Updated Elaboration

Today was ordinary.
I went out with my best friend Skylar and we spent a couple hours browsing books and drinking coffee at the book store. He always gets an Americano. I always get a frozen cappuccino. My parents always accuse me of dating Skylar but I assure you, we are just close friends. After arguing over authors, James Patterson versus Sandra Brown, over artists, Georgia O’Keeffe versus Claude Monet, and over bands, Green Day versus Linkin Park, Skylar dropped me off at my house on the end of the street. On the outside of my house, everything looks perfect but once I step inside all my energy is drained and my parents are fighting. I put on my blank mask and sulk up the stairs to my lack luster room and immediately try to find a safe place in a dream.

The next day is far from ordinary.
Everyday I wake up and wish I could have slept forever but today is different. Today just felt better as I bounced downstairs for breakfast. Can you turn the coffee on, mom? She didn’t move. Mom! Mom? “Kristin, could you please go wake up your father and tell him his damn breakfast is ready?” I walked back to the guest room where my dad had been sleeping for the past year and yelled in the door Dad, breakfast is ready. Get up or you’ll be late for work. I walked back up the hall and sat down on the stool in front of the bar. Everything was beginning to feel fuzzy. “Kristin. I said to go wake up your dad!” I told him to get up! “Kristin! Are you listening to me?” Yes! What do you think I am, deaf? “Why aren’t you talking to me?” I am! Oh my god…I’m…not…I can’t talk. My mom kept talking but her voice sounded further and further away. It was like I was falling into a pit and she was yelling at me from the top of it. That’s all I remember.

Everything sort of blurs together but I think the next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital. My mom and Skylar were both there watching TV and didn’t even notice that I had woken up. My mom was curling the edge of her magazine and Sky was biting his nails. Where…am I? Oh right, I can’t talk. I tried to wave my arms to get their attention but my arms wouldn’t move. Oh great. Can’t move, can’t speak and I think I’m in a hospital. My lucky day. I tried moving everything. I couldn’t move my arms, my legs, my lips, my back, nothing. However, I could blink and move my eyes but it was really really hard. Would you look over here! Come on…over here! After what seemed like years Skylar looked over at me and his green eyes became even greener “She’s awake! She’s awake!” He ran to my side and grabbed my hand as my mom took my other. Where was my dad? I wondered. He was probably drowning out his sorrows with mindless office work. That’s his greatest talent.

“Hi there, Kristin.” My mom said in her softest voice. It lacked the normal motherly infliction, though. I guess it always would. I wished I could respond. “How are you feeling?” She asked as Skylar ran out of the room to get a nurse. I’m feeling like proper crap. “Can you tell me what you’re feeling?” I wish! Skylar ran back in dragging a poor elderly nurse by the arm. “She’s awake! Aren’t you Kristin?” He exclaimed. “She still isn’t talking, Skylar.” “Oh…” He sounded sad. I wished he wouldn’t sound so sad. It was just me anyways, who really cares?

The nurse bent down and flashed a bright light in one of my eyes and then the next. “Can you follow this light, sweetie?” Please don’t call me that. My eyes moved slowly and I couldn’t keep up with the light. “Can you raise your right hand? How about your leg? Finger? Can you say something?” After each question she would wait for me to respond and then when I didn’t (couldn’t) she would write something down on her clipboard. “I am going to see your mom outside for a minute, ok? She will be right back, don’t you worry.” What does she think I am, 5? I’m 17. I don’t need my mommy. “Kristin, if this is some wicked prank you’re playing it’s really not funny. Yesterday we were out having fun like always and today you pass out and can’t move! Please tell me you’re kidding.” I wish I was, Sky. I really wish I was. His eyes filled up a little bit with tears but they couldn’t have been about me. Maybe he started thinking about his dead dad or something; that must have been it. Nobody would cry over me. The nurse and my mom were still talking outside my glass cubicle room.

They came back inside and the nurse wasted no time getting down to business. “Kristin, dear, we aren’t sure what is wrong with you. We will need to do some tests on you to figure it out but we know you are in there, ok?” Sure.

