I was sitting on the wrinkling sheets of a doctor's office bed. Jason was sitting in the chair beside me in the small room holding my hand, it was my regular monthly check up. Nothing special, they take blood, they x-ray, and go through the regular motions of a doctor visit for normal people. Today was different, something felt... off. Like, something bad will happen. I just hope Dr Solace doesn't sugar coat it. I hate it when people try to be easy on me, I need the blatant truth. I need that hard slap of reality to the face, because it helps me realize that it doesn't get better.
Hope.
I've learned to dismiss hope with a wave of a hand. I learned that when hope blossoms, all that happens is disappointment. It crashes down on me and if there is no hope, there can't be the hurt of disappointment. So I don't hope, I don't fear, I don't feel anything. I just shut it out. So I sit in this doctor's office with no emotion playing on my face, my hair pulled up in a messy ponytail and clad in a pair of ripped jeans and an old hoodie.
I don't care.
The door cracked open and in walked Dr Solace. He had shaggy blond hair and a blinding smile. Most girls woo over him, but I couldn't care less. I looked up towards him with a bored expression on my face and he plastered a smile on, a very flirtatious smile might I add. I felt Jason's hand tighten slightly on my own and I squeezed his back in recognition.
"Well good news and bad news," Dr Solace began,"which would you like first?"
"Bad news," I responded In a monotone.
"Okay, well it seems that your lungs have gotten worse and are getting worse rapidly, we have you on the donor list but you need a transplant fast."
"Okay, good news?"I asked him, I showed no reaction to the lungs because I was expecting the worse, and that was the worse.
"We can have you lungs in four months, someone in critical condition has no chance of survival, they agreed to help you," Dr Solace told me with a big grin. I ignored him and looked down at Jason who looked up at me. Our eyes both conveyed the same message, in four months I could be normal. We could be a normal couple and do everything I never could.
"Okay," I whispered back quietly, I was in awe that I could really be normal.
I felt Jason squeeze my hand and I allowed a small smile to take over my features and returned the action. I looked up at Dr Solace and he handed me a bottle of pills.
"One in the morning, one at night it should help slow down the process," he said as he gestured towards the prescription bottle. Little capsules sat inside, half pink half blue. I stared at them, hoping that they might help a little. Because most medicine I've taken has had no effect.
I looked up and masked my emotions again, I had gotten used to doing it so much it was second nature nowadays.
"You're free to leave," Dr Solace said as he stood and left the room. Jason stood first and brought me to my feet along with him. Fuck him and his height, literally he is a good half foot taller than me. With our hands linked together we walked out of the small doctor's office that reeked of sterilizer. We hopped into my car and I leaned back in my seat to let out a long breath.
Two weeks have gone by since Jason and I had started dating, and I really love every second of it because this time I really think it's different; I think he actually likes me. But the emotional stress of being around people and smiling is taking a toll on me. I feel drained 24/7 around his friends and I just want to melt into the shadows again without having to fear someone with a flashlight finding me. I have the feeling returning, of suffocating and not being able to breathe. And the walls are caving in on me one by one. And I can't avoid the depths of nothing for ever. But I want to so badly because when you fall you keep falling and falling, and your struggling to find something to grip onto to stop the whistling in your ears, the whispers of failure. But all you do is flail hopelessly and no solid substance comes under your fingers and you keep hoping to hit the ground to end the hurt and fear but it never comes.
It feels like your drowning while watching every sit three feet away pointing at you shouting, "Learn how to swim!"
But you can't seem to prevail and eventually the air gives out in your lungs and you waste away before someone realizes they could have saved you. I just wish someone can dive in after me and bring me to the surface to take deep breathes of glorious air, to be alive. Yet instead I keep drowning and opening my mouth to call out but the water sucks the noise away just like it fills my lungs and chokes me. And I never see the surface before my heart beat gives out and my body goes limp.
I sit up after a long breath and stick the keys in the ignition. I can feel Jason's eyes scanning me for a sign of despair but I shut down my emotions so they only play behind my eyes in the darkness of my mind. Give up, Piper. No one's going to save you. A chorus of demons chant inside my ears, because they kick me when I'm down. When I'm gasping for breath they latch their hands around my throat and close down the air ways. When I break a bone they push down on the crack to make it as painful as possible. They ruin me.
It's a shame that I used to believe in fairytales, but was struck down by reality of the demons in my head and the fear of never being loved. Because what hurts the most is having to pretend it doesn't hurt at all. Because it fucking hurts, everything hurts. Every thought is a battle and every breath is a war. And I'm not winning. Because every slice on my skin in a horizontal strike of red is music to my ears. My blade is the bow and my skin is the strings of a violin and every harsh strike has a new meaning of a sound and the whispers of pain emerged from my throat is the keys I press on a piano. Because now death sounds like a melody.
