Ch 1 - I Stand Alone

Help me decide if my fire will burn out
Before you can breathe
Breathe into me
I stand alone
Inside
I stand alone
Feeling your sting down inside of me
I'm not dying for it
I stand alone
Everything that I believe is fading
I stand alone

“I Stand Alone” – Godsmack

“How are you doing today Isabella?”

I sat, slouched down in the beaten up old brown leather chair. I had my arms crossed at my chest and my legs stretched out with my ankles crossed. My entire posture screamed ‘I’m not talking, I don’t care’ but evidently the man sitting across from me was oblivious to that. Or else he was simply trained to ignore it. Whatever. We went through this often enough, I knew the routine by now. My body language would tell him that I didn’t want to be there, and his would tell me that he didn’t give a shit what I wanted.

I sighed loudly. What did he expect me to say? Great? Fantastic? Couldn’t be better? So like always, I said nothing. He was looking down at some paperwork lying on his desk—my chart, I presumed—and frantically scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad. He seemed to constantly be taking notes, which I found baffling considering I hadn’t said a single word. Was he writing a detailed summary of my outfit—my old worn jeans with holes in some improper places that told him what color panties I had on? Is he commenting on the fact that I couldn’t be bothered to do anything with my hair today and it was in complete disarray? That my bottom lip is chapped, cracked and bleeding from me chewing on it constantly, and that I didn’t seem to know or care enough to get any damn chapstick?

Or maybe he was commenting on my lack of comments. Who knows?

He paused his writing and peeked up at me through the top of his thick reading glasses. The frames were old and bent and there was a scratch on one of the lenses. His name was Dr. Nelson. He was middle aged, if I had to venture a guess I’d say mid- 40’s like Charlie, but he had the beginnings of a receding hairline and some sporadic gray hairs. He was slightly overweight, a very noticeable plump middle—beer belly, as Charlie would say. He looked disheveled, his button up shirt wrinkled and his tie crooked. He hadn’t shaved either. I doubted he had a wife… no woman in their right mind would let their husband walk outside looking like he did. I figured he must not make much money working here and I momentarily felt bad for him… until I remembered that he was the one sitting behind the desk. Every ounce of sympathy went out the window then. I was the pathetic one here.

He shook his head, frustrated by my lack of response, and went back to writing on his pad. I started chewing on my fingernails, one of the many bad habit’s I’d picked up in the recent months. It was one of the few I hadn’t bothered to try to break myself from… this one wasn’t as harmful as the others.

“Well you appear to be doing okay,” he muttered under his breath, answering his own earlier question.

He finally dropped his pen on the desk and looked up at me. He had a bored look on his face. “Look, I’m not stupid. I know you don’t want to be here. Most of the people who walk through that door feel the same way as you. But there’s nothing we can do about that, you’re here and that’s that. And you’ll continue to come here until I’m convinced you don’t need to. It’s been months now and I’ve barely gotten anything from you. Want to get rid of me Isabella? Then you’re gonna have to start talking.”

I sighed, looking away from him. I knew he was speaking the truth but I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to tell this ridiculous man my deep dark secrets. I didn’t want to tell him the horrific things I’d done that led me to being forced to come and sit in this room with him 3 times a week.

I didn’t want to tell him anything, because talking about it made it real. And frankly, he’d never understand. Half of it was so unbelievable he’d think I was bullshitting him anyway, so what was the point?

He went back to scribbling notes on his pad, and I went back to chewing my fingernails. The hour passed excruciatingly slow, no words being exchanged. When the clock on his desk started beeping, indicating my time was over, I stood up quickly and headed for the door. He didn’t say goodbye, didn’t wish me a good day. Hell he didn’t even stop writing.

I wondered if he had even been writing about me at all… knowing our sessions, he was likely scribbling “someone please put me out of my misery” over and over again.

His office was on the first floor, near the front entrance of the building. I stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the third floor. I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes during the short ride up. When the door chimed and opened, I stepped out and pulled out my ID. I handed it to a lady sitting at a desk adjacent to the elevators. She smiled brightly at me and I gave her the best smile I could muster, but it looked more like a grimace. She scanned my ID into her computer and handed it back to me while a door behind us buzzed and automatically started sliding open. I muttered ‘thanks’ and stepped inside. The door closed quickly behind me.

I walked through the empty common room and down a hallway, passing about a dozen rooms full of people doing whatever it was they did to pass the time. My room was the last one on the right. I opened the door and slipped inside, shutting it behind me. Shutting the door was truly pointless, as there was no privacy here. There were no locks and people were constantly opening my door to check on me all hours of the day.

I kicked off my shoes and plopped down on my stomach on the bed. It was small and the mattress was hard with a plastic covering. It was uncomfortable, to say the least. I grabbed my pillow and put it over my head to drown out the sounds coming from the adjacent room.

Someone knocked on my door and opened it quickly. I didn’t bother to move. If they were here for checks, they’d see I was still breathing and move on. After a moment the person cleared their throat. I pulled the pillow off of my head and looked towards the door. The guy whose room was across the hall from me was standing in the doorway, smiling.

