Nadia Reategui
ENG 218R – 003
Down in a Rabbit Hole
"Why do you do it, Riley?"
"It frees me," she said while closing her eyes. "It makes everything go away."
"For how long?"
"For the time being."
"Like for a day? Or a little while?"
"It's better than nothing," she said, opening her eyes and looking at the man sitting in front of her.
"How do they go together?"
"They just do."
"Will you tell me how it happened?"
Riley looked away from the psychiatrist's eyes and to the window. It was raining. The water was washing away all the dirt outside. She wished it could wash away her pain too, her dirt, her sins, her memories. Oh, if she could erase her memories. Start anew. She closed her eyes and bit her lip.
"Yes, Dr. Nielsen," she said. She grabbed her left arm out of habit. "I will tell you how it happened."
*
Riley rolled up her sleeves and saw them. They had never gone away. They were still reminding her of the desperation she had felt, of the cage she was trapped in, of the first time she decided to have control over something. Control. She couldn't even control that. Everything came back as she traced the scars on her left arm. She smirked a crooked smile.
Go right out of your mind trying to escape the paradox of life.
She stood in front of the floor length mirror in her room and examined herself. She could not recognize the person that looked back at her. Her face was pasty white and her long brown hair fell lifeless on her shoulders. She looked dead. She felt dead inside. She was soulless. She took a step forward and stared more closely. She had purple circles around her eyes. Her black eyeliner was all over her face. She needed to buy waterproof mascara. Her make-up was smudged. Her face disgusted her. I am ugly, she thought. Her brown eyes looked vacant yet so full of resentment and shame. The white part of her eyeballs was bright red. She could hardly keep her eyes open. She punched the mirror as hard as she could with her fists. It hurt. A lot. Instead of cracking the surface, her knuckles had scratches on them.
She fell on the floor and leaned on the mirror.
"I will respond when I get a chance" is not an answer.
She clenched her teeth. Angry tears ran down her cheeks and smeared the surface of the clean crystal she was leaning on. Tears full of hatred and rage. She wiped them out furiously with her sleeve. Tears were signs of weakness. She sighed. The mirror was ice cold. Her face started to burn. She looked down at her hands and saw them turn bright pink. Blood. Unconsciously she traced the scars on her arm again without even looking at them. She could feel the incisions in her skin. Her eyes drifted to the marks of her past and she just stared at them attentively. They were perfectly lined up. They were perfectly visible. They were clearer than her skin. Her eyes lit up. Why did she have to hide them? They were beautiful. They were hers. But people would never understand.
Nobody was home. Riley's roommates were probably still at school. She was alone. Alone with her thoughts. Alone with her ideas. Alone with her music. She had her iPod on and Old Soul Song by Bright Eyeswas playing. Every note reminded her of different stages of the best times of her life. Times where everything was carefree and natural. Times that were now over, forever.
She could see herself laughing. She was happy. But what does it mean to be happy?
She let out a sob.
Old symbols of freedom.
Anguish. She stood up and went to the kitchen. It was impeccable. No dust. No dirty dishes. It looked perfect. The tiniest drawer under the sink was calling her name. She reached to it and got out a pair of shiny black scissors and put them away inside her sweatshirt pocket. She went into her room again and closed the door.
As she walked to her bed, she stepped on Aubrey's pants lying on the floor. Her roommate was messy. She always had her clothes and shoes spread all over the floor. Her bed was hardly ever made. The side of Riley's room was perfect, just like the kitchen. Riley was a good roommate. People should learn from her, she thought.
She laid down on her bed facing the ceiling. Her Harry Potterposter was looking back at her. There had been a time in which living in fantasies had made her whole, but now her reality was stronger than any world she wanted to escape to. She closed her eyes.
She saw the black Isuzu Rodeo in her mind so clearly she thought she was actually in front of it. She had seen the letters in the Californiaplate so many times she didn't need a reminder of what they said: 4WSC999. She was on the passenger seat and her eyes were fixed on the stick shift next to her, and on the hand moving it.
She fast-forwarded in her mind what happened next. She couldn't bear remembering it. She pressed the Play button of her mind when she saw the Isuzu Rodeo driving away as she ran to her apartment as fast as her legs allowed. She started crying. She wanted to get rid of the grief she felt but crying was never enough.
She opened her eyes abruptly. The Harry Potterposter was still looking at her from the ceiling. A single clear tear left her eyes, ran down her cheek, and died on her chin. Her memories would never leave her. They would torment her for the rest of her life. She wanted to curse God for the perfect creation of man.
Nobody knew what she was thinking. She was waiting for an answer that would never come. She knew it. Yet she was still waiting. She couldn't let go. Letting go would make everything final. She had been waiting so long for an answer it didn't feel out of the ordinary anymore. She was willing to wait forever. She didn't have forever but she would make forever possible.
