"I want to see my family." I said to The Stripe. My voice was sad and hurt. "Why haven't they come?"
The Stripe had continued to assign me journal entries about my family, and the more I wrote the more I missed them. I was so angry at them for leaving me abandoned, but the other half said that I deserved it after all I had put them through. I felt so alone and uncared for. I was convinced that they hadn't seen me because they truly hated me. I thought seriously about suicide - but I knew it was all in vain. Suicide was a hopeless thought. I couldn't see how I would be able to kill myself in a place where I was so strictly supervised. I would have to wait until I got better, and I'd sign myself out. I'd see my family to get the affirmation that they truly no longer wanted me, and then I'd do it. Without my family, I had nothing left. Just my name, and what was that worth?
But then again, I hadn't done it yet, so what's the use of living today to die tomorrow? Did I do all that work to wake up to rejection and hurt all over again?
The Stripe scrutinized me closely. "They have come, Taylor."
"When?!"
"Isaac was here every day for your first two weeks. He watched you paint, but he was too scared to approach you. Your parents speak with me on a weekly basis for updates on your health. Your entire family moved to LA until you got out of the hospital. They care about you quite a bit."
"Where have they been?" I said, beginning to get mad, "Why don't they see me?"
"You weren't ready."
"Who are you to decide if I'm ready or not? They're my family! I love them and miss them and I want to see them!"
"I knew you would be angry, but don't be angry at them. Your parents have been asking to see you every time they see me."
"Why didn't you let them? You fucking asshole."
"Taylor, regardless of what you think this was not to hurt you. You were incapable of conversing with anyone for three months. We had to isolate you or you would have really lost it. We agreed that this is what is best."
I was so angry with him. Infuriated tears dripped down my chin. "Maybe I wanted to see them. Even if I couldn't tell you."
"They would have been emotional. Your mother couldn't bear it. If I let them see you they would have expected a different you. This has impacted them immensely, Taylor. Try to think about it from their perspective. When you were first here, I told your brother he could talk to you while you were in art therapy and he stood in the doorway, frozen. They're coping, too. But they're also in an entirely different state of mind. It would have only made your post traumatic state worse."
"I was so angry at them. I thought they had abandoned me, and all along they've been watching! That's not fair! You lied to me!"
"I never lied."
"You never told me."
"You never asked."
"Fuck you! You think you know what I need so badly. You don't know what it's like! I need them. I need them! And you took them away."
"Taylor, please understand that your family agreed, too, that this was the best course of action to help you get better... Taylor... Taylor!"
"Get away from me!" I said, marching down the hallway. When do I get better? I just couldn't figure it out. If I couldn't see them now, I was never going to see them again because I am too insane and sick.
In the common room I sat down at the piano for the first time, but I didn’t play anything melodious or try out a new song. Instead, I pounded the keys just to listen to the discordant random sounds. A part of me found meaning in it that would never be evident in Beethoven or The Beatles or even my own music. Life was random and discordant, why make it out to be anything more? I wasted my whole life believing in order and God's good will and all along it was just like this. Cold and without color. Scattered and random. What was the point in anything other than to waste space and time? Frustrated, I kicked the piano and pushed over the bench and left the room. That's all the musician can come up with? Angry noise and a toe to the piano?
I died when I stopped playing music. Unable to see in it what I once did. Music, for my whole life, was my outlet, and then Zac died and my sense of self with him. I was dead for months... my voice, I knew, was ruined. I would never get back what I had. That's it, then, I guess. That is all the musician can muster.
I sat in the floor of the hallway and cried. "I'm crazy, I'm crazy, I'm crazy, I'm crazy! I'm never ever, ever going to leave! This place is a jail!"
"Taylor..." The Stripe crouched down beside me.
"Get away from me." I said, and I walked off to the cafeteria for breakfast.
Mike threw a fit at lunch that day.
"I weighed myself." He said, "One hundred fifty point five. Do you know how much that is?!"
I didn't weigh that much. I quietly shoveled my meal into my mouth as he ranted and raved, and finally started crying. The Stripe tried making him eat several different ways until Mike just threw his plate at him and left the room. The noise and the shouting upset me, and I was shaking after he left the room. I had to go with The Stripe to change his clothes, and I was afraid I might have a panic attack. My anxiety had just shot through the roof.
