Thrown

Chapter 1
Thermostat:

I woke up to the sound of my mother arguing with some unknown person. Her voice was shrill and antagonizing. “This is absolutely ridiculous! I refuse to pay a cent!” I envisioned her hands on hips yelling at some innocent man. “They have been checking my thermostat for free for the past…my whole life…no I’m not paying a cent!” I pull the covers over my head to try to drown out the noise. It is 10:48 a.m. My body aches, from to much sleeping, my head feels empty, will this feeling ever go away? I switch positions again, more muffled arguing from the living room. I lay on my back, my chest feels to heavy, and there’s this ache in my thoughts, just before my subconscious takes over.
I wake up an hour later to my mother on the phone. “Jill? Yeah can you believe they tried to charge me! I swear this is ridiculous, they’ve been checking my thermostat for free for the past…” I suppose I should get up, it’d be to painful to stay in bed. With these numbing thoughts that I’m sure will eventually paralyze. This isn’t apathy, this isn’t healing. This is…the scar tissue, permanent? Most likely, but I can only hope with years (oh..years can I last that long?) that it’ll fade. It’s time to get up
I sit at the kitchen table, my mother is across the phone still yacking her head off. I always feel odd eating breakfast in the afternoon, but waking up and eating lunch would feel wrong. Brunch? Too formal. All I can hear is the sound of my masticating. Cereal for breakfast. My mother continues her conversation as I tried to drown the sound out with my chewing… “I swear the world today is so upside down, so crooked and backwards….” Chew Chew Chew Chew. “Alright Jill talk to you later! Yep…uh huh….Buh Bye”

Silence. My mother stares at me, I can’t tell if the lines on her face are worried or annoyed, I don’t look up. “Beth you have an appointment with Lilly today at 2 right?”
Lilly? Two? I think still not looking up. “It’s Saturday” she says with a slightly worried slightly annoyed tone. “Yeah” I say pretending I knew all along. “Alright be ready.”
2 o’clock. It’s 12 now. Two hours for sleep. I crawl back into bed with a slightly heavier stomach. I tried to hide under my covers, but I can feel it, no matter where I go, as if it’s watching me. As if she’s watching me. I shudder at the pronoun and my cereal threatens to make it’s way out of it’s warm bed. I wait desperately for sleep to take over, feeling just as disasterous if not worse as when I walked out of it a half hour ago. She She She She. The words jab into my head. Forcibly painfully. I clutch my skull. Till I’m not conscious any more.

Chapter 2:
Lily

I remember it so vividly and I can’t help but feel like my brain does it just to spite me. What did I do wrong? Why do the good memories fade and whether while the bad ones become more deeply etched in as each day passes. I remember the day. I remember I had been thinking about a magazine article I had read about Mcjagger. He was from Ohio, not Okonkwo but about an hour away. I remember if he could get so famous why can’t I? I feel foolish now remembering my thoughts. People always desire honor, and fame, we don’t deserve that, we don’t deserve nothing. Then everything seemed to shatter and Mcjagger being from Ohio was a fickle thought. I looked up at the street and I heard the thud…..

“BETH!” my mother shrilly screams “Let’s go! We have 6 minutes to get there!” It’s 1:54. We’re always late.

We arrived to Lily’s office at 2:26. I slipped into the waiting room and found it empty with the exception of a pouty looking over weight mother discussing something the the secretary at the front desk. “So if my daughter refuses to go to the meetings the insurance stops paying.” The secretary looking flustered and noticed me, “Beth,” she said slightly annoyed “Lily is waiting for you.”

I had been going to Lily for about 6 months, after it had happened. The insurance gave me some temporary psychological disorder and sent me here. This wasn’t a real phsychologist office. Not to say that Lily wasn’t a real psychologist she had the placks on the wall and everything but she worked for the insurance company. It was a cheap one.
It seemed like everything in my life had been that way. I didn’t resent this, I was used to it. I even took a little pride in it. People with brittle bones had to go to real psychologists and paid tons of money to cry about problems that weren’t really their.
Did I have a problem that wasn’t really there. I don’t know. The insurance company sent me here. That is all.

I thought about the woman at the counter. A lot of kids don’t like coming here. For the past few months I’ve seen all sorts of them come in and out. I never really minded Lily, it always seemed normal that I should dislike her. When my mother first brought it up she stated it solemnly as a loss cause. Almost as if she knew that I’d refuse to go, but I didn’t mind it, there were some aspects that I didn’t like but Lily was nice.

I walked into Lily’s office and found her sitting in her chair writing something. The room was dimly lit with two chairs and a coach. There was a mini fountain trickling on one of her shelves amongst various books from psychology to young adult. I sat down and started playing with a zen garden which sat next to a big vanilla candle. This is what I didn’t like about this place. Everything was so strategically placed.

