That evening before I was transferred to the psych ward, everyone blamed someone for my breakdown. Charlie blamed Tom, Tom blamed Matthew, my parents blamed the hospital. None of them blamed me. They probably didn't think I could handle the blame but it was okay because I blamed myself. I let the voices have control. I gave in to the nagging whisper that I wasn't good enough to be loved and I listened to the angry boy inside me screaming that no one could love me. I couldn't even love myself. I hated myself. I hated what I'd become. I hated the voices. I hated the way my parents smiled at me when they came to visit and I hated the way Charlie started hugging me like he was hugging a precious vase that might shatter if he squeezed too tight.
There wasn't much to say about the other floor. I was alone. I missed Tom. The only bright spot was talking to people who saw the world the way I did because I didn't have to explain what I was feeling because they already knew. It was the type of place where Matthew would have felt at home. Pills and people with problems were everywhere. I saw one guy with a `nobody's home' expression on his face and my first thought was that he needed help but then I remembered we were both in the same place and I wondered what that said about me.
The doctors thought I needed to be medicated. Dr. Conley agreed. I wanted to cry when the nurse brought me my first little tiny plastic cup of pills. I tried to tell her the pills weren't for me but she didn't want to hear it. The pills felt like bricks when I placed them on my tongue and I feared I might choke on them as they slid down my throat. I talked to Dr. Conley and I told him I didn't like being medicated.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because I'm not that crazy, am I?"
"Being medicated doesn't mean you're crazy. Lots of people need medications to regulate their emotions. Try to remember that medicine is designed to help you and if taken properly, it can make you feel better. You do want to feel better, don't you?"
"Yes."
"So take your medications and we'll see how it goes. If you're not feeling better in a few days or if things worsen we'll try some other prescriptions until we find the combination that's best for you."
"I don't need pills to make me feel better. There are other things that would work."
"Like what?"
"Find Tom and make him come see me. He'll make me feel better. He always does."
"Tom hasn't come to see you?"
"No. I think what happened was too much for him, but if someone would just tell him I need him, I know he'll come."
"How long has it been since you've seen or spoken to Tom?"
"Three days."
"And how does that make you feel?"
"Lost." I started fidgeting because the pills had calmed the voices, but they hadn't soothed my heart. The want to see Tom or hear his voice over the phone had become a need. I thought about Tom all day and I flipped through memories of him like I was flipping through stations on a television. I realized I was bordering on becoming obsessed with him but I didn't care. I needed him more than I needed any stupid pills. "He makes me want to be better," I said.
"So you don't want to be better for yourself? You want to be better for him."
"I guess."
"You know what I'm going to say, don't you?"
I shook my head. "I need to want it for myself."
"Why?"
"Because only I can make myself better."
"Good."
"But I don't want to be anything without Tom," I mumbled, "not even better."
Dr. Conley wrote something down then he asked, "Can you see yourself existing without Tom?"
I didn't have to think about it. Tom was my reason for living. "No." I knew it was the wrong answer, but it was the honest one. I didn't want to live without Tom and I couldn't imagine doing it. If he died I wanted to die with him. That was how much I loved and needed him. I was afraid I couldn't function without knowing he was out there somewhere.
Dr. Conley and I spent most of our time talking about my feelings for Tom and only a little time talking about my family and the medication. To me, Tom was all that mattered but Dr. Conley was trying to get me to see that I mattered, too.
Going home was a big adjustment because everything was different. There was a fate worse than dying and I naively stumbled upon that fate. I agonized for years because my family didn't see me. I wanted them to notice me and the bathroom incident made them do just that. Their eyes followed me every time I walked by and they looked at me like I was one wrong comment or movement away from losing it. They stopped talking when I entered a room and they smiled awkwardly at me as they fumbled for words to form sentences void of any possible insinuation that I was something less than perfect. They were seeing me clearly as the pathetic depressed son I was and I saw the change in their eyes. I went from being the son they barely knew existed to being the son they wished they never had. They weren't prepared to handle my problems. I heard my mother tell my father that the first night I came home. She was worried I would kill myself. I wanted to die but I wasn't brave enough to kill myself and I wouldn't do that to Tom. If she had listened to anything I said she would have known I wasn't suicidal.
I wished the way they treated me was the only thing that changed, unfortunately it wasn't. My whole life changed. All of my secrets had been exposed. They knew about the cutting and the burning and I was stripped of all my coping mechanisms and left to deal with what I was feeling.
