CHAPTER 39
It is one thing to be in a dilemma and another thing to be stuck. Dilemmas can be worked out with time and effort. There’s usually a release somewhere that can be seen. But when you’re stuck, you’re in one place or situation without foresight. You wait until you can be free.
Here, at Bent Creek, I felt stuck.
After Janine was taken away, I found it hard to go back into our room. Her warm, pink blanket was lying on her bed. It was neatly spread out across the top. Her clothes were folded in each drawer of the dresser that she used. Her hair brush, toothbrush, comb, hair ribbons, deodorant, feminine products - everything - was still sitting in its place, waiting for her, as if she were coming back to use them.
Mr. Anton told me to go into the room to pack up my belongings. I couldn’t stay in that room anymore. As I admired Janine’s things, I saw her clearly in my mind. She was sweet and beautiful. I ran my hand over her pink blanket.
I remembered how she had cried on my lap that night, the same day when Dr. Cuvo hadn’t come back and Rocky had attempted suicide. After Dr. Cuvo had left, Janine had become so upset. It was as though Dr. Cuvo had become a part of her. He had been like life support. Daniel had been the only one who had made her smile after Dr. Cuvo had left. Then Daniel had left, too. Maybe Janine had felt like she didn’t really have anyone. Maybe she’d felt abandoned. She had admitted that she’d felt that she couldn’t please her father and make him happy. Maybe she’d been stuck. She’d been stuck by herself, clinging too much to people who couldn’t carry her.
I quickly packed up my things so that I could leave the room. On my way out the door, I ran into the maintenance lady. She was a short woman with wrinkled skin. She pushed a large cart that had cleaning solutions, and she smelled strongly of cigarettes and ammonia.
“You want to get out of my way so that I can clean up that mess in the bathroom?” she asked me in an irritated tone.
I didn’t respond. I slipped past her and kept walking with my bags. Mr. Anton met me in the hallway. He grabbed my bags for me and kindly smiled.
“Come with me, Kristen,” he said in almost a whisper.
I followed him down the hallway quietly, because everyone on the unit was already in bed. I wasn’t feeling very tired, but was interested to see who I was going to be rooming with. We came to the door of the new room. Mr. Anton knocked once. There was no answer. He knocked again.
“What?” shouted a familiar voice from the other side of the door.
“We are coming in. Are you decent?” Mr. Anton asked. He waited a few seconds for an answer. She didn’t respond, so he opened the door.
The new room was a lot bigger than my old room.
“You can take that bed right over there near the bathroom, Kristen,” Mr. Anton suggested. He sat my bags down on the bed.
I looked around to see whose familiar voice that had been. Mr. Anton knocked on the bathroom door.
He said to the door, “Don’t be too long in there. Kristen’s your new roommate. So be nice.” He turned to me before walking out of the door. “Good night, Kristen.” He left me in the bedroom, alone.
I sighed heavily, relieved that he was gone. I unfolded my blanket and pulled out Janine’s blanket. I had hidden hers inside of mine so that Mr. Anton wouldn’t see it. I put Janine’s blanket beside my pillow, folded up. I probably shouldn’t have taken it, but it reminded me of the Janine I had first met when I had come to Bent Creek. She had helped me meet everyone, and she had been very friendly. She hadn’t made fun of me or made me feel like a loser. She’d loved smiles, and she had just been beautiful to me.
I looked over at my new roommate’s bed. She didn’t have her own blanket. There was the hospital’s thin, white blanket spread across her bed. I shivered, remembering my first night in Bent Creek. Then I thought about the familiar voice that I had heard when Mr. Anton had knocked on the door. I hoped that my new roommate was nice.
The bathroom door opened, and a grinning face appeared before me. Those large, dark brown eyes were menacingly sweet. She still had on her loose, black jeans, a camouflage t-shirt, and that tight ponytail. I imagined this as the full gear that she had slept in. That girl looked like she was always prepared for battle. She didn’t strike me as the type of girl who wore nightgowns and matching, pink pajamas.