To risk it all and lose. To lose and not know.
She grabbed the silver frame from on top of her night desk. Seeing the picture was distressing. She stopped breathing. The picture frame fell from her hands as they went up to her throat. The glass cracked. It was broken. So was her heart. So were her dreams. So were her hopes. She reached down and picked up the frame to guard it in her back pocket. She clenched her fists.
Riley walked out of her room and into the bathroom. She locked the door. As she sat on the bathtub, she got the picture out of her pocket, and put it on the toilet seat. Something that had been her strength and her reason to live was now enough to give up. She looked at the scissor blades for some minutes. Her iPod was now playing Time Code by Bright Eyes. Her sleeves were rolled up and the scars of her past were claiming her attention, claiming their place, claiming the cold blades.
Parting is such a sweet sorrow. To sleep. To die.
She stretched out her left arm and placed the scissor blades on top of it. The blades felt so cold, so reassuring. She was home. She knew she could leave the ugly world she was part of, if only for a moment, as soon as she decided to.
Everything feels smaller when I go further away.
She scratched the scissors against her skin violently and started cutting. The crimson blood started flowing and running down her arm. With every cut, she felt a bit of her pain was fading away. She was feeling again. The scissors were all over her arm leaving their trace behind. It is not craziness, she thought. It's art. She got her boost from the blood that was now staining the floor. It was all she wanted to see. It was all she needed to see. She felt alive again.
At times, she would glare at the picture looking back at her from on top of the toilet seat. Some tears left her eyes and showed she was hurting. Tears were signs of vulnerability and limitation.
No, no tears. Just blood.
She saw a green vein on her forearm and knew it would be full of the red drug she needed to lay her hands on. The scissors were moving on their own trying to go home. Home to that fat bloody vein. She pressed the blades against her skin with all the strength she had left, but didn't dare to slice her arm with them. She took a last glimpse at the picture and her mind was flying away.
"I will respond when I get a chance."
The words echoed on her mind and brought back the vision of the Isuzu Rodeo driving away. When I get a chance. That was all she had gotten. When would that chance come? Will it ever come?
Nothing else mattered. She was not going to pretend she would pull through. She was tired of pretending. She was tired of being the principal character in her horror story. She was tired of everything. She traced the vein. She felt it beating…
And cut.
*
"So… yeah." Riley shrugged.
"And that caused you to cut yourself?" Dr. Nielsen grabbed a metal container from his desk and offered Riley a piece of candy. She showed him the palm of her hand and the container was back on the desk.
"Yeah."
"I don't understand how they go together in your mind."
"I feel too much pain."
"You feel too much pain."
"Yeah." She made eye contact with Dr. Nielsen and folded her arms.
"And you are under medication, is that correct?"
She nodded. "Yeah."
"What is it that you are taking?"
"Prozac."
"Fluoxetine?"
"That's your mumbo jumbo for a simple word."
"Who told you to take the fluoxetine?"
"Dr. Graden," Riley said.
"How long have you been taking it?"
"A couple of weeks."
"Do you feel any different?"
"No," she moved her head from side to side, "I just doubled my dose."
"Who told you to do it?"
"Dr. Graden."
"When did you double it?"
"After cutting."
"Do you want to stop?"
"No."
"Do you like your arms?"
She rolled her eyes and crossed her legs. "I don't mind them."
Riley saw Dr. Nielsen semi-close his eyes and watch her in silence. For a moment, Dr. Nielsen's blue eyes were focused on Riley's arm. She stared at him coldly and rolled up the sleeve on her left arm.
They scream louder than my voice can.
Everything he needed to know was in her cuts. The lines drawn across the girl's arm told her story. They had been carefully created by Riley's own hand as if everything that was in her mind had been written through the glowing red lines that formed around dark wounds.
"What are you thinking?" the psychiatrist asked looking away from Riley's inhuman arm.
"What are you thinking?" Riley rested her head on the palm of her right hand and waited.
He frowned.
"My diary." She admitted.
"You keep a journal?"
"Always have."
"Why?"
"I have a lot to say."
"You don't talk a lot to me."
"I don't trust you."
"That would make sense. So, your journal. Do you write on it every day?"
"No."
"Did you write on it that day?"
"Around that day."
"Before or after you cut?"
"Before."
"Tell me what happened after you cut."
She closed her eyes and traveled back in time.
*
The cut was the deepest she had had so far. Her blood kept flowing out of her veins and it would not stop. Her eyes were wide open, fascinated with the idea of the human body. The blood flow was breathtaking. It made her think of a river running downstream. Never stopping. Her blood would not stop. It was time. She hadn't planned it that way but she was ready to go.