Back in the common room, I eased myself into a book. Reading helped calm my nerves.
"What are you reading?" Came a voice. "A romance novel?"
I looked up to see Steve standing over me. I closed my book and showed him the cover. E.E. Cummings, you shithead. I'm memorizing poetry.
"Hello? Don't you talk yet? Or was that just a fluke? I'd be surprised if you can even think."
Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off. I thought.
"Why do you read these stupid poems all of the time? Don't you ever get tired of this shit?"
I shrugged and I rolled my eyes. I held the book up to my face for long enough and he went away.
I sighed. I was sick of this. My family was something I barely remembered anymore. Just like the rest of my life. I stared off to space and started to gather words.
"My father loves me but he does not understand me. This is a fact. He told me. Sometimes I wish I could make clearer whatever he doesn't understand. Sometimes I feel like he hates me. My mother is just the opposite. I still run to her for consolation in the middle of the night. Isaac is like my Dad, but he supports me. Zac was the buffer between us, I think. It's hard, without him. We grew apart after he died. My sister Jessica is a lot like me, and it scares me. But I'd never tell her that. I feel a disconnection from my younger siblings because for much of their childhood all we did was travel. In many ways, Avery and Mac, who are now teenagers (or nearly), are still little kids to me. My little sister Zoe, however, surprises me every time I see her because she's so much taller and more verbose than the last time. Kids have been in my life for my entire life, but yet I've lived in an adult world from very young. It's strange, sometimes. But it's all I've ever known."
Eventually, someone in the evening staff noticed the crowd and took the magazine away. It made me laugh, a little. We were all grown men, and we weren't even allowed to stare at a dirty magazine. The Stripe saw me snicker.
"What?"
"Nothing." I shrugged, "Just the whole fiasco with the magazine."
He laughed, "Well you know how it is, everybody's feeling a little sexually repressed, I think. That's kind of what sucks about the ward. It seems kind of backwards, doesn't it?"
I shrugged, "What's forwards? Free reigning sex?"
"No, not necessarily. It just seems to me that since sex is good for your mental and physical health, that maybe it shouldn't be restricted to see your lovers every now and again."
"Who can keep a lover when they're sent to a mental ward?" I said.
The Stripe shrugged. "There are some guys in here who have girlfriends or boyfriends that visit them. It's not totally weird."
"I would be ashamed." I said, "It's better that she's dead, I think. Because she wouldn't have to come see me in this place."
"Do you think you would be here if she hadn't killed herself?"
"I'd rather not think about where I'd be."
"Why? Where would you be?"
"I don't know." I said, sadly. "Maybe I'd be with her."
"I want to see my family!" I screamed at The Stripe for the last time. "I want to see them! How long must I wait?" I was anguished, sitting on the floor of his office. "Please, please, please..." I begged. "Please... I'm so lonely."
"You will see your family as soon as you demonstrate to me that you can interact with your peers."
"Are they watching? Can they see me?" I crawled to the door. "Can they hear me? Mom! Dad! Let me out. Let me out. Let me out."
"They're not here, Taylor."
"When do they come? I want to know! When do you see them?"
"You will see them when you talk to someone new."
"I talk to Mike! I talk to Angel! Who else is there worth talking to? I talk to you! I'll talk to my family!"
"So essentially, you want me to allow you to choose who you wish to talk to, rather than helping you rebuild your confidence in talking to and associating with other's."
I grunted. "No. I talk when it's important to talk."
"Well, fine. Then tonight in therapy, you must speak to all of your peers about yourself. If you can do that, then I will ask your family to come to visiting hours on Saturday. I am sure they will be happy to see you."
"That's unfair!"
"I think it's entirely fair."
I screamed.
"Well, it's up to you. If you want to see your family this weekend, you will act accordingly. But if you do not feel you are ready to speak in group, then you will not be ready to speak to those most deeply affected by what has occurred in recent months. Your family will come and you will retreat back to your shell, Taylor. You must not do that. You must fight to get better."
"You're wrong." I said, crying. "You don't know me."
"Maybe not, Taylor. But you must trust me. And you must trust yourself."
"Hi, my name is Taylor. I'm here due to anorexia and PTSD. Earlier this year my brother died, and shortly after my girlfriend killed herself. My head was silent for many months, and that is why I could not speak to you. But today, The Stripe told me I had to, because I want to see my family on Saturday. I don't know what else to say. It is hard for me, lately, to say much of anything. I hope that maybe I am brave enough to get to know you better, because even though I've been here so long, I hardly know you at all. Which is my own fault, and I am sorry. I think I am done now."
