I didn"t have anything to say. I felt completely lost at that moment. I looked down at my wrists. If Rocky really was dead, why had he died later on? Could they not have saved him? Had he tried to kill himself again after getting better?
I didn"t really understand what had happened. Dr. Pelchat had every reason to be upset. He probably didn"t want us to know about it, because he thought that we"d get ideas from Rocky"s behavior. Maybe he thought we"d try to get away with it ourselves while we were in Bent Creek, or even when we got out. We were supposed to be protected. He"d told us that suicide was not an option.
Dr. Pelchat hadn"t protected Rocky. Rocky hadn"t wanted to be protected. Maybe he hadn"t thought that he could be protected from what had been going on inside of himself. We didn"t feel protected. I didn"t feel like I could be protected. Not from everything that had happened and what was going to happen. Maybe that"s how Rocky had felt, I thought to myself. Most of us would end up envying Rocky.
As the day went on, everything just seemed too normal. I hadn"t seen Dr. Pelchat yet for my session. I hadn"t seen him since the morning when he had come through the doors to our ward. Knowing what we knew made things seem a little too normal. Tai said that she could tell in our group meetings that the counselors were worried, and were trying to be calm.
Finally, after lunch, Dr. Bent called us into Anger Management. The only people I recognized in my group were Tai and Mena. There were only nine of us. I sat on the end seat, far away from Mena. Dr. Bent let everyone introduce themselves with just first names. We didn"t go through the regular routine of stating our name, age, and reason for being at Bent Creek. Mena still didn"t seem like herself. She was quiet and distant, and she didn"t have any expression on her face.
When it was her turn to speak, she wearily told everyone her name, and it pa.s.sed on. I was the last one to speak.
Dr. Bent leaned forward in her seat. She began to explain what AngerManagement was about, and what we were going to discuss. Mena unexpectedly raised her hand, as if she had something to say. Dr. Bent looked shocked.
She said, "Yes, Mena? Do you have a question?"
Mena stared down at her fingernails.
"Yes?" Dr. Bent pressed.
Mena raised her eyes with her head still low, giving her an intimidating look. She looked angry. She took a deep breath and looked back down at her fingernails. They looked clean, but she picked at them as if they were dirty. Finally, she opened her mouth to speak.
"Is it true?" Mena asked.
Dr. Bent shook her head. "I"m sorry. Is what true?"
"You know what I"m talking about," Mena growled.
Now she was looking straight into Dr. Bent"s eyes. Her jaws were tight and her fists were clenched.
"You"ll have to tell me what it is you are talking about," Dr. Bent told her.
"Fine," Mena said. "You want to do it this way?" She was getting upset, but she seemed to be trying to stay calm.
"Mena, please calm down," said Dr. Bent. "Listen to me. Maybe you should wait to talk to your doctor if it"s something that is making you this upset."
"This is Anger Management, isn"t it?" Mena yelled. I could sense that she was going to lose her temper. "Is Rocky dead?"
Dr. Bent closed her eyes. She nodded her head. "I"m not going to lie to you. He did suffer with some complications, and he pa.s.sed away yesterday morning."
Everyone in the room gasped except Tai, Mena, Dr. Bent, and me. We were the only ones in the room who had actually known who Rocky was. Dr. Bent kept on speaking. She went on about sadness, grief, anger. She told us that we needed to learn how to cope with death because it was a part of life. Her words did not seem to be getting through, because Rocky was young like us. He wasn"t supposed to be dead. Not yet.
As Dr. Bent went on, I watched Mena"s face turn red. She bit down on her bottom lip and she shuffled her body around. She looked like she was holding something inside and was trying her best to keep it inside of her. It seemed almost like it was going to burst out of her.
"Today," Dr. Bent said, "we will talk about how to cope with suicide. When someone you know, like a close friend, commits suicide, we need to know how to cope with it."
"How?" Mena screamed. "How do you people sit here and say these stupid things? You don"t know us! You don"t even care about us! You think that you know everything! He had a life! A life! And he saw beyond what any of you blind-folded idiots could ever see! It was the truth, and you made him feel like he was crazy! That"s why he did it! That"s why he got away. He"s freer than all of you! And you know it! Tell the truth! I hate you! I hate all of you!"
At that point, it was obvious that Dr. Bent had enough of Mena. She pointed towards the door and said, "Mena, get out."
"Fine!" Mena said as she stormed towards the door. When she exited, she slammed the door behind her.
