My Chemical Imbalance

Chapter One

Chapter OneMy life is such a clusterfuck.

My husband of five years, Jeff, left me and our three-year-old son the day after Christmas. I’d been suffering from extreme endometriosis pain for over a year and didn’t feel like showing much affection to Jeff, let alone having s*x. I can be really cold and remote without even trying. By the time I decided to have a hysterectomy in the hopes of ending my pain, Jeff said I’d grown too distant from him. He’d met a woman at work, and left to be with her.

Three weeks later, just a few days after my hysterectomy, I relaxed on the couch at my best friend Nia’s house. My son, Jeremiah, and hers, Nate, were battling each other, playing the most current version of Just Dance on the Wii. They were so cute together. Jeremiah looked just like Jeff, with wide-set blue eyes and brown hair. Nate was stocky, with dark brown skin and tightly curled black hair. By lucky chance, Nia and I had been pregnant at the same time. I hoped the boys maintained a life-long friendship as Nia and I had.

“Rihanna, do you need anything?” Nia asked as she walked into the room.

“No. I’m having fun watching these two and drifting in pain pill euphoria.” I tucked my brownish-red hair behind my ears on a green-eyed face that some called cute or pretty, but never hot.

“Girl, I think you’re losing weight,” Nia said. She sat the end of the couch and playfully grabbed at my feet. Nia was beautiful. She had dark brown skin, brown, narrow eyes, and always the latest hairstyles worn by pop singers.

I tried to look out the nearest window. “Is it still snowing?”

“Yeah. I hope Andre doesn’t get the car stuck again,” Nia said. “So, will you and Jeremiah really move with us? We’ll rent a bigger house, and the kids will always have each other to play with. It’ll be fun!”

“Yeah, I’ll live with you. I can’t pay the bills on my own at my house. Jeff hasn’t said anything about custody or child support. I don’t even know if I want support. But if I live with you I won’t need it.”

“Yeah, f**k him anyway.”

As January turned to February, my body slowly recuperated. I kept an eye on the boys as Andre and a couple of his friends moved my small amount of belongings. Jeremiah had more things than I did! I just left Jeff’s stuff there.

I still remember when it first happened. We were back at Nia’s house grabbing the last of their boxes. Nate and Jeremiah chattered in excitement.

“I hope the boys take care of each other,” Andre’s taller friend said telepathically.

“Like brothers,” I responded intuitively in my mind.

“Then say it out loud,” Andre thought. “It only counts if you say it out loud.”

I never said it out loud, though, because I didn’t think I had to. The rest of the move went smoothly, and I pushed that moment out of my mind.

Two weeks after moving, I returned to work on a rainy day in March. I spent most of my days sitting at a computer, doing data entry for a trucking company in Jamestown, Indiana. I’d worked there for seven years. My supervisor, Jerod Hatch, greeted me with a smile.

“My right hand is back!” he said, relief obviously showing on his face. “Are you feeling better?”

“Better than I have in years.”

“You look like you’ve lost a few pounds.”

I nodded. I wasn’t really sure how I was losing weight. But there was no use telling anyone that for some reason my stomach was so riled up that I threw up every morning. I thought it must be some kind of smoker’s cough flare-up. And of course it couldn’t be morning sickness.

Jerod’s desk was behind mine, so I turned to my desk, which was connected to five other desks forming a rectangle and divided by half-cubicles. I had two co-workers in my department, Rylee and Destiny, and they helped refresh my memory on a few things since I’d been gone. It wasn’t long before I was back in the flow.

At home, it also wasn’t long before I had to do the final edits on the novel I’d finished a few months before. I’d been published through a small press that sold their books online. I only made enough money once in a while to pay a utility bill or something, but the prestige of seeing my books available on sss was what I really lived for. So far I had two books on the market, and the one I needed to edit was book three. It only took me a couple days to email my edits to the publisher. Next I made a list so my best customers—my co-workers—could order the latest Rihanna Perry novel.

At our new place, my mom showed up frequently to see how Jeremiah and I were doing. It happened again one afternoon, like a radio station trying to tune in through static, or a cell phone signal cutting in and out. Mom was sitting on the couch, the boys were playing Just Dance, and Nia was bragging about my new book. When Nia left the room, Mom stood and picked my first book from its place of honor on the mantle, beside the other books and magazines I’d been published in.

“I’ve read this one, but the print was almost too small to read,” Mom said. Then, telepathically: “Bitch.”

I shrugged that one off. Surely I’d misunderstood.

Andre came home from work and joined Nia in the kitchen. Mom was now sitting on the floor with the boys, so I did too. The connection kept coming in and out. I c****d my head to hear. It seemed Mom suddenly knew I was listening.

“It must come with age,” she said.

I realized this was the key, the secret to adulthood that every child wonders about, but no one ever talks about.

I looked intently at my mom. “Did you want to have kids so young?”

“Hell no, I wanted to party.”

This was so different from my mom’s outward behavior that I shook it off and concentrated on the boys. Once I got a good signal, all of the telepathy was completely audible, as if the words were spoken right into my ears. But after that moment with Mom the mind-reading stopped again, so I forgot about it.

Jeff and I came to an agreement with Jeremiah. Every morning I’d spend time with Jeremiah, and since I worked second shift, I would drop him off at Jeff’s on my way to work. The schedule was almost like before we broke up, except Jeremiah would be at different houses…and he’d be presented with Daddy’s mistress. We’d officially started the divorce process with a separation underway, and for the most part I was just fine with that.

I got into a routine at the new house. I’d wake up whenever Jeremiah did, throw up, play with the kids or do some chores or one of my exercise DVDs, get Jeremiah ready, take him to Jeff’s place, and go to work. On my way home I picked up Jeremiah, put him to bed, and either lie awake in bed or worked on a new story late into the night.

One morning in late March, Nia brought up something that I hadn’t even thought about.

“You should try dating again,” she said as we cleaned up the kitchen. “Find someone who will treat you right.”

“I was married for five years and dated Jeff two years before that. I don’t know how to date anymore! But maybe someday I’ll give it a try.

“Right now I have a new idea to plan for anyway. The Jamestown Summer Festival lets people pay for booths and sell whatever they want. I’m going to sell my books there this year.”

“What a—Nate put that penny in your bank, not in your mouth—what a great idea!”

“Booth rent is $250, but I think it’s a good investment.”

“Look at you. You’re just glowing with happiness. You’re like a whole new person.”

“I feel better than I have in a long time. I think it’s because I’m not in pain anymore. I feel like I’m coming back to life.”

My new books came in, and I passed them out to those at work who had bought one—around fifty people. One co-worker, Ethan, stood out to me above the rest. He worked in a different department than I did, but I’d always admired him from afar. He was tall, with bright blond hair, ocean blue eyes, and I could tell he worked out. He was also recently divorced. He’d bought all of my books, too. I decided to write him a special message in his book, saying I had seen him overcome struggles and I was proud of him.

“Rihanna, are you done passing out books?” Jerod said.

“Yeah, I’ll get to work.”

Jerod was a couple years younger than me, but had worked for the company longer than I had. He was good-looking, too, with dark brown eyes, brown skin, and shaved black hair. He was happily engaged, and had a new baby girl. He’d always been more of a friend to me than a love interest. Nia’s words about dating again came to mind. But just like in my earlier years, I reminded myself that engaged or married men and women were off-limits.