I stared down at the floor in front of me, like I always had, and cried softly to myself. I felt pathetic and embarrassed, wondering what my brothers would think if they could see what I have been reduced to. There was nothing I could claim as just mine. Not even the clothes I wore. Not even my voice, or my bed, or my shit. Everyone hugged me and offered their support, but I still felt so alone.
I accidentally fell asleep again, and I missed that morning's meeting with The Stripe.
When he asked, "What happened?" I felt like he knew my secret. My face grew red and I stuttered.
"I-I don't know. I'm sorry."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing." I said, defensively, and hurried away with my lunch tray. God, why was I freaking out?
"Taylor, it's okay that you missed our meeting." He said when I sat down. "But it seems to me that that's not what's bothering you."
"It's not all that important. I'm just being a girl." I shrugged. It was just a wet dream. This stuff happens all of the time. There was no reason to fear it, but at the same time I was plagued with unreasonable guilt. The clear, innocent liquid that had dampened my underwear that morning had conjured something inexplicable. I couldn't trace what was so foreboding about it. It just didn't seem logical that I should fear my own sexual fluids, but nonetheless I did. Their existence, to me, seemed unholy. It was a part of me that I desperately wanted to forget. All my sex had ever done was damage me. I wished to cut it out of my life, so that I'd never be responsible for another terrible thing. That's how it made me feel. Responsible.
That morning was the beginning of a manifesting sexual fear that lead to another panic attack a few days later. It was the day before my parents were supposed to come, and it made me so mad. Somebody had touched me. Brushed my side a little too closely. And the next thing I knew I was filled with hysteria. I was convinced that this would mean I wouldn't get to see my family for another week, but The Stripe assured me that the date was still on. I told him about the wet dream earlier that week and how I felt so disgusting.
"Do you know why?" He asked. "Do you think there is a reason?"
I shrugged, "I feel like I've used too many people. I feel guilty."
"How do you feel you have used people? And why would you feel guilty now?"
"I used to have sex with girls that hung out waiting for us. I never asked if that's what they wanted, but they never really told me otherwise. I think some of them might have been virgins, but I didn't care. I fucked them all because they were there and then I let them walk home."
"How was your relationship with your girlfriend?"
"Loving." I said, "She was the only girl I ever cared about."
"Then why should you feel guilty?"
"What about all of those other girls?"
"Do you think that they could forgive you?"
I shook my head. "It is unforgivable."
"Did you ever have feelings of guilt about this before?"
"No, I used to think that they were the animals."
"But you don't anymore?"
"No, I know the truth now. It is I who was the animal."
The Stripe tells me to wait. Five minutes, he says. But it feels like decades. My heart is racing. I feel nearly ill with the tortuous anticipation. They haven't even come yet and I am about to cry with fear.
My head is so filled with noise that I don't even hear it when my mother walks in. She touches my shoulder and I jump, alarmed at the sight of her face. She recoils and the hurt rips through me. All of my anxiety awakens my nerves and I begin shaking as my eyes fill up with tears. I'm almost going to scream, but I keep biting my lip down.
"Taylor..." She says, and tentatively she hugs me. I wrap my arms around her and I let myself yelp as the tears come rolling down my face. She rocks me back and forth gently for several minutes, as we both will ourselves to stop crying. We say nothing. I simply take in her scent. Her hair smells so much like home that I imagine I could be there. I wonder what I smell like.
She takes my hand and leads me out of the room with The Stripe following closely behind. The rest of my family is waiting in this other room down the hall. I am overwhelmed when I am surrounded by arms. I am crying all over again. My Dad is worrying.
"Don't crowd him," He says, "Let him have his space."
The words are caught in my throat, but I want to say it so badly. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. I love you. Instead I smile and smile and smile, wiping my face roughly with my shaking palms.
"What did you do with your hair?" My littlest sister asks. I bend down to pick her up, but I find that she is too heavy for my weak muscles.
"I cut it." I say, bending down so she could touch the messy mop that had sprouted from my bald head over the past few months.
"Your cheeks are soft."
