“Normal,” I whisper, mostly to myself. “I’ll never be normal.”
I’ve been fighting medication because the night I cut my mother in the kitchen, the sedative made me feel weak, less concrete in my body. And because the phantom was still there even beneath the haze of the drug. She wants to climb inside me, claim me. I can feel it, like she’s pounding on the door of my soul. What if, by taking the pills, I become too weak to fight her off? And somewhere, deep inside me, I think medication is poison. I don’t know where that thought comes from, but it feels like a conviction. Now they want to force me to take it, and because I’m a minor, they say I have no choice.
“Ryan, this is not your fault, nor is it something you can will away. The bravest thing you can do is to come to a place of acceptance so you can move forward in life, healthier and better able to cope. You don’t have to suffer.”
You do. Yes, you do.
We fill my new head-med prescription, and after the first week of taking it, I don’t feel much difference. My mom is worried that the prescription isn’t effective. “Maybe that’s because I’m not mentally ill?” I offer with some sarcasm.
My mom cries openly while driving home from my follow-up visit to Dr. Collier’s. “I feel like I’m losing everyone I love. Your bodies stay here, but your minds become a room I can’t enter. It’s been a long road with your father’s PTSD. He’s having bad dreams again. Did you know that?” I didn’t, but she doesn’t wait for my answer. “Your grandma slips deeper into herself every day, and you . . . you’ve changed before my very eyes.” She wipes her face with the sleeve of her flowered blouse.
“Why didn’t Gran come with us to the doctor?” I ask in a feeble attempt to change the subject.
Mom notices and gives me a raised eyebrow. “She isn’t feeling well. I couldn’t rouse her this morning, so I let her stay in bed. She should be fine for this short while.”
I think of Gran’s hitchhiking adventure and how quickly she can slip away. She shouldn’t be alone. “I lost her,” I blurt. “After I got out of the hospital. She went hitchhiking for pancakes.”
My mom’s eyes pop open in alarm. “She went?—” Then she laughs, but quickly stops herself with the back of her hand to her mouth. Her laugh isn’t carbonated like before. Now her laugh is flat soda: sweet but lifeless. The car speeds up, and after a few tense minutes she says, “You should have told me.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“We were always so close,” she says. “I feel like I’ve lost my daughter.”
“I’m sorry.” I’m marinating in it.
“I know you didn’t want to take the pills, but they brought your father back to me. If they bring you back, then it seems worth it.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. The daughter she knew is gone. Visions of the girl they miss scroll through my head like a movie montage. Everyone’s fighting to save the girl they love.
We’re all losing the fight.
Suddenly I feel sick. There are kids whose parents don’t fight to save them. The strange, potent thought comes from last night’s dream, but with such emotional force, I’m pierced as if it’s my own story. It’s one of those visions, populated by people with dour, pale faces who are crowding in on me, laying hands on me, that I had to scribble about in my journal. The visions are increasing and uncontrollable. They’re like nightmares while awake. Daymares.
“Have you ever dreamed people you don’t know?” I ask, wanting to know if this is a normal thing. I dream the same cast of strangers so frequently, I feel like I’m starting to know them. And deeply hate them. Powerful emotions?—?hate, anger, despair?—?skip like stones on the lake of my dreams and visions, but otherwise, in day-to-day life, they sink to the bottom.
My mom gives me one of her assessing glances, full of concern. “I think we are all of the characters we dream. Different parts of our psyche playing various roles.”
So does that mean I hate myself?
My dad phones and asks if my mom can come handle some paperwork for the exhibition jump for the facility visit of the organizers of the X Games. He’s called in some favors and has arranged for more jump planes to be onsite when they come. The hangar is getting the top-to-bottom white-glove treatment. With each day, his anticipation ramps up. It has the faint trace of desperation.
My body hums with jittery excitement at going to the airport, and it’s a welcome sensation, something new. Maybe if I skydive, I’ll feel like myself again. The thought of jumping makes me queasy all of a sudden, but to be all the way alive, to experience something more than guilt and confusion, I have to do everything I can to be that girl?—?and that girl eats and breathes the drop zone.