Dr. Bent called Geoffrey on the telephone. She told him what had happened and asked him to meet Mena on the unit and to deal with her. I had a feeling it meant that Mena was going to the BCR.
"Are you okay?" Tai asked Dr. Bent.
Dr. Bent nodded. "Yes. Thank you," she said to Tai.
Dr. Bent looked angry, but she remained calm. She shook herself off calmly and said, "We have something effective to talk about. We are going to talk about this."
We stayed silent. I was shocked. By the looks of everyone else, it seemed as though they didn"t expect her to want to talk about it, either.
"We have to finish talking about this and how we deal with situations like this," she said as tears began to fall from her eyes. Her voice remained calm and vigorous. "I hope that you know, without a doubt, that we are here to help you. We will always do our best as long as you are in our care. You have someone to talk to here, and you have people who really do care about you. We will do our best to guide you and show you the right way to cope and contend with life. Everything you go through and everything that you feel affects your life. This is your life! You only have one. No matter what you suffer with, every day that you wake up, and every minute that you are breathing air, is another chance for you to make the choice to do what is right to help yourself. We can only do so much. We can only take you by the hand and show you, but you have to let go and move on your own towards making the right choices."
She wiped her tears away and continued, "If you want help, we are here, and you are going to get it. You will receive the help that you came here for. The truth is that some people, no matter how hard you try, just can"t be helped. With some people, no matter how far along in life they are, there"s just nothing that can be done."
My thoughts went from hopeful to hopeless. What did she mean by that? I thought that she was going to say that we all could be helped, and that there was hope for all of us, but she didn"t. Her words were precise. That scared me.
After Dr. Bent"s coping skills group, I went back to the main unit feeling worse than I had when I"d woken up that morning. My mind stayed on the book. I wanted to go back to the room to get the book and continue to read more about Borderline Personality Disorder, but I was too scared to go back there alone. Mr. Sharp rang in my ears. He begged for my veins. Why?
Rocky"s death was affecting me more that I knew. Everyone"s fascination with how he"d done it. All of the details. The visions of his head in that box. His tongue extended from his mouth. Daniel"s cries.
Before the tears could even begin to fall, I went to the counselor"s desk where Geoffrey was sitting, keeping an eye on the unit. I asked for a pen and a sheet of paper. Without hesitation, Geoffrey handed me one sheet and a pencil, but demanded that I return the pencil when I was finished with it.
"Yes," I said. "So that I won"t try to stick it in my eye. Right?" I sarcastically replied.
"Hey now, Kristen!" He seemed shocked.
The mood was not good in this place. I sat at a table where I was sure Geoffrey could see me. When I sat down, I waved at him because he was still staring. He rolled his eyes and looked away from me.
When Mr. Sharp had called out to me while I had been in public school, it had usually been easy to slip into the girls" bathroom and get those feelings out. The blood would soak in and decorate the soft, white toilet paper. I used to like to watch the quilted pattern"s white, floral motif get painted red with the rouge lineage that spilled from my veins.
When I had been in a cla.s.s like AP Chemistry or College Literature, it had been too difficult to escape. These cla.s.ses had been taught by authority figures that were supposed to make us feel privileged and special, just because we could read a chapter or two ahead of the required a.s.signment quicker than others in our cla.s.s. They had decided that we were gifted, and put us there with teachers that had been hard a.s.ses and quick to knock us down to make us feel not so special and stupid because of their own insecurities. When I couldn"t escape, I had pulled out a random sheet of paper and had used my pencil, not to jam my own eye out with, but instead I"d bleed my thoughts onto the paper. I had decorated the white, less soft, college ruled, blue lined, motif paper with speckles of grey with words.
This time it was Geoffrey watching, instead of an uptight teacher.
I began: What is it when you try?
Get to the end.
Succeed and die.
What is it when you fail?
Was it all just a fake?
A real way out?
An easy bail?
Carrying a heavy load upon my chest, Without a helpful trailer.
Feeling sorry for myself?
A disastrous and complete...
I swear that it was the worst thing I had ever written. However, it had come from somewhere that needed to kick it out. Rocky"s face appeared in my mind. I remembered when Cadence had been obsessed with pestering him when he had first come to Bent Creek. I remembered when I had first spoken to him. The very first thing I had said directly to him was, "How did you do it?" or something like that. I had asked him how he"d tried to kill himself. Why had I asked him that, the exact day I had met him? What had I been thinking? He hadn"t answered me.