“You look like you had a great session,” he said with a laugh. I groaned and rolled my eyes.

His name was Darren. He never asked me why I was here, so I shared the courtesy and never asked him. What was wrong with us or what we did to lead us here was irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was that we clearly appeared to be the most normal people in the place, and that alone was enough to bond us.

“Simply thrilling,” I muttered. He laughed again. I got up from the bed and headed out of the room for the common area. The rules dictated that he wasn’t allowed in my room, nor was I allowed in his, so we had to take to the large room at the front of the floor in order to ‘associate’ with each other. That way they could keep an eye on us, make sure we weren’t doing anything too scandalous.

I sat down on a large black couch and he sat down beside me. He reached over and grabbed the remote, turning on the TV in front of us and flipping through channels. I never bothered with the TV… most of the good stuff had a block on it. The last time I attempted to watch TV in here, I put on an episode of the cartoon Tom & Jerry and the ridiculous woman supervising declared it as too violent. I gave up after that.

“So how much longer do you have?” Darren asked.

I sighed. “Two weeks supposedly. I’m afraid Shrink-a-dink’s gonna throw a wrench in that, though.” Shrink-a-dink was a nickname Darren had given Dr. Nelson awhile back.

Darren shook his head. “Naw, you’ll still have to see him three times a week like usual. You’ve fulfilled all of your other requirements so there’s no reason they won’t let you walk.”

“Yeah well, I still need to obtain residency outside these walls,” I said, groaning.

In two weeks, I will have been here for six months. For six months I’ve lived in that small room down the hall and slept on that little uncomfortable bed. I can count on my fingers the number of times I’ve been outside and seen the sun and breathed in fresh air. It’s been well over six months since I’ve seen either of my parents, since any of my friends have spoken to me. I’ve been completely isolated. That was my punishment… six months of pure hell, for the hell I caused.

In actuality, I deserved much more. But I imagine this is just the beginning of my hell.

Darren gave up channel surfing, stopping at a cooking show. I watched it for a moment before sadness started creeping in. I remembered cooking for Charlie every night, the time we spent together at the table eating. It was mine and Charlie’s only bond. We were different people, lived different lives, but dinner was the one time we came together as a family. That it wouldn’t be like that ever again. I was the black sheep of the family, the wayward daughter. The relative they don’t speak of because of the terrible things their memory brings up.

Darren sensed my mood change and turned the TV off. I know he always wondered why the little things sent my mood spiraling, but of course he never asked. It wasn’t his place to and he knew it.

“So you gonna go to school?” Darren asked, wanting to make conversation.

“I dunno, I thought about it,” I said with a shrug. I received my diploma a few weeks ago finally. I hadn’t survived in the real world long enough to graduate from Forks High School, but after being admitted here they set it up so I could make up the work and get my diploma. I was thankful for that, at least—better late then never.

Other people started filtering out into the common room. The TV got turned back on and a woman named Marianne sat down on the other side of me. She was amusing, to say the least. She was completely harmless, but diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. I know it was horrible to laugh at her, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped.

“Be careful, they’re watching you,” Marianne whispered to me.

“Who?” I asked, looking around. She smacked my arm, telling me I wasn’t being inconspicuous enough and I was drawing attention to us.

“The owls,” she said, her voice low. “The owls are watching us. They don’t know I know yet.”

I glanced around the room briefly and couldn’t find any owls so I had no idea what she was talking about.

“I won’t tell the owls we know,” I whispered, hoping that would please her. She smiled and nodded. “How do you know owls are watching us?”

She picked up a newspaper and made an extra effort to seem casual as she handed it to me. It did nothing but make her stand out more. I had to stifle a laugh… it reminded me of the old cartoon characters who turned their heads away and whistled when they were trying to be sneaky about something. I took the paper from her and saw the headline across the top. “Whoooooo’s watching?” It had a photo of a cartoon owl. The article was about some special on the Animal Planet channel, but obviously Marianne took it as a sign that owls were watching us.

I put the paper back down. Marianne had lost interest in me and was talking to a nurse on the floor about the owls so I chose that moment to make my exit. She could be quite demanding, occasionally it would take hours to get away from her.

I told Darren I’d see him later and walked back to my room. I pulled out my journal… it was the only part of therapy that I ever actually accomplished. I flipped to the first open page and started writing.

I poured my thoughts out, no matter how random they were. I’d been writing like this for six months now… I never went back and read anything I wrote, but I have nearly a dozen journals full of every thought and feeling I had. I offered to let the psychiatrist read them but he declined. Apparently it was mandatory that I say everything out loud to him, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

A little while later there was a knock at my door and one of the workers opened it.

“Mail,” she said with a smile. My brow furrowed as she handed me a blue envelope. I scanned the front quickly, seeing that it was from my stepfather Phil. I handed it back to her so she could open it and ensure it was safe… policy dictated that staff must check over all mail to ensure nothing illegal was coming inside, and the people that worked on our floor were nice enough to allow us to watch them open it. It cuts down on patients accusing them of stealing.

She handed the envelope back to me and I tossed it on my small desk. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with the outside world yet.