Charlie decided he would protect me from myself. He moved in my room so he could keep an eye on me and make sure I didn't do anything. I had a hard time sharing my room with him. He was smothering me and I couldn't take it. Every time I looked up he was there and he wasn't just there, he was watching me and commenting on my actions. He took away my privacy. I would go to the bathroom and he would go with me. He was more vigilant than the nurses at the institution.
Charlie was making me crazier than I already was and he wouldn't let me see or talk to Tom. He might as well have pulled my heart from my chest and tossed it in a blender because that's what it felt like to be away from Tom. Charlie didn't care that he was killing me. He just wanted to keep me away from the person he blamed but Tom wasn't to blame. Charlie was trying to run my life for me and in the process he was ruining it by destroying the one ray of sunshine I had come to depend on.
On the second day I was home I started suffering from severe Tom withdrawal. It was bad enough not seeing Tom while I was away but I couldn't handle not seeing Tom while I was home. I needed him. Charlie was sitting on the mattress he had dragged in to my room. He was reading one of his psychology textbooks.
"Charlie where's my phone?"
"You can't have it," he said without looking up.
"I need to talk to Tom."
"No you don't."
He wasn't listening to me. I had to make him listen so I screamed as loud as I could. He closed his book and looked at me. My father came busting through the door in a state of panic, "What's going on in here?" he asked.
"Sam wants to talk to Tom but I won't let him."
"Well let him talk to the boy if he's going to scream like that."
"Sam doesn't need to talk to him. Tom isn't in a good place right now."
Nobody had told me anything about Tom. "What do you mean he's not in a good place? Where is he?" My father closed the door and retreated downstairs. Charlie was in charge of dealing with me.
"You don't need to worry about that," Charlie said.
"Don't tell me what I don't need to worry about. I love Tom. I'm allowed to worry about him!"
"You don't need to worry about him. The only person you need to worry about is yourself."
"I don't have to worry about myself. You do that for me!"
"Someone has to!"
"That someone doesn't have to be you! Tom did a good job of worrying about me!"
"You were slowly killing yourself during Tom's watch. I wouldn't say he did a good job. Besides, Tom needs to worry about himself right now. He can't help you anymore."
"Why not?"
"He's on house arrest."
"What did he do?"
"He tried to break in to see you."
I took a moment to process what Charlie said. Tom went to jail because he wanted to see me. "Couldn't he just come with you guys?" Charlie didn't respond. "You guys wouldn't let him come see me, would you?"
"We did what was best."
"For who? Not for Tom or me."
"Why does it matter? What would he have done?"
"It matters becomes it means everything! I thought he was upset with me, but it wasn't him staying away, it was you keeping him away." I grabbed my hair without thinking and pulled hard. "You don't get it! It's not about what he would have done. It's about him. I needed him. I needed to see him."
"You both have a problem! You can't function for a week without each other and that's not normal."
"I've never been normal."
"Yes you have."
"When?"
"We're not going through this again." He picked up his textbook and started reading.
I stretched out on the bed and exclaimed, "I can't live like this."
"Like what?"
"Without Tom."
Charlie sighed. "You can live without him."
"No I can't."
"You'll see him at school tomorrow. You can make it till then."
I needed to see Tom so I could tell him how sorry I was about what I'd done and he could kiss me and forgive me. I had to let him know that I knew what rock bottom felt like. Seeing my bloody reflection in the mirror was the like seeing the real me for the first time. I saw myself in that mirror and thought, What the hell am I doing?' and I wanted to scream at myself and shake myself silly but the shock of how I really looked overwhelmed me and all I could do was focus on how I had messed up and how I'd give anything to not be screwed up anymore and my only hope was that I would get the chance to redeem myself. My rock bottom happened when the bathroom door opened and Charlie was there and then he came in and Matt and Tom came rushing in behind him. I saw the fear in Tom's eyes and all I could think was My God you bastard, look what you've done to him.' I finally did it. I changed the way Tom looked at me.
Seeing Tom like that caused the worse kind of pain I had ever felt. The pain burned me all over, searing every part of me with the memory of what I had done to him and consuming me with an intense rush of regret that chased away the voices in my head. I looked at Tom and all I could say was, "I'm sorry." I must have said it a hundred times while people tended to my cuts. I wanted Tom to hear me but he didn't react and then I didn't see him anymore.
