Her (58 page)

The world was completely white.

“She’s awake! Mommy! Mommy! Her eyes are open!” I heard Nick’s voice so loud and clear.

The sound of his feet pounding on the floor made me cry.

“Her eyes are watering!” Alison said with fear in her voice.

I did not move. I lay still on my back, staring up at the bright lights and white ceiling above me. I couldn’t see anyone’s face. I could only hear their sweet voices. Nick and Alison’s sweet voices made my heart beat steadily again.

Mom was there. I could feel her hands touching my arm and rubbing my hair gently. I heard her crying and sobbing. Real tears seemed like they were actually falling from her eyes. I saw her leaning over me, almost like a shadow. The tears that fell from her eyes landed on my face. It reminded me of the rain.

“Oh, baby,” Mom cried from over me. “I’m so sorry. I’m here. It’s okay.”

“Is she awake?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

Mom looked away from me towards the voice.

“Her eyes are open, and she has tears in her eyes. Does it mean that she’s awake? Does she know that we are here?” Mom asked.

Mom was pushed out of the way, and someone else stood above me. It was a woman dressed in a white coat. Her white coat almost blended with the white ceiling above. The bright lights made it hard to make out her face. She shined a circle of light into my eyes from a pen she pulled from her almost invisible coat pocket. It made me blink. She gasped happily.

“Kristen is awake and alert!” The woman exclaimed. “Get Dr. Grayson. Quickly!”

I couldn’t hear Nick and Alison anymore, but I heard Mom still crying. I did not know what was going on. All of the excitement from the moment I opened my eyes was exhausting and scary. I closed my eyes and pushed myself away from the white lights and the confusion.

CHAPTER 63

Hospitals have a smell to them. The sickening smell lingers to make you always remember where you are and what you’ve done. The smell was too familiar. The white, thin blankets were too familiar. I lay in the bed with three of the white blankets spread over me.

That day when I’d followed Mr. Sharp onto the bridge, I knew that we did not intend to ever get off the bridge alive. We’d jumped over the wall to die so that there would not be any time for regret, no way of turning back, and no way for us to be saved.

Or so I’d thought.

After I’d climbed up the wall and had stood next to Mr. Sharp, we had decided we were going to jump. I hadn’t looked behind me, and I hadn’t looked down. My chest had been tight, but I’d taken the deepest breath I could take and I’d jumped. I’d gone up into the air, but I’d never felt myself go down.

I was told that I had passed out, possibly from fear or shock once I had actually jumped, but, before I could launch myself completely forward, someone had caught me. I never made it to the bottom of the highway where I would have, without a doubt, died. If the 100-foot drop down to the highway below wouldn’t have killed me, then I was sure that a passing car or semi would have done the job.

My limp and unconscious body had been pulled back by the person who had been there and quick enough to grab me. When I had been pulled back over, I’d fallen back to the ground and had hit my head on the concrete ground. The person who had saved my life was a man who had been driving the car that had almost hit me. He’d parked his car right there on the bridge, and when he’d seen me climbing up the wall, he’d started running towards me. He had been screaming out to me, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

As I had been launching myself off the wall with Mr. Sharp, I’d grown light-headed, and then I remembered only seeing black. That’s when my savior had gotten a hold of my shirt. He’d told the police that he barely got a hold of an inch of my shirt, just in time. He said that I had been so heavy because I was passed out and unable to move myself or take control of my own weight. He didn’t think that he was going to be able to keep me from falling. I was told that he had almost lost his own life trying to save me, because he’d really had to pull to get me to fall back and not make us both go forward and down. He certainly had pulled hard enough, and he’d been able to let me go before we could fall over. That was when I’d fallen backwards and had landed back on the concrete ground of the bridge. I had suffered a serious concussion, but the doctors had said that I was lucky that a concussion was all I had.

I woke up from that concussion a few days later. Mom, Alison, and Nick were there beside me. Mom told me that they would not leave my side until I had woken up. I did not fully regain consciousness for three days after I woke up for the first time. After those three days, I did not have any more blackouts. Coincidentally, the day that I regained full consciousness was the day of Jack’s parole hearing. To my surprise, Mom, Alison, and Nick were there at my side. Mom promised me that she was not going anywhere.

She said, “I am right where I am supposed to be.”

“What about the parole hearing?” I asked her.

Nick and Alison stood next to Mom, one twin by each of her sides. She squeezed them tightly with one arm each as she smiled down at me. Genuine tears fell from her eyes and, one by one, they made me happy. 

“That’s not important,” she said. “Our family is what is important right now.
You
are important to us.”

I knew that this was certainly not a dream. I was wide awake, and what was happening was for real. Everything that Mom was saying was true. Her tears were not fake, and her actions were not of my imagination.

Every tear that was shed between the both of us that day proved that I didn’t fail this time. I was given the strength to push myself back into the light. I could not stay in the darkness and let myself rest eternally in hell where I did not belong. That was where Jack belonged, and that was where he was going to stay.

CHAPTER 64

Dr. Pelchat’s office was terribly familiar. I sat in the same chair opposite his as he sat behind his big, wooden desk. He had my same familiar chart open with a pen in his left hand. He and I were alone together in that familiar room with the same familiar window that I had a habit of staring out of when I felt too closed in.

