay." he said, "I understand it is hard having lost her so recently."
"If you knew that then why bother asking?" I said. "You ask me all of these questions, but you already know the answers. They're in your file. Why bother even asking?"
"I have facts in my file. Not you."
"I can't talk about this." I said. "Too much."
"Alright. Let's just relax, then, and end for today. Okay?"
I was mad when later, everything I painted turned brown.