Over the next several months all I can recall is pain and hope. They stabbed huge needles in my back, they took lots of blood, they even opened up my skull and tried to fix me but nothing worked. I was ready to die if this went on much longer but my hope was still lingering at the back of my healing skull. My mom had visited everyday but every time she came it was for less and less time. She never said anything; she just sat there and watched TV with her back to me and curled the end of a magazine, her nervous habit. She didn’t even cry anymore. My dad would come on the weekends and spend a couple hours playing solitaire with himself over my table so I could watch but I think he had nearly moved on with his life. He had already accepted the fact that he had a vegetable for a daughter. Skylar came over everyday after school and most weekends too. He would tell me all about whatever new girl he was dating or what prank someone played on a teacher that day or how high he could ollie on his skateboard. One thing I hated him to talk about was which colleges he was going to apply to. If he left, what would I keep ‘living’ for? But I liked it the best when he came to see me. He didn’t treat me like I was dead or dying. I always wished I could have as much hope for myself as he had in me. My hope was fading.

Even though other people came to see me, I was very lonely and just wished I could have my old life back. I didn’t care that my parents hated each other, I didn’t care that I didn’t have a boyfriend, or that kids at school made fun of me for dressing like a boy, or that our house was under foreclosure. I didn’t care! I wanted it all back. I wanted to be able to live again because this was worse than death. I felt like a ghost that Satan had forgotten about and had left my soul here, trapped in my dead body.

After about 6 months of my misery Skylar came to see me just like clock work right after his school day ended. The doctors had opened up my brain again and Skylar was perched on my bed examining the staples in my skull. I was staring across the room at the wall that I had memorized by now. “Kristin, this is awesome. I really wish you could see this! They just sawed your head open, huh? That’s insane!” I was glad that he enjoyed it so much because I certainly didn’t. My head was pounding like tremors of an earthquake. Ow. He better not touch those staples or else I’m gonna smack him…when I can move again…if that ever happens.

I felt dead. My thoughts amounted to nothing to no one. You can’t care about what you don’t know. I had gotten lost inside my own head. When people talked to me, I used to at least respond in my own head but I didn’t care enough anymore to do that. Skylar was about to leave to get fitted for his tux for the dance this weekend. I had been planning on asking him but he asked some chick from Algebra. I immediately didn’t like her. I lived out my days in solitude. Even if I could speak, I don’t think I would remember how at this point. I had lost the ability to even think in language. No one knew the misery I held inside my head, it was worse than the pain that ran throughout all the needle holes and veins and incisions all over my body. I began to enjoy the pain. It allowed me to feel something, anything. I wished they wouldn’t use so many anesthetics; I was numb enough off of my own poisonous mind. I could feel death settle inside of my rib cage. It just sat there and waited, some days I wished it would just rip my heart out right there and be done with me but it insisted on maintaining its position. It had taken everything away from me, why couldn’t it just take the last thing? My life?
If I had only written a living will…but who writes those at 17? Who would think they would go practically brain dead at 17? I wished they would just slip some medicine into my veins that would make me sleep forever. I hated living inside my own head. Sky…why can’t you just tell them to kill me? You know I wouldn’t want to live like this. Language is…was…my life. Now my life is nothing more than an almost cadaver.
“Hey, I’ve gotta go get that tux for Saturday. You know? I’m not even sure if I want to go. Not to the dance, I mean to college. What’s my mom gonna do without me there? It’s just all so confusing…” His voice even irritated me now. Everything irritated me so I just zoned them all out. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. I couldn’t care less about Skylar’s dance or the college he just got accepted to. I don’t even think I opened my eyes again after that. I just tried to sleep as much as I could.
I’m sure Skylar and my parents stopped visiting soon after that. Even if they had, I had sunken so deep inside of myself that I wouldn’t notice them there anyway. Maybe they did slip me some drugs then…I’m just not exactly sure. I was so close to dead that it wouldn’t have been much of a transition for me at that point…