“Well, I guess we are roommates now,” she observed aloud.
I kept my eyes on her as she walked past me, and over to her bed. When she lay down and turned her lamp off, I threw myself down on the bed and stuffed my face into Janine’s blanket. I thought to myself, Mena? Mena! Of all people to be stuck with! Mena!
CHAPTER 40
I knew that my mother was getting restless with me being away. When she came to visit me the next day, she brought my schoolwork and my last paycheck from work.
“I received your paycheck in the mail. Here’s your schoolwork. This is your last year, so you need to hurry and finish up. You want to get your diploma before you are nineteen, don’t you?” she said as she stacked the books up on the table where we were sitting. She seemed like her normal self, but more anxious. “Do you need anything else?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Thank you, Mom,” I said.
I looked down at my school books. Physics 2, Calculus, Civics... What had I gotten myself into?
“Kristen,” Mom calmly called out to me.
I had drifted off into a daydream. I looked at her after setting my books aside. They started to give me a headache.
“Do me a favor. Why don’t you go ahead, sign the back of your paycheck, and endorse it to me. I can take it to my bank and get it cashed for you.” She smiled sincerely. It was almost frightening.
I twisted uncomfortably in my chair. “Why can’t I just cash it when I get out of here? I have to mail a portion of it off for my school tuition. I have to pay for this semester at the end of the month, anyway.”
“Well, endorse your check to me, and I will mail it off for you. Besides, we don’t know when you are getting out of here. And I also need the portion that you are supposed to give me so that I can get a few things.”
I looked down at my paycheck with a slight frown. It didn’t feel right, but Mom was right. I showed it to her.
“My tuition is due by next Tuesday. That’s the end of this month. If it is late, they only give me five days before they add a late fee. Can you cash it and mail it off for me tomorrow?”
I looked into her eyes. Her smile went from frightening to warm.
“Yes, Kristen, I will do that,” she assured me.
I believed her. So, I endorsed the check to her, and handed it over. As soon as she took it, she seemed to calm down. But it seemed like something was on her mind.
“Are you okay?” I asked her. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I’m just tired from work. So, you have to take that test tomorrow. Are you nervous?”
This was the most we’d talked without yelling or crying since I had been in Bent Creek.
“Not really,” I said. “It’s going to be pretty simple.”
“Well, I hope you do well on it,” she said kindly. “And if you do have that Borderline Personality Disorder, I want you to know that we will do what we have to do to help you. If that means coming to the doctor every week, then that’s what we will have to do, and if you have to take medicine, then we’ll get that taken care of, too. I just want you to become a normal adult and be able to function right on your own. You will be eighteen soon and graduating from home school. I know that you plan on going to college, and you will be working and on your own. So I want you to be able to take care of everything for yourself.”
The sound of her voice made me sad. She was so sure about what she wanted for me. On the outside, it seemed like she was any other normal parent, just wanting the best for her child. But on the inside, I felt as though she just couldn’t wait to get rid of her problem. Her problem was me, and having to take care of me.
“Do you know anythin
g about Borderline Personality Disorder?” Mom asked.
I shook my head. I remembered the book that Dr. Pelchat had given me, but I hadn’t had a chance to read it.
“Dr. Pelchat gave me a book to read,” I told her. “It’s about BPD.”
“That’s good,” she said.
An awkward silence crept in.
Mom broke the silence. “Can you receive phone calls here? Are you at that level?”
“Yes,” I told her, “but it has to be during visiting hours or scheduled.”
“Good. Lexus has been asking if she could call the hospital to talk to you. I guess she doesn’t really have much time to visit, with everything that’s been going on with her and John.”
I shrugged. I couldn’t think about Lexus or John. I had to be strong and stay positive to get out of Bent Creek.
“I miss her,” I heard slip from between my lips.
