Breathe

Chapter 8

Ashley

It's been two weeks since I've been admitted. It's the same routine everyday, we wake up at six thirty, we have fifteen minutes to bath while there are female securites around to make sure we don't kill ourselves, breakfast is served at qauter to seven and then we get an hour of television after medication, after that it's activities which includes, yoga, painting, screaming, gardening, crafting and so on until afternoon therapy. It does make me feel better that I'm not the only one who's an outcast, that maybe i finally found where i belong

We do have a weekly group therapy where we talk about our experiences and ways we can recover. I always listen to my fellow 'friends'. Some are surprisingly getting a lot better while some of us are stuck in the same place. I come across the van lady once in a while. We once had a conversation and made a fair introduction, i feel like we both met our monsters before we could hide them away. She told me that Armonia was her new born baby, she was only two months old. She told me that Armonia was sick that week, she tried everything but nothing worked and she didn't have enough money to go to the doctor. She spent restless nights taking care of sick Armonia. After a few days Armonia was able to get sleep, after Armonia slept, Camilla, the van lady put Armonia beside her and slept. She's a heavy sleeper so she couldn't hear anything throughout her sleep. When her husband came back from work ge found the baby's lifeless body lying on the floor. He woke Camilla up and all she saw was blood on Armonia 's body and dried blood on the corner of the nightstand. Everyone blamed her, the case went on for a while until she was diagnosed with PDS. You could see in her eyes that she truly loved her daughter. With the ongoing case, the press and divorce from her husband, she couldn't take it anymore. She was constantly having nightmares and she now uses pills to be able to sleep. She told me that she gets constant flashbacks which causes her tantrums. Her neighbor called the facility, apparently they were taking videos of her while having tantrums and sent it to the facility. She now goes to therapy and by the looks of things, she's getting better. Her face is not as pale as it was on our first occurance, her brown curly hair is fairly brushed back. I finally see her sparkling eyes . She's even more beautiful now that i can see her in the light. I just hope she gets through this. She sometimes attends therapy with us and talks about her improvements and nightmares. All i do is sit and listen to other people's troubles but never engage. My psychiatrist decided i should get a private session and it not help as much.

I spent most of the time talking about general things or we spend the entire hour starring into each other's faces, she constantly writes down on her notebook like that psychiatrist which frustrates me to death.

"what are you exactly writing there?" i break the silence

"nothing, just some things i picked up" she says

"mhmmm" i continue to stare at her while she's writing

"what if i wrote something about you too, something you can't see. Would you like that?" i finally say, I'm both curious and angry

"what would you write about me?" she drops her pen and puts the notebook away

"things i can't tell you" i say

"oh ok, let's have our first activity that maybe you'll be interested in, I'll hand you a page and we both write things we think about each other after thirty minutes we'll exchange the papers" she says in a challenging tone

"if we'll both be brutally honest and tell nothing but the truth" i say. She lifts her hand up and we nake a pinky promise, for the first time in two weeks the matchbox room is filled with ny laugh,we looks like 10 year olds.

We spent the entire thirty minutes writing. She doesn't use her notebook to refer and i scratch out alot, i don't know what to write about her because she barely talks about herself. I don't tell her anything either and yet her page is overflowing with words.

Thirty minutes passes and we put the pens down and stare at each other, we both release a soft laughter. I tell her I want to go first, i can see her rubbing her hands together to show that she's nervous

"ok, i don't really know where or how to start. My first time in this office was kind of irritating, i was awfully irritated that everyone's trying to get me to talk and act like they care, i still hate this little matchbox office but i kept on coming for the past week eitherway. Something made me want to come back, i wanted it as much as you wanted me to talk. To me, our sessions were no longer about me getting better or opening up, it was about something else. In this room full of documents and a bunch of flowers om the window stand, what i saw, wanted and needed was that notebook. It killed my suspense day in and day out. I felt like I needed it to be able to breathe, i need it in order to breathe. What amazes me is that on our daily session we barely talk, i try to keep things as short as i possibly could, it's either we stare into each other's faces until i break the contact or we talk about general things but everyday you wrote something. My obsession with that notebook kept on getting worse with every word you wrote. I wanted to see what you think of me, damn i want to know every little thing that goes into that notebook. Each night i think about what I would write about me if I were you but i can't come across anything except for the fact that I'm a filthy rich kid who tried to kill herself after beating her bully blood out. I even tried to capture your pattern of writing, i noticed that you write alot when I keep quiet, which frustrates me even worse. I tried to forget about the notebook and pretended that I'm not interested, I'd sometimes look around on how you arrange everything orderly, from small to big, even your files. I sometimes stare at you,i noticed how your mouth twitches when you write alot and how you shake your crossed leg for concentration. I tend to do that alot sometimes, which makes me wonder if you also have anxiety, are you always this observant, i wonder if you've noticed my eye bags...... Of course you did, I'm sure you've written about it too. Me and Lucy made a heist plan,we wanted to steal the notebook, we're planning to steal the notebook . I hate this, i hate the suspense, i hate that it's eating me inside... I hate it alot."I take a deep breath and looked across me, she was listening attentively, she didn't move as if she expected me to continue." wow"that's the only words she can push out of her mouth. We both exchange our writings and i decided to keep her writing for the right moment.

It is now five o'clock which is dinner time. I go to the cafeteria and see Lucy across the room. Lucy is that ten year old i saw on my first day here, we get along well and on her happy days, she lets me feed her. She's still going through the same thing Camilla is experiencing but she reacts differently. She has nightmares and sometimes cries for hours until they inject her. She was diagnosed with ACEs (Adverse childhood experiencez) She's deeply scared of other people and always screams whenever the nurses or security guards come her way,which explains what happened on my first day here. I feel as if it is my duty to take care of her. On other days Lucy pushes me away and does not want to talk to anyone but on other days she becomes happy and free. I always feel like that but people never notice. Everyone just thinks I'm always numb and hate tieing my shoe laces.