“You’re a strong girl,” Dr. Pelchat said.

His voice crept in and disturbed my silent thoughts.

“I didn’t think that you would want to see me this time,” I admitted to him.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I just didn’t think so. After all, I did become a statistic.”

“No,” he corrected. “You would have been one of those statistics if you had actually succeeded in killing yourself.”

“You’re right.”

“Do you remember what happened that day?”

“Yes,” I told him. “I let him go. Mr. Sharp is gone.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I’m taking it one minute at a time.”

Dr. Pelchat nodded.

“There are times when I wish he would appear again, but I know that he won’t. Especially now that you put me back on Risperdol.”

“Does that make you upset?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I mean, sometimes it does. Sometimes I am very upset because I have to take the medicine, and Mom really pushes me to take it every single day.”

“That’s good. She is only looking out for you. How are you doing, now that you’re at home with your family?”

“I’m doing all right,” I told him.

“You will continue to be all right. I’ve told you this before, and I will say it again. You’ve come a long way from when I first met you. You’ve made progress in such a short time. We do have a long way to go, but you are a fighter. We just have to watch out for those moments. Those moments that cause the desperation that you feel when you are about to do something impulsive. As you learned, Borderlines tend to make irrational decisions based off of their intense emotions.

“For instance, when you cut, from the patterns on your arms, I see that you are a fast and compulsive cutter. You slice at yourself in a rage. You make these impulsive, self-abusive decisions. You release your anger all out on yourself at those moments where you feel loss of control and despair. Sometimes the past becomes something you hold on to, and it comes up every time something goes wrong. It doesn’t matter if it’s something that has nothing to do with your mother or Jack. Somehow, you are able to work it up in your mind that all of these things are coming down on you, and because you don’t know how to deal with it, you jump to the most desperate conclusion. The almost fatal conclusion, Kristen, was when you tried to kill yourself. You need to know and understand that when those moments arise, you cannot give into despair. You have to use your coping skills and talk to someone.”

“When I’m in that moment,” I said, “I feel as if there is nothing in the world that could pull me out. When I did decide to end it all the first time, I thought that the only thing that would give me rest was death! That is how it felt. I wanted to sleep and never have to wake up and feel that way again. When I tried to jump, I needed to get out of the darkness. I was so afraid.”

“The darkness was where you felt you had failed. You were afraid of what you thought would happen if your mother had taken Jack back. You see, it did not turn out the way you thought it would. You did not fail because you managed to come out of that darkness. Kristen, you’re alive. If you had died that night, you would not be here right now. You wouldn’t have had a chance to see that you
are strong enough
to survive. This is your only chance to open your eyes and see the light that you have been searching for. Now that you are aware of what it is - your illness, which is Borderline Personality Disorder - you have to think about what you know and use it for your survival, because this is real.
What happened to you and your family was not your fault. Therefore, you shouldn't feel sorry. Stop punishing yourself.
Kristen,
this is your life
. It’s no more excuses.”

I thought back to when Ms. Mosley had told me about the moment when I would truly understand. She knew, just as Dr. Pelchat knew, and they were both right. These weren’t just random words from a book or psycho-babble crap that doctors just say to get you in and out of their office. These words were true. There was no way to deny or reject any of it, because there it was, laid out right in front of me, and for the first time I understood.

In realizing this, I felt something change inside of my mind. Something clicked inside. The change that I felt within myself brought on a new feeling, a new way of thinking, and a new understanding. I realized that, this whole time, Dr. Pelchat’s words were being used as a potent force. These words were powerful enough to help me out of the darkness, and they began to lead me into a new light. Dr. Pelchat, Ms. Mosley, and even Dr. Cuvo’s words all seemed to come together and somehow began to make sense to my mind. It may have been because this was the moment I began to understand that everything that had happened to me and my family in the past was not ever going to disappear, and if I did not want it to destroy me, I had to begin coping and healing so that I could get on with my life. I couldn’t use it as an excuse anymore. It was going to be hard, and it was going to take a lot of time, but it had to be done. It had to be done for my family and me. None of these people wanted to hurt me. I didn’t want to hurt myself anymore.

This is my life, I thought to myself. Then I realized who I was, and who I was ready to be.

Dr. Pelchat stared at me silently. He was watching me. He was waiting to see if I would respond. Did it bother me that he was staring this time? No.

Without another thought or hesitation, I stared right back at him. I could tell that my direct eye contact with him caught him off guard. He shifted in his seat a little, but he did not take his eyes off of me. In a straightforward and mild manner, I raised my head up higher while keeping focused on Dr. Pelchat’s eyes, the way I remembered Dr. Cuvo used to do.

I said to Dr. Pelchat, “I
want
to be a survivor.” 

EPILOGUE

Her

Her story was one that waited to be told.

In order to tell a story there has to be a story to tell.

There has to be

A beginning,

A middle,

And an end.

For Her,

There was a beginning,

And there is an end.

This is where the story of Her ends,

And my story begins.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Felicia Johnson was born in Philadelphia, PA. Felicia is a writer, youth mentor, behavioral health worker, and big sister. She loves ice cream, dancing, and seeing her little sister, Laura, smile. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.