Her drug was always so available. It was the only thing that had never left her, and never would. Nobody suspected anything, she was always wearing sweatshirts and her arms were safely hidden. She had a deep love-like feeling for her cuts. Running the shiny scissors across her splotchy arms was addicting. It was a routine that had become a part of her.
They are what cannot be put into words.
Salty tears blurred her vision as she watched herself bleed.
To die.
She pulled herself up and tried to open the door. She unlocked it but her body was so weak that her weight was too much for her legs to handle and they gave up. The blood was all over her favorite Hurley sweatshirt and it wouldn't stop. She tried to cover her wound but soon her hand went from pale white to bright red. The beige walls in the bathroom all had red handprints on them. Her wound was wide open. She could see a bit of her muscle. She laughed.
Not yet.
She reached down to her pocket to get her phone. She couldn't see anything, everything was a blur. With a lot of effort she managed to dial her roommate's number and waited.
"Hello?"
"Danielle…" she panted.
"Riley, what's going on?" Danielle's voice sounded desperate and confused.
Riley was gone.
"Riley? Hello? Hello?"
*
"Do you remember anything else?"
"No."
"You faced death. What do you think about that?"
"Exhilarating."
"What about your journal?"
"What about my journal?"
"What did you write on it?"
"Stuff."
"Would you show it to me?"
"Nobody sees it but me."
"Riley, why are you here?"
"Dr. Graden."
"He sent you."
"He said I needed it."
"And do you?"
"No. "
"How is your arm?"
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"That's what I said."
She stood up.
"I don't think this is good for me."
"Riley, let me help you."
"I don't need to be helped," she said as she shook the psychiatrist's hand. She took a piece of candy out of the metal container on the desk, and went out the door. She stared at the man's nametag on the wall one last time.
As Riley walked down the street, she tried to avoid every look that was on her, on her arm. People murmured whenever they saw her walk by. Some of them asked if she needed help. She didn't need anyone's pity. She didn't want anyone's compassion. She wanted to be left alone. She didn't care about her arm. She had done what she did because it was her only way out. It had been a perfect plan that had turned out completely wrong. She would face the consequences.
Danielle was waiting in the car for Riley to come out. Riley climbed up on the passenger seat. She looked at the rain falling down from the sky and dying on the ground. They had served their purpose. That was a well-spent life.
"How was it?" Danielle asked while they were driving back to their apartment. She had a tentative smile on her chubby face.
"Same as always."
"It will help eventually."
"I don't know if I will keep going."
"Riley…"
"I'll be fine, Danielle."
Once they had arrived at the apartment, Riley went directly to her room and laid down on her bed. The Harry Potter poster on the ceiling was gone. She did not believe in fantasies anymore. Reality had overcome her. The window blinds were open.
It was still raining. Riley looked through the window wishing she could go out. She had her mind set on opening the window but she knew she couldn't.
The old picture that had caused her to cut herself was looking at her from its usual spot on the night desk but she couldn't reach it.
Her journal that kept all her secrets was under her pillow, but she couldn't reach it either.
She felt useless.
The rain fell down on the cold hard ground. The raindrops were falling audibly down on the metal window ledge.
The rain cannot wash out my memories. It will never go away.
She was afraid of closing her eyes. She knew she would remember. The look on everyone's faces when they found out about her "accident" was excruciating. The sound of her parents' voice was insufferable.
To die is such an adventure. Courage that I don't have.
She needed to sleep. But when you sleep, you dream. She didn't want to have dreams. They were so vivid she always woke up screaming and covered in her own sweat.
To live. To feel.
Her exhaustion won the battle and her eyes were shut. She was swimming in the ocean of her mind, scenes of her life passing by. She was reminded of the mistakes and bad decisions she made, of the first time she cut herself to get rid of her feelings and to feel at the same time. The Isuzu Rodeo was behind it all.
What did I do?
She moved and with a lot of effort got her journal from under her pillow. She opened it and reached to grab her answer. It had been inside her journal all along.
*
"The damage on her arm will be permanent."
"What do you mean?" Danielle was rubbing her hands together. Her body was shaking uncontrollably.
"She cut too deep on her nerve endings. She's lost a lot of blood."
"What does that mean?" Danielle asked as she looked away from the ER doctor to the hospital bed where her roommate was dying. She had tons of tubes connected to every tiny part of her body and some nurses were performing the blood transfusion. Danielle had never seen so much blood in her life.
"She's lost feeling in her arm."
"That means…"
"She will not be able to use her arm anymore."
"Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!" Danielle's hands covered her eyes.
Tears ran down her face. Not tears of weakness, but of desperation and real pain.
"No! NO! NO!"
*
Riley held her journal close to her chest.
The raindrops started changing color and turned bright red. But it was not rain anymore. She took a deep breath.
It's kill or be killed.
Closing her eyes had never been freedom. But that day, it was. A small razor fell on the floor next to her bed.