Mom nodded at me. “I will give her the hospital’s number. Everyone has been asking about you. Of course, Alison and Nick want to come visit you. They miss you. They have written you other letters, but I must have forgotten those letters at home. Oh, well. I’ll bring the letters to you next time.”
“Will you hug them for me?”
“Of course I will.”
“And please tell everyone who’s been asking “hello” for me.”
“I will do that.”
“And Mom?”
“Yes?”
“I will be out of here soon. I feel different. I feel like I can beat this, and I won’t be doing anything to get myself back in here again.”
Mom smiled warmly. It was a real smile, not a forced one. She believed me. I believed me.
After visiting hours, I immediately wanted to go back to the room to get the book that Dr. Pelchat had given me on BPD. I remembered seeing Mena go to the Girls’ Unit. I knew she’d be in the room, lying on her bed, probably listening to music that screamed she hated the world.
Against my feelings, I went to the room anyway. When I walked in, the room was empty. Mena wasn’t there. Relieved, I went over to my bed and grabbed the book from the bedside table. I looked at the cover. There was a picture of a girl’s reflection from inside of a broken mirror. The shards of the mirror remained in the center. Pieces had broken out from the center and had scattered, causing the girl’s reflection to look distorted. Her face was misshapen and disoriented.
The cover was playing tricks on my eyes. It made me want to open it. So I did, and skipped through the pages. The titles of the chapters looked boring: Borderline Personality Disorder, What is BPD? Who Am I? The Symptoms and the Root, The Borderline. One chapter caught my attention: Self-Injury and Suicide.
I read on. I found a quote from a girl who had been suffering with Borderline Personality Disorder at the time she was interviewed for the book. She’d written:
“I tend to think about suicide quite often. When I think about it, it seems like the only welcoming solution. It’s the only thing I seem to be able to think about, and it makes me feel as if I have something. I find it very hard to not self–mutilate, and I tell myself that this is what I deserve. When I hurt myself, the fear and the pain of everything that is going on in my life disappears.”
It was as though I were reading my own words. Afraid, I threw the book down to the floor. I covered my eyes with my hands and tried not to see the girl’s face on the front cover. I tried not to hear her voice speaking those words. It was easier to cut. It was so easy to cut so deep. Deep enough to get wire-sutured stitches, but not deep enough to die.
Mr. Sharp’s angry eyes breathed cold air through my heart that pumped hate through my veins. His shining eyes begged. He was upset. How long could I deny him? How did I think that I could deny him? He whispered through those silver butterfly wings onto my skin, If you deny me now, then you deny me forever. I will leave you. You will be alone.
I was too scared. When the wings pressed to my skin, I jolted. The pain was not how I remembered it. It used to be so easy. But I couldn’t do it. I put the butterfly pendant back into my pocket, and I didn’t hear Mr. Sharp anymore. Instead, the pain got thicker and heavier. I got up off the bed quickly and I rushed onto the main unit. Geoffrey was sitting at the counselor’s desk. I leaned on the desk and greeted him. He smiled up at me.
“Hey there! Do you need something?”
“May I have a pencil and a sheet of paper, please?” I asked him.
Geoffrey handed over two sheets of paper and a pencil. I took it, thanked him, and went to the sitting area. Most of the other patients were watching television or talking. I sat down at a table that faced away from the television, and I put the sheet down. I held the pencil between my fingers and sat, frozen, with the tip of the pencil touching the paper.
I remembered when it used to be so easy. Every feeling I had was so easy to write down and pour out of me onto the paper. They went from just mere thoughts and feelings to words and creative expression. They traveled from my mind and heart to my fingertips, to the pen, into the ink, and out onto the paper. It was hard, sitting here at Bent Creek with the pencil and the paper. Mr. Sharp kept screaming in my mind. What if he really did leave me? What would I be? Who would I be without him?
I was writing instead of cutting--was I the one abandoning him? Writing used to be so easy. Easier than cutting, anyway. But here in Bent Creek, neither came to me easily. I felt abandoned, in a way. I stared down at the paper. What was I feeling?