Dinner with my family was a nightmare. My mother wouldn't give me a knife so Charlie took his knife and cut up my meat. My mother gave me a plastic fork and I wanted to inform her that I only used a knife to cut myself so a real fork would be safe, but I didn't want to make her feel bad about trying to do something for me. They watched me eat and Charlie forced me to eat a little more when I wanted to stop.
"Eat two more bites or you can't leave the table," he said.
"But I'm full."
My mother joined the conversation, "Come on Honey, try to eat it."
She sounded nervous talking to me. I ate two more bites because I didn't want her to be uncomfortable. I swallowed the food then asked to be excused from the table. Charlie denied me permission.
"You're not my father!" I rolled my eyes before I gave him my best death glare.
"When I finish, we can go. I'm almost done."
I would have looked to my parents but they deferred to Charlie as far as I was concerned. A few psychology courses did not make Charlie an expert but you couldn't tell them that. Charlie wouldn't let me leave the table without him because he was afraid I might run to the bathroom and free my dinner from my stomach.
We went up to my room after dinner and Charlie studied while I wrote a letter to Tom. I had a lot that I wanted to say to him. I didn't want to say it at school but Charlie was leaving me no choice. I was writing my second paragraph when I began to wonder if Tom would be at school.
"Charlie."
"Yes."
"Is Tom going to be at school tomorrow?"
"How would I know?"
"You knew he was arrested."
Charlie started laughing. "What? Arrested?"
"You said he was on house arrest."
"I may have exaggerated a little."
"He wasn't arrested?"
"The security guards escorted him to his car and sent him home. His mother has him on house arrest, not the police."
"So he's grounded?"
"Yes."
"Why did you lie?"
"I didn't lie and don't get any ideas about seeing him. You can see him tomorrow."
"I want to see him tonight. There's still time."
"Sam, you're not allowed to go see him."
I stood. "You can't stop me."
He stood. "Sam look at you then look at me. How are you going to get out?" I made a run for my window and he grabbed me and threw me on the bed. "Are you crazy? You could kill yourself if you go out that way."
"I wasn't going to jump."
"What the hell were you going to do then?"
"This!" I jumped off the bed and pulled the door open and ran out. I was at the bottom of the stairs before Charlie wrapped me up from behind. I started kicking and screaming and yelling bloody murder. "Let me go!" My parents and Kristy came running to see what was wrong.
"Maybe he's having a reaction to the pills," Kristy said.
"It has nothing to do with the pills," Charlie told her.
"Aren't they supposed to calm him down?" my father asked.
"They are but this is about Tom. He wants to see Tom."
My father stood in front of me, "Calm down. You'll see Tom tomorrow."
"Let me go!" I screeched.
My father put his hand over my mouth. "Shut up!"
It scared me. I stopped screaming and stood there. He'd never had much to say to me but he'd never screamed at me like that before. I'd rather be invisible than have him hate me. I looked down at the floor and let Charlie turn me around and slowly walk me back upstairs.
I sat on my bed and tried to sift through the emotions I was feeling. The medicine didn't seem to be helping. I grabbed one strand of my hair and pulled it out. It felt good so I grabbed another strand and pulled it out. Then another and another and another, then my hand was slapped away.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"Well stop it then."
"Fine."
Charlie continued to shadow me all night. I woke up the next morning excited about going to school and getting away from him. We were in the bathroom and I was brushing my teeth when I told him, "I bet you wish you could follow me at school."
"It's time for me to get back to my classes so it's okay." He grabbed his toothbrush. "Don't worry, I'll be there to pick you up this afternoon." I sneered at him in the mirror. He smiled at me. We went to my room and I was about to put on my make-up when he stopped me. "You're not wearing that shit today." I reached for my black jeans and a black t-shirt and he grabbed the shirt out of my hands and handed me another one. "Put this on," he ordered. I did as he told me but I didn't like it. He was too controlling. I wanted to think for myself and that included putting on my makeup and my dog collar and my black clothes.
Charlie drove me to school and told me he would be waiting for me. I said okay and walked in the building. Tom was waiting at my locker. He pulled me in to a tight hug. "I missed you," he whispered before he kissed me on my cheek in the middle of the hallway.
"Me, too. I missed you so much. I'm sorry they wouldn't let you see me." I clung to him as if letting go would have killed me. "How'd you know I was coming back today?"