“How are you today Beth?” Lily asked me putting what she was writing down and looking up at me. I tried to figure out something to say. How am I today? I regular question, but did I know how I feel?

Lily didn’t like me to call her Mrs. Sanchez, when we first met she insisted on me calling her Lily, but I hated the informalness of it all. She wasn’t just Lily she wasn’t my friend. It used to upset me a lot. Why should I tell everyone to someone who does not care about me? “I do care about you Beth,” She insisted one afternoon. “I know because I’m your patient you want to see me heal.” I said my voice heavy in teen angst, “but what if the insurance company suddenly decided I was okay, and they stopped paying for these sessions?” She sat silently waiting for me to continue. “I would disappear from your life and you would disappear from mine. The End” “What’s the point of all this”
I could tell she wasn’t sure what to say. She shrugged and said, “We’re trying to heal you, I don’t know what else I can do for you, all I know is that until the insurance company stops paying for these sessions, I’ll be here for you.”

I don’t think about it anymore. It just leaves me dizzy if I do, so all I can do is come to these sessions and try to figure out whatever it is I’m trying to figure out.

“How are you doing?” She asked again, with an unfailing patience I could never hope to have. With Lily sometimes we talked about it sometimes we didn’t.

“I don’t know…” I mumbled telling her the plain truth, “I’m not bad, but I’m not good either. I’m like some particle in the air letting the air push me and take me where it goes…” There was truth in what I said, that is all I knew. Lily paused, whether it was for dramatic effect or if she really did not know what to say I did not know. What is something interesting about Lily is that she believes most people can be fixed, by one way or the other. I left the end open would if somebody can’t be fixed? What if I can’t be fixed, but then again am I even broken? Was I even made in the first place?

This is what silence does. Silence is so good; distractions have saved me since the incident, distractions sweet loud distractions. “Interesting…so you believe you have no feelings what so ever that you’re just going with the flow?” She asked regaining her composure. “I guess so..” I replied. “Are you happy with this? Mad about it or feel nothing about it. Is it easier this way.”
I tried to process all what she was saying she was speaking rather fast. “I’m not sure, I’m not mad about it doesn’t make me really happy either, I just feel unsatisfied, starving, yet full at the same time.”
She laughed unexpectedly, “You’re such a contradiction.” She said, I thought about It, I suppose it’s true.

She turned serious again, professional Mrs. Sanchez. She adjusted her skirt, moved the non existent hairs from her face. “Now Beth, we have to think about this…Is this whatever floats your boat, if that’s what you want to call it, is this healthy. Can someone live like this? Is it normal? Is it sane?”

“Does it matter?” I said immediately regretting it. Lily responded simply. “If it didn’t matter we wouldn’t be here, so while we’re here let’s pretend it does matter. I don’t know how you feel but this matters to me, you matter to me.” She looked at me, I was never good at reading people, was she lying I didn’t know, did it matter?

(There’s a possibility.)

“I have to think about this more, Beth, for once you have me slightly speechless, there isn’t a problem, but then you’re not fixed. Now I shouldn’t use that word fixed, heal is a better word or “get better” you don’t need fixing…just some tinkering.”

“The mind is a strange thing.” I said letting the atmosphere take me in, wanting to forget about being broken and being fixed.

“Ahh, the human is a strange thing, it isn’t just our minds, there are impulses drives, emotions, aches, pains, and numbness all at once.”

“Numbness….” I said as I slowly began pinching the side of my arm. Lily was silent for a while. “This is quite interesting though….is it unheard of? I’m not sure, I’m sure the numb really said anything about it.” Lily had a funny way sometimes of talking out load to herself.

“Well,” she said glancing at her watch, “There is something else I have been working on for a while. It concerns you.” She said looking up at me. I felt a muffled curiosity reach my brain. “Next week I’d like you to meet someone, can you handle that?”
Who did she think I was? I could meet people I could be social. “I know you can handle it,” she said as if reading my thoughts, “But you may or may not like what this person has to say or what they represent. But I think it will help you immensely.”

I felt curious and yet I couldn’t believe her. I was quiet on the drive home, my mother filled up the silence with obnoxious talk radio. I tried to imagine who Lily would want me to meet. Another crazy person? A person who’s a specialist and what I’ve been through, some post traumatic stress disorder scholar? She said someone to help me immensely…hmm. I stared out the window at the occasional pedestrian, my mom always avoided the street the accident happened on, I’m not sure if the avoidance made It better or worse.

I tried to listen to the voices on the radio. “It is not right for a woman to with hold sex from her husband, it is a crime.” My thoughts turned back immediately to this person. Lily what have you got in store. Until next Saturday….I wait.