"Your's are much softer." I say, letting my fingers run through her blonde ringlets. My fingertips are so sensitive to the feeling of someone's skin against them. I close my eyes with the ecstacy of it.
When I straighten, I see that I am surrounded. So many people that I am made dizzy by their faces. Isaac is standing beside my father, both wearing the same expression of heartbreak and joy. It's all noisy in the room, but it's a stiff noise. I can tell they're nervous. Afraid of me. I do not blame them. And I do not know what to say to so many people, when our time apart has made me so distant from my home. It occurs to me, for the very first time, that I have no idea what is happening in their lives. I should have a thousand questions, but I can't think of a single one. But then I see, over the sea of blonde heads, the striking red hair.
"Alexis..." I mutter, and then I see her round pregnant belly. It shocks me. I had completely forgotten. "Good God, when are you due?"
"Very, very soon." She says, laughing. Lilting almost. She seems joyful, but I can feel her sadness, how immense it is. When you live in a ward, you begin to feel the sadness of those surrounding you. Your sense of emotion is fine tuned, because in a ward, everyone is feeling or not feeling on a level far more intense then those on the outside, and everyone is trying to hide. Inside the ward, there is no face to be kept except for the one we keep for ourselves. When you're at the bottom, there's no use in facades, instead we keep masks so that when we look in the mirror we can pretend that we are someone other than ourselves, and go on living for one more day. The trapped know. We can see the other's like us. My hand involuntarily fell upon her belly, feeling for the hope inside. I wished again that it were me, instead of Zac, as I stared into the stricken face of his fiancee.
"Taylor..." Her eyes were filling with tears, and the room had grown silent. She grabbed my wrists.
"I-I'm sorry." I step back, raising my hands. "I didn't ask. I'm sorry. Don't cry."
Everyone is still silent, and I begin to wonder what I had done. I begin to apologize again and stumble away backwards. "I'm sorry." I say again, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it."
"Taylor, it's okay..." She reaches toward me, but I can still feel all of the eyes on me. So sad. So completely sad. I feel as if I have actually died, and my family has come to mourn my death.
"No." I say, "No, it's not."
Before I take my flight, The Stripe places his hand on my shoulder, "Taylor, would you like to show your family some of your artwork?"
Slowly, nervously, I nod my head.
I held the folder to my chest. "Can't we just... talk?"
"I want to see..." Protested my littlest sister.
I shook my head. "It's not worth seeing."
I could feel their thoughts. I could feel how far away they felt from me, then. I knew I was a stranger. I never thought I'd ever have to see the day when my family regarded me as a stranger.
We talked. We sat in an empty room and we told each other about everything. I asked about home, and school, and Los Angeles. I asked about what The Stripe had been saying about me, and laughed lightly. It wasn't so bad once the words were there. Once we were all in the playing field. But it still felt stiff and unnatural. Strange. Unreal. As if it weren't actually happening to me. I can hear my fingers drumming against the chair with nerves.
"Taylor, do you remember anything?"
I was bewildered by the question. "Remember what?"
Tears started dripping down his cheeks, unprompted. "The night you came home. Annissa. The hospital."
"I-I remember. I remember a little."
"Tell me what you remember. Please. Please tell me."
"You don't want to know what I remember, Isaac."
"Yes, I do. Please God, yes I do." The desperation in his voice made me uneasy.
"What's the use of me telling you?" I asked. "What will it gain you but more pain?"
He said nothing, but cried. Making that tragic laughing sound as he stared at me with the saddest expression I have ever seen in my life. The tears dripped silently and effortlessly down my cheeks. Never in all of my life had I ever seen Isaac as he was at that moment. He couldn't even form words as they were all choked up in his throat.
"You don't know..." He said, "You don't know what it's been like... I have been so strong for you. I've been so strong for everyone. I'm falling apart."
I grabbed him and I hugged him tight because I didn't have words to say. He sputtered. "I'm so afraid, Taylor."
"I remember..." I said, my voice was even and calm. "I remember when I came home that night and I walked into your room. I saw you and I knew I was safe. I saw you, and I let myself fall to the floor. I let my muscles fall apart because I knew you were there, and that you could fend off all of the bullies. That sounds so ridiculous, but I still look up to you, Isaac. Every day that I was in the hospital, knowing that you were there gave me reason to believe there was something worth living for. I hope you know that. I couldn't speak to tell you, but it is so much more than you can ever, ever know."