"Your mother told my mother."
"Oh." I kept holding him.
"If you squeeze me any harder, my back is going to break."
I stepped back, "Sorry." I kissed him on his lips and he looked surprised. My fear of someone knowing I was gay was gone. I gave it up because I needed to be close to Tom and I didn't care who saw us.
Tom leaned in to kiss me again, "Don't be sorry."
"Look at the faggots!" someone yelled.
Tom looked to the side. "Go fuck yourself Billy!"
"You weren't saying that yesterday!"
"Billy leave them alone!" The voice sounded like James but I didn't turn to see.
Tom gazed in to my eyes and I finally got a good look at his eyes. He was still looking at me differently. His eyes moved to my forehead and the maze of stitched up cuts. He kissed my forehead. "Did that hurt?"
"No."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing." His eyes made me want to cry.
The bell rang and Tom said he would see me at lunch. I walked to my first class thinking about the advice Dr. Conley gave me. I had seen him almost every day and he said I was making progress. I shook my head and agreed with him even though I knew it wasn't true. I wasn't making progress with Tom or my family. Dr. Conley said the people in my life needed time to adjust and I had to be patient because I might have moved on but they relived the trauma of what I did every time they saw me. I pointed out that I hadn't seen Tom and he said that might be the reason. He was wrong about that. Tom didn't stay away by choice. He was forced to stay away.
Lunch was a painful experience. Tom didn't attempt to comment on my eating or give me extra food, then there was the way he looked at me. I hated the way Tom looked at me. His eyes were filled with such worry and sometimes sadness and I knew every second he was with me, he was thinking about me not being there. He tried to act like the same Tom from before but seeing me bloody had changed him. A few times I caught him staring at me with pure sadness in his eyes and I wanted to die for doing that to him. I put that sadness there.
I made a big show of eating for him but he talked about missing me and stole glances at my tray. "I'm sorry I didn't come see you," he said. "I tried, but they wouldn't let me."
"I hear you tried to break in."
His lips smiled but his eyes didn't. "It was killing me not to see you. I was so worried about you. I begged your family to take me with them, but they wouldn't. Charlie said that I wanted you to be sick because I loved having you need me. I tried to tell him it wasn't like that then he got angry with me and I hit him."
"You hit him?"
"Right in the middle of the lobby."
"What lobby?"
"At the place where you were." His eyes stared at his food. "I followed them up there and I tried to go in with them, but Charlie stopped me then security came and threw me out. Your mother called my mother and my mother was pissed when I got home. She told me I had to respect your family's right to privacy. What kind of shit was that?"
"It wasn't my family. It was Charlie."
"I know he's trying to look out for you, but he has to know that I love you. I don't want you to be sick. I want you to be better. I want you to be happy and healthy and in love with me."
"I am in love with you."
"I know, but we still have to work on the other parts."
I felt guilty for what I had done. "I'm sorry if I hurt you."
"Stop apologizing. I'm okay. You didn't hurt me. I wasn't expecting to see you, you know, like that, but I knew you weren't trying to kill yourself. Maybe if you hadn't been in the same room with Matt you wouldn't have done it."
"Don't do that."
"What?"
"Blame Matt. It wasn't his fault. Too much happened that day and I couldn't deal with it. Matt didn't do anything to me and being around him didn't make me do what I did."
Tom cleared his throat. "Let's not talk about him."
I went to my next class and before I could sit down, a strange girl asked, "Did you really try to kill yourself?"
"No."
"What happened to your head?"
"I fell."
"I heard"
"I don't care what you heard! Shut up and turn around!"
My anger shocked both her and me. I wanted to have silence so I could think about Tom and try to sort out what Tom might have been thinking.
I left class and walked down the hallway towards my locker. I saw Matt walking towards me. He still looked at me the same way and I was thankful for that.
"What are you doing here?" I asked. He smiled at me and it was the best smile I had seen all day. Even his eyes were genuinely happy to see me.
"I'm stalking you."
"Besides that."
"I go here now. I just started today. So how are you?"
"I'm okay. Today is my first day back."
"Your face is healing."
"Thanks."
"You want to meet up after school?"
"He can't," Tom said as he grabbed my arm and led me away.
Copyright Lustyville 2008 Please send comments to lustyville@yahoo.com and check out more of this story and my other stories at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lustyville and my new website at www.lustyville.com