Medicine Man

“I have been, yes.”

His frown gets bigger. “Did something happen? You want me to tell the docs?”

“No.”

My non-answer answers are messing with his patience; I can see that. “Willow, I’m gonna have to ask you –”

“If I want to harm myself? If it’s a bad day?”

I don’t know why I said that but I did, and it seemed to have surprised him and apparently, me too.

“Well, is it?”

“Yeah. It’s a bad day and I do want to harm myself a little,” I admit truthfully. “But I’m not gonna do anything about it. Not today.”

Days spent on the Inside = 28

Days left to spend on the Inside = 14

Days since The Confession Day = 2

He never touched me.

He could have. But he never did.

The day I hugged him, he didn’t hug me back. He didn’t even move a muscle except to wipe my lone tear off. Even then, he only used his thumb.

When he grabbed my elbow in his office, calling me a liar, it was only to drive his point home. It was in anger, not in desire.

Simon Blackwood never touched me more than necessary. More than what was required.

Touch.

All the other senses can satisfy only so much. You want to touch. With your hands, your mouth, your tongue. It’s like an itch, very similar to my symptoms. You constantly think about him. You constantly think about touching him, his skin, his hands, his hair, the stubble on his jaw, his strong chest, the grooves of his stomach, his tree-trunk thighs.

You touch yourself in frustration, in desperation, in lust because you can’t touch him.

Touch is everything. Touch is the litmus test of attraction.

Simon never touched me. Not that there was any other indication that he liked me back but I just like to torture myself with re-thinking, re-analyzing. Re-everything.

“Willow?”

Someone calls my name and I look up. I’ve been toying with my nails. I trimmed them this morning under the watchful eyes of a nurse. Sharp objects. You can’t have them. Not on the Inside.

I’m in the reflections group right now. It happens at the end of the day where we discuss if we stuck to our goals – the ones we set for ourselves at the beginning of each day. It’s basically to keep track of the things we’re doing every day to be able to lead a functioning and stable life when we leave here to go Outside.

“Would you like to contribute? What was the goal that you’d set for today?” Ellen, the therapist who conducts these meetings, asks.

We’re in a big circle, about twenty of us, and Ellen is the focal point. I want to go with something simple, straightforward like, I tried a new yoga pose today – only because Renn’s been on my back to do some exercise – or I read a few chapters of this self-help book. I lost my Harry Potter on The Confession Day and I have no plans to go retrieve it. Or I can say something about my art therapy project that I tried to finish.

Clearing my throat, I sit up. “I, uh, my goal was to…” I clear my throat again. “To live. When I woke up this morning, I decided to live. And not give in.”

I’m looking at Ellen but I’m not really looking at her. My eyes are unfocused. I always thought that if I said these words out loud, something would happen. Something drastic. Horrible. Something life-altering. I thought people would look at me like I’m a ticking timebomb. Like I’m thinking of killing myself right this second. Like I’m not fighting with every breath that passes my lips.

But nothing happens at all.

Nothing outward, at least. Whatever’s happening is happening inside of me.

“That’s basically my goal every day,” I continue. “I mean, mostly. Sometimes I’m okay. I think of coffee or my classes, you know, when I was Outside. Or the new Harry Potter t-shirt I wanna buy. There’s this online store that I absolutely love. They have great stuff.”

I lick my lips and collect my wayward thoughts. “But some days it’s hard to think about anything else other than… dying. Disappearing. Dissolving. For as long as I can remember, I was always that weird kid who people talked about. Nobody wanted to be friends with me. It hurt, and I retaliated in my own ways, but it was okay. My family’s great. They all love me. Very much. Especially my mom. She brought me up by herself. And because I’m the baby of my family, they worry a lot. Maybe too much. And I always wanted to not make them worry.”

The Funeral Incident was the first time I ever really realized that something was wrong with me. Something terribly, horribly wrong. Before that death was an abstract concept, but after the funeral, death became so real. Like, a dream. A vision.