"Why did this happen?" He asked. But I had no answer. Neither of us did. "What did we do?" He whispered.
I knew none of these things were true. I knew that they would never leave me. But occasionally, I wasn't so sure. One day I might wake up, another grey day in the ward, and they might all be dead. And then what would I have?
"All of the time."
"How? How do you think about her?"
"Fondly. Just conversations and being with me."
"Do you think about her suicide?"
"I try not to."
"Why not?"
"Why would I?"
"Can you tell me what happened when you found her?"
"...N-no."
"Why?"
"Because I don't want to."
"Are you afraid of your memory?"
"No."
"What did she look like when you found her?"
"Dead. What do you think? You've read all of the documents. You know it all. Why do you always insist on asking me these questions? Why don't you just get to the fucking point. Ask me why he raped me. Ask me why she killed herself. That's all you fucking want to know. Because you think I have the fucking answers. You just want my voice. You just want to sell me saying it. Well, guess what? I'm a weak minded piece of shit! I did too many drugs, I didn't eat, and I got raped up the ass like everyone always wanted. Pretty Taylor Hanson taking it the way he was always supposed to. I'm just somebody's fucking bitch. Nobody would ever take me seriously. What's the point in trying? Everyone knows. They all know. The news said 'assaulted' but they all know what that means. What do you want me to say? What do you want me to feel? I bet it's all over the internet next to a picture of my mug. Some kind of glorified flash animation of cute Taylor Hanson getting all banged up. And everyone's laughing because it's so fucking perfect."
"Am I laughing, Taylor?"
And the tears filled up in my eyes as I began to cry.
In the common room that evening, somebody had a dirty magazine. Everyone hovered over its pages and talked rapidly. It was very rare that we saw women in these parts. I was nauseated by the images and I went outside to go have a cigarette. I wasn't interested.
I was still shy to speak, even though it had now been a few weeks. I spoke to very few people, and when I did the conversation was sparse. The only person I spoke with at any length about anything was The Stripe. When other's addressed me, I spoke only when necessary, and oftentimes went to great lengths to avoid confrontations at all. I followed all of my directions. I ate by myself. I avoided group situations. I went to bed early. The silence became my defense. I grew so obsessed with keeping silent that I had developed my own personal sign language. It was all I had in this place, where someone was watching me, even as I took a shit. The words were the only thing I had been able to keep, and slowly I was being forced to give them all away. It hurt me as if I were being stripped of my livelihood.
I stood up, and I felt naked. I hadn't said a word in group therapy for the entire four and a half months of my stay. Everyone's eyes were on me. My whole body was shaking, and I had to will myself not to cry as I spoke the words I had pre-rehearsed.
I woke up in the morning and I felt the wetness. I sat up abruptly and I quickly looked for a change of shorts before Mike could wake up and see, and I hid the soiled ones under my mattress. I lay awake for the next hour wondering about what had happened. Every part of me felt disgusting.
I am nervous and scared. I sit in a strange part of the hospital. A place I have never been. A waiting room of sorts. I feel like I was awaiting my doom. I can't stop wondering. What do they think of me? Will they still love me? Has a lot changed while I've been away? Will I even recognize my little sister? Will Dad talk to me? Will they be afraid of me? Will they hug me? What will I say? How am I supposed to feel? What if I cry, or panic, or don't say a word? What if bad things happen? Maybe they'll never want to see me again and I'll be left to live in this sterile place forever.
My folder was filled with ugliness so I didn't know what to show my family. I hated almost everything in it. I felt that all the artwork did was reaffirm how crazy I truly was. Pages upon pages of crooked lines all running into each other, shaky like a racing heartbeat scribbling away through the graphing machine. I had drawn one figure, and it was a picture of myself with a hole in my throat. I didn't want to show my family any of these.
I showed them around. This is where I sleep, eat, bath, and piss. This is my roommate, Mike. These are a few of my friends.
I excused myself to use the restroom and my brother cornered me in the hall.
I pressed my fingers against the window of the door as they shut it between us again. I smelled the stiff air all around me and a part of me wanted to scream. I hated to see them go. It was a feeling of abandonment, staring at them through that door as they all waved goodbye one last time. Like I might never, ever see them again.
"Taylor, do you think about her?" The Stripe asked.