I read the last four lines of the poem again: Carrying a heavy load upon my chest, Without a helpful trailer.
Feeling sorry for myself?
A disastrous and complete...
Disgusted, I did not want to continue. Nevertheless, I pressed the pencil to the paper again to decorate the rest. Bleed in the gray.
...failure.
I read the poem silently to myself. I read it again. Then I read it once more. That made three times I read that horrible poem before I broke the pencil in half and threw it across the room. Both parts of the pencil hit the metal legs of the table across the way, and it made a loud clang. This made Geoffrey look up at me.
"Kristen!" he exclaimed.
I aggressively pushed the paper away from myself, and it slid off of the table. Geoffrey shook his head and looked away from me. He didn"t even ask me what was wrong. He didn"t tell me to pick up the broken pencil pieces. He just looked away. For some reason, this made me angrier. I got up from the table and stormed off to my room. I wished the doors had locks on them. I"d keep everyone out, just like at home. I could go in my room and just lock the door. Keep it shut and stay in there for hours. Mom didn"t care. I was out of her way. I sat on the edge of my bed and saw the BPD book sitting on the edge of the occasional table. I picked it up without hesitation.
"Tell me! Tell me what"s wrong with me! Tell me now!" I screamed at the book.
Of course it didn"t answer me back verbally. But Mr. Sharp was sure there. He was shining through those sharp b.u.t.terfly wings that rested between the pages. I forgot I had left him in there. I shook the book to see what page he would fall out. He fell out of page 136 and landed on my lap. I kept the book open and looked at the page. Oh yes, I thought as I began to read page 136. It was on the chapter of symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder: The constant feeling and fear of abandonment and being alone.
Frequent and sometimes extreme mood swings.
A changing and unsure sense of ident.i.ty.
Over-sensitivity to criticism and real or imagined rejection.
The constant feelings of worthlessness that quickly alters to belief that one is deserving of better treatment and recognition than what is given.
Do you feel that everyone is ignoring you? Do you feel that no one cares? Do you feel that you are the one who goes out of your way for everyone else, but that no one is there for you? Is that what you feel you deserve? And at times do you feel that you are being wronged?
"This doesn"t make sense," I said to the book. "What are you talking about?"
The need for attention.
The fear of being alone.
Pushing family and friends away and avoiding new contact in fear of being abandoned.
"What? I want her attention? But then I push her away? I called her!"
Impulsive behavior.
Depression.
Constant mood changes.
Violent outbursts.
Self injury and other self-destructive behavior such as the abuse of alcohol and drugs.
Suicidal hints and behavior.
Suicidal attempts that may be just to call for attention. Which sometimes leads to accidental suicide without the intention of succeeding.
I had nothing to say back to the book.
When it was time to meet with Dr. Pelchat, I didn"t speak about Rocky. Dr. Pelchat didn"t seem to be all the way there with me. I knew that it was because of Rocky"s death. I wanted to ask him, just to make sure it was true. Dr. Bent wouldn"t have said it was true if it actually wasn"t. I didn"t want to upset Dr. Pelchat anymore.
I told him that I had started to read the book on BPD. He was glad to hear that. He suggested that I read more. There was no talk about medication because he didn"t have a diagnosis for me yet. He a.s.sured me that the test results would be back in a few days. I didn"t know whether to be glad about that, because I didn"t want to worry for a while, or if I should be anxious and upset because I"d be finding out very soon if I did have Borderline Personality Disorder. From what I had read, it seemed like I understood too well some of the words written down in that book.
"How are you feeling today, Kristen?" he asked.
I looked around the room and shook my head. "I don"t know. It"s been a weird day. How are you?"
"Is how I"m doing really what concerns you right now?"
"I"m curious."
"You know, Kristen, I"m curious about something too."
My heart began to beat fast. I waited to hear what he had to say.
"Did you hear about Rocky"s death?"
"Yes, I did," I responded.
I could feel him staring at me. I still was not looking at him. Instead, I let my eyes roam around the room.
"How did it make you feel to hear that one of your peers actually succeeded in taking his life?"
I couldn"t believe he was asking me this. He"d caught me off guard. I didn"t say anything in response.
"Is it hard for you to talk about?"
"How did it make you feel, Dr. Pelchat? He was one of your patients."
"My concern right now is you, Kristen."
"Why is Rocky"s suicide your concern for me? That doesn"t make any sense."
"It makes perfect sense, Kristen."