1st December 2027- part 2

"Really Cat, I am fine. Just a bad week, you know? It's probably just like period time or-" Rose began to babble as the two of them entered her room. She seated herself on the bed, facing the wall and looking anywhere but at Cat, she was Rose Weasley and Rose Weasley didn't cry in front of people. Not ever.

"Stop, Rose. You are not fine and we both know that." Cat said firmly, moving to sit beside Rose. She didn't attempt to touch her or put an arm around her or even to look at her, she just sat beside her and there was something sort of comforting about that.

"I am fine, I am. I have to be. And I am!" Rose continued to protest and she wasn't even sure why she was still fighting this. Out of the corner of her eye, Rose saw Cat shake her head.

"You're not fine, Rose. And that's fine. You have never been fully fine and you spent the last two years or so of your life in a deep depression, whilst you are on the way to recovering, you are still not okay. Relapse is part of recovery and-"

"And it's a marathon, not a sprint. Yeah, I got all the cliches from my Healer years ago." Rose sighed.

"You've been talking to a Healer or someone about this?" Cat asked, surprised.

"Yeah, I didn't actually have much say in the matter but yeah." Rose replied, looking and feeling sort of uncomfortable.

"Why was that, Rose?" Cat asked, "you honestly can tell me anything, okay?" she said, taking Rose's hand. Rose sighed, shook her head and then took a deep breath, preparing herself for what she was about to say.

"According to the healers, I attempted suicide." she said.

"Fuck." Cat replied, moving slightly closer to Rose, "And what happened, according to you?" she asked, picking up on Rose's phrasing.

"I tried to make the sad go away without considering the consequences," she began, "and before you can point out that that's often what suicide is, let me promise you that it wasn't like that." Cat nodded and gestured for Rose to continue. "I just wanted the sad to go away. Nothing felt right and everything hurt and I couldn't make myself care or move or do much at all really, I was numb and empty and so alone and really just everything hurt. I wasn't thinking about killing myself at all, I was thinking about making myself feel better, so I took two tablespoons of painkilling potion and waited. And I didn't feel better. So I took another two and I waited and I didn't feel better.
It was all just painfully numb and all I wanted was to feel happy, so I took another four and before long the bottle was empty and I still didn't feel happy. I was honestly not even thinking about what happens when you take too much pain medication, I was thinking about feeling better because that's what painkillers are meant to do, right? It all made a lot of logical sense at the time, you see. Because that's what it's like when you're so desperately sad and it's killing you how unhappy you are and how much you need to be happy again, or at least to not be sad, you try anything that you think might help a bit.
And the bottle was empty and I felt weird, I didn't feel ill, just a bit uncomfortable and still completely sad so I decided I may as well just get drunk and forget about it all. So I went to the shop round the corner from my flat and bought a bottle of vodka and I sat on my sofa and I turned on my TV and I started sipping from the bottle. And after a few sips things were all hazy but also really clear, I can't explain it. So I was feeling completely fuzzy and weird and unreal, not like drunk fuzzy, like the sort of fuzzy you get when you have a migraine or you're just generally in so much physical pain. But the clarity was the weird thing, I could suddenly think really clearly and I somehow snapped out of the sort of logic that had convinced me a bottle of painkilling potion would do the trick.
And I remembered that you're not supposed to have more than three teaspoons a day at the absolute most because otherwise it's dangerous, and I remembered that mixing medicine with alcohol can cause all sorts of dangerous and weird reactions. And so I realised that unless I did something, I would die within the next few days." tears were dripping down Rose's cheeks and Cat was trying to suppress her sobs at how sad and broken this story was. Cat put her arms around Rose and Rose cuddled her back. Neither spoke for a little while but then Cat broke the silence:

"I'd've thought that kind of death would be fast, like hours and not days." she said, unable to allow herself just yet to associate this event with her lovely lovely friend Rose.

"That's sleeping potion and alcohol. Had I drunk a whole bottle of sleep potion and then not thrown up or anything, death would have been quick and easy. That's what I was trying to explain to all the healers, that I had a whole bottle of sleeping potion and that if I'd wanted to kill myself, I'd have had that rather than the painkilling one because death by painkilling potion is the most horrible and painful thing ever. If I had actually been attempting suicide, I would most certainly have overdosed on that and then would have quietly died in the night." Rose explained, finding her voice was now stronger and that she was more able to talk about what had happened than she'd thought she would be. Cat nodded.

"So what happened once you'd realised what you'd done?" she asked Rose.

"I went to the bathroom, and shoved my fingers down my throat until I started to throw up. And I kept doing that until there was nothing left to throw up. And then I flooed to St. Mungo's and had an emergency appointment. I had to explain what I'd taken and how I was pretty sure I'd got it all up, but that I needed to make sure. And I had been a successful vomiter, luckily, but then they'd taken me off to a little room to talk about why I'd taken all that medicine and I kept trying to explain that it had been accidental, that my intention had simply been to stop being sad and to kill the pain, not to kill myself. And they just didn't believe me so they decided that for the time being I was a danger to myself and sent me to St. Myrtle's- y'know, hospital where they deal with non-magical illness, injuries and things in magical people- and I had to stay on the mental health ward for about a week while they assessed me.
Conditions of my release were that I take antidepressant potions daily and that I have weekly counselling sessions, and they'd said I only had to do those things for a year until I was declared healthy. Spoiler alert: I wasn't declared healthy after a year because six months after my not-a-suicide-attempt-supposed-suicide-attempt, my brother had a suicide attempt which not only actually was an attempt but it was successful too and so my healer added another six months of treatment on for me, because grief and all that shit really fucked up my already very fragile mental health." she finished, suddenly feeling very emotionally drained and tired. She wriggled slightly and ended up lying across the bed with her head in Cat's lap as Cat gently stroked her hair. They stayed in that position for a long time and Rose was surprised by how much better she felt now that she'd told someone who wasn't a healer about what had happened, and she was surprised by how nice it felt to be close to someone both emotionally and physically. For the first time in ever such a long time, Rose didn't feel alone.

"Thank you for being here, Cat. I mean it. You are an amazing friend." Rose said, looking carefully into Cat's kind brown eyes.

"I'm glad to be here, Rosie." she replied. "Now, I think there are a lot of things we need to discuss in terms of helping you feel more okay again, but I think that for today we should just do our best to have a lovely day together, what do you think?"

"I agree." Rose replied, "There's a Wizarding village a few minutes walk from here that I was considering visiting today, shall we go there?"

"Yeah, let's." Cat agreed, gently pushing Rose up and getting up herself. Before they separated, though, she embraced her and they stood in the middle of the room holding each other for a minute or so. And Rose felt better than she had felt in ever such a long time. There was something about talking about it outside of therapy and with someone who wasn't paid to be there. Cat was there and she was listening and she was kind and she was Rose's friend and that just felt like everything right then.