CHAPTER 41
The next day, Dr. Pelchat called for me after lunch. When we arrived in one of the Group Therapy rooms, he didn’t waste any time.
There was a booklet on the table, and two No. 2 pencils. When he told me that I had sixty minutes to complete the test, I felt like I was back in public school. Dr. Pelchat looked down at his watch and nodded.
He said, “This is a yes-or-no choice test. You just have to answer as truthfully as possible. If you don’t understand a question or you cannot answer it, then skip over it. Some questions may not seem to apply to you. Everyone who takes this test has different experiences. Just answer as best you can. Responding openly and honestly to all of the questions is the only way that we can accurately assess whether or not there is something we can do to help you. If you are not open and honest, the test measures will indicate that you are being defensive or suppressing information or simply lying to hide things you don’t want us to know. This response attitude then prevents an accurate assessment of your situation, and then we may have to do this all over again. So, remember to be honest. Go ahead and start when I walk out of the room. If you need me, I will be across the hall. Good luck.”
“Good luck” didn’t seem like the right thing for a doctor to say, but I nodded at him anyway.
When I heard the door shut behind me, I opened the test booklet and began. The first question was simple: Do you feel that you worry excessively about too many things? Yes or No.
Second question: Do you have a fear of losing control of yourself? Yes or No.
Do you feel afraid that you will be in a place or a situation from which you feel that you will not be able to escape? Yes or No.
Do you find it difficult to let go of the past? Yes or No.
Do you find yourself constantly having to answer to a higher authority due to your actions? Yes or No.
Suddenly I was taken back to an earlier time, when I had been called to the principal’s office at my last high school.
“This is the second time we have had to call you into our office,” the principal said.
Mrs. Dickinson was always so sincere, and she spoke in such a calm voice. This time she wasn’t so calm. She nervously stared down at the bloody kitchen knife that was sitting on her desk. She had it in a plastic bag, with paper towels wrapped around the blade. Mrs. Dickinson wasn’t talking to me. She was talking to my mother, who was sitting next to me while we sat, face to face, with Mrs. Dickinson.
I sat quietly as she told my mom about what had happened. She only told h
er side of the story, about the girl who had been in the bathroom while I had been slicing myself with the kitchen knife. I’d made a mess on the floor, and the girl had been scared, so she’d run to get the school nurse.
When the school nurse had seen me, I had already put the knife away, but I couldn’t hide the blood I’d spilled, or even the cuts on my arms. The nurse had pulled me into her office so that we could have a “nice talk” while she wrapped up my arms. Did she need to call the principal? Apparently she’d felt the need to after she’d found the bloody knife in my backpack. She hadn’t even asked me why I’d done it. She was so quick to tell on me.
So that’s how I wound up in Mrs. Dickinson’s office, with my arms wrapped up and my mom sitting next to me, ready to snap my neck because she’d had to be pulled out of work to come to my school.
“This is very serious,” Mrs. Dickinson continued. “Last time we caught her with razor blades in her locker. Now she has a real knife! Normally, in situations like this, we would have to call the police, and Kristen would be arrested for bringing a deadly weapon to school. From what I see, Kristen does not need to go to jail. I think she needs to see a psychiatrist.”
Mom sat up straight and jumped in, “No! Excuse me. I don’t think that you are certified to even make a suggestion like that. Is your degree in psychology?”
Mrs. Dickinson said, “No. but-”
“I didn’t think so,” Mom cut her off. “You can be assured that this will be handled. With our family’s break–up and the divorce, things have just been a little rough, and Kristen is dealing with it in her own way. It’s not necessarily the right way, but we are working on it.”
“Have you even noticed Kristen’s change?” Mrs. Dickinson ignored my mom. “The way her grades have been dropping? She pulled out of the Writing Club, which I thought was very important to her. She’s been absent eighteen days this semester. Did you even notice?”
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