I live in my own personal hell, where the demons find my head a playground for their twisted joy. The feeling of building me up only to push me down and laugh before repeating the cycle again. And again. But then I remember that I am a demon myself and I let these insecurities crawl in my ear and I'm killing myself. I carry my own prison and live in it, but I also hold the key to escape. I just can't seem to put it in the lock and turn because of my shaking hands. Or the invisible shadows dancing around me and taunting me, pushing my arm down inches from the lock and shoving me to the floor. And then the lock seems so far away like I could never reach it. I shrink smaller, and smaller but the lock looms above me creating an impossible scenario. I just can't reach.
I didn't notice the wetness on my cheeks until my hands started to shake and my lungs started to seize making it where I had to pull over to the shoulder of the road and take deep breaths. Jason unbuckled his seatbelt before reaching over and unbuckling my own. He scooped me up and pulled my shaking body onto his lap while locking his arms around me, shielding me from the world. I buried my head in his shirt, soaking it with tears from an unknown reason. I didn't know why I was crying I just felt so... gone. I didn't feel like this was reality and I was really there sitting with the one person that could erase my tears. Jason just sat there softly stroaking my hair and saying nothing. And he didn't need to, he just needed to be here. Because through my struggle I was going to need someone's shoulder to cry on for no reason at all.
"Why do you weep Piper?" Jason whispered softly into my ears with a voice that calms my bones and can make them wild all the same.
"Because the world is my enemy," I murmured into his now soaked shirt and sat up slowly wiping my eyes and hiding my face with my hands.
"How can the whole world be your enemy? I'm not your enemy," he said gently while taking my hands from my face and enveloping them with his own.
"I'm my own enemy and its torment to hear yourself scream into your ears constantly and constantly," I said while taking my hands and gripping my hair, outside slowly started melting away in the sounds of rain.
"Then make it stop," Jason said while wiping my tear stained face.
"It's not that easy, I can't stop it and it just won't go away. I just want it out of my head!" I yelled to the sky. Give up, Piper.
"Lets count your scars," Jason said pushed up both my sleeves to reveal several strikes on my tan skin.
"Why?" I asked him while trying to hide away, but Jason's grip held firm and he studied the destruction I inflicted.
"So I can see how many times you needed me and I wasn't there," he said and held my forearms facing up to be able to see all the pale markings clearly.
We silently started counting all the slashes in my flesh, one, two, three...We went on and on to a grand total of twenty two scars peppered across my skin.
"I don't care if it's four am or three in the afternoon, when ever you feel like you need to do this, call me," Jason said softly but with a tone of seriousness behind it.
"Okay," I whispered and pushed my sleeves down to hide away again.
"Good, it hurts me when you hurt Piper. Your not the only one suffering because when I'm right beside you and can't seem to hold you close enough to take the hurt away it torments me," he says while looking straight into my eyes.
"I'm sorry, I didn't know," I mutter in his ear as he pulls me into a tight embrace.
We sat there in each other's comfort trying to hold on. And I ha one way to do so, and sometimes the world feels so far away and my feet can't seem to touch the ground and my hands can't grasp the air. I just am nowhere and somewhere at the same time. And I'm not sure how that's possible.
The thunder shocked me out of my little comfort bubble with Jason and I look outside of the fogged window.
"I like the rain," I comment while pressing my hand against the now cool glass.
"Yeah?" Jason responds in a way of asking 'go on,'.
"It shows that while right now it's raining and tears fall from the sky, somewhere else on earth can be bright with Sun and happy. It shows that the earth has days where it cries and others where it smiles, and the sky screams sometimes, too." I say while tracing lines on the windows that meant nothing.
"Everyone cries," Jason says as he leans his forehead against the glass that separates us from the wet.
"Lets go outside," I say and before he can respond pop the door open and drag him outside along with my little tank. I walk out into the middle of the little field beside the road and reached my arms up towards the sky.
"Are you crazy?" Jason ask as he comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist.
"Insane," I agree truthfully. We stood there in th pouring rain, soaked down to our bones. I could barely see three feet in front of me due to the heavy downpour. The water pelted my skin and I lofted my face towards the dark clouds and instead of basking in the light of the Sun, I am basking in the shadows of the clouds. And surrounded my nothing but water and the comforting presence of Jason I really didn't care. I felt nothing but a small smile on my face.
