All my life. There she was. I say she but who knows what it is. A presence that I’ve never been able to prove but am routinely tortured by, costing me any small chance of connection with other people, family or not.
I’m utterly alone.
This yearly “tradition” has gone on for so long and now I’ve hit the final mark of my sanity, with absolutely no one to confide in anymore. So I’m going to put it out for everyone to see, before I finish things.
I remember being annoyed walking into the sterile, beige doctor’s office at the age of 7. My friend Danny was hosting his weekly freeze tag gathering in his absurdly large yard, and I was being ripped away for some “problem” that I thought was completely normal. A blurry figure, 50 or so meters out, whom I giggled at due to its awkward stature.
My imagination gave it many identities, from a quirky angel protecting me as I constantly attempted to show off to it, all the way to a neighborhood mime that my friends apparently just refused to tell me about. However, after hearing about all my fellow neighbors’ imaginary friends that they’d tell secrets to and share tea parties with, I thought that this figure was just my own version of that. Imagination is the strongest form of denial.
The doctor shuffled his way into the room, followed by a not so enthusiastic “Shelly?”, consulting his clipboard. I nodded robotically, uncomfortable by the cold environment along with the tall stranger I was being forced to engage with. My mom sitting in the corner chair, feigning a smile to the man before brining her fingernails back up to her teeth.
“‘My names Doctor Aaron, and I’ve heard we’ve made a new friend have we?” the doctor spoke as he fitted his stethoscope into his ears.
“Yeah, but mom doesn’t believe me.” I said, exaggerating my words in typical childlike frustration.
I grew irritated just thinking of the situation. I had told her about the figure, and after stating she had not seen anyone multiple times, my anger flared as I screamed and continuously pointed in its direction. Tired of my attitude, she had walked next to the tree in Danny’s yard where the figure was standing, side by side with it, throwing her hands up in impatience. She saw nothing, but in my eyes she was being a jerk to my friend.
His nod showed an understanding that calmed me slightly, as the cold surface of the scope was placed on my chest. After the usual breathing instructions, his brow furrowed slightly.
“You’re not feeling nervous are you Shelly, there’s nothing to be afraid of here. See look.” He said, pointing up the dozen or so children’s drawings taped above the patient bed, some being appreciation notes written in sloppy crayon.
“Plenty of kids just like you sat in here, and all walked out right as rain! So It’s pretty cool you’re here you know, it takes a strong girl to work up the bravery to go get medicine herself, yuck!” He said, scrunching his face and smiling. I laughed and smiled alongside him, feeling more and more comfortable with Doctor Aaron as the visit went on.
I don’t remember much of the specifics of those visits, but I was eventually diagnosed with clinical anxiety. Fear and worry weren’t exactly what I’d call my emotions at that age, but with excessive irritability and refusal to be separated from others at all times, it was a safe bet. Not to mention the figure, to them being a creation of my mind which gave me an unhealthy, hypersensitive paranoia to my surroundings. How could it be paranoia? She was always in the same place. Behind me.
Whenever I had mentally acknowledged her, she would freeze in place, allowing me to turn around and gaze at her. As a child, this was a rare occurance, due to the immense distance alongside the many other things in my small mind. I essentially summoned her when I wanted to, having to access a large open area to do so. But things changed. She got closer. Year by year, the distance slowly became shorter, with a pattern I hadn’t recognized until my 17th birthday.
— — —
I hadn’t wanted to be at that party that day, but you know how it goes. You’re friends with someone for so long they’re practically a part of you, alongside my raging hormones pushing me to make the stupidest decisions when I was around him. Danny’s house was bustling as always, his dad on his usual out of town business trips, with his mother no longer around, caught fucking a colleague at work by Danny himself. It happened a couple years ago, and he took it about as well as you’d expect any teenager to, refusing to open up about it and letting it consume him in more ways than one. But I loved him. Well, a teenagers idea of love, but he really was the only one I felt comfortable being with without losing control of my breathing and going into fits of panic. My mind being so infatuated with him that even “she” never appeared.
The bottles of beer began to pile up between the 8 of us in the living room as we passed the blunt around, a recording of the Blue Jays and Phillies World Series silently playing on the TV as a track mix of Shai, Aerosmith and many others blasted throughout the room. Danny sat beside me, throwing comments back and forth with the guys about the various girls they hooked up with over the summer break, stopping me and my friend Madison’s conversation.
“God really?” She said, flicking her cigarette and crossing her legs, smuggly wincing in disbelief.
“How many times did you assault my parents basement with your dragons and dung jeans or whatever the hell that crap is.”
Some laughed, others cursed, but Danny took it differently. He apparently had enough of hiding his internal frustrations, and allowed the alcohol and drugs to make it a challenge instead, performing an over the top movement of putting his hand on my leg, slightly under my skirt. I felt a tingle of excitement in my stomach as it was the intimacy I’ve been craving from him for so long, but it didn’t last.
“What Maddie, you’re gonna pretend like you’re not craving one of us to break you in, nice and slow?” Danny said to her, slurring his words slightly but holding conviction in his tone. I didn’t get to see her reaction, as he reached his hand up between my legs.
I can’t describe the pure fury and terror that overcame me, as I quickly threw his arm away and attempted to get up, only being stopped by his aggressive embrace. I felt my breathing rapidly increase as my sense of touch dissipated and my vision blacked out in a paranoid frenzy. All my body allowed me to do was listen, hearing erupting laughter from all the others along with the stereo lyrics blasting throughout my senses.
“I try to cross to the opposite side.”
“So I can finally find what I’ve been looking for.”
Danny wasn’t my Danny anymore, a foreign entity at this point, causing me nausea and dizziness as my mind rapidly convinced my body I was in immense danger. Rage overtook me, and despite being a sobbing, shaking mess I blindly scratched and bit my way out of his grasp and frantically sprinted for the exit out of the house. I flung open the front door and tripped down the few concrete steps leading onto the yard, not feeling any sensation as the panic pushed me foward with my vision slowly returning to me. The darkness of the night branched out in front of me, and I realized I was completely alone for the first time since I was a child.
“In the middle of the night.”
“I go walking in my sleep.”
“Through the valley of fear.”
“To a river so deep.”
The sounds of the stereo and concerned cries for my name faded in the distance as I sobbingly walked down the main road with arms crossed, small streaks of blood smeared across them. No doubt Danny’s. As I walked, my eyes rapidly darted side to side observing every possible angle, my mind sending unexplainable waves of nausea and dread throughout my body as I struggled to even breathe. Suddenly, my eyes widened and I swallowed a weak, shallow breath as I quickly turned around in a frantic motion of paranoia. There she stood a mere 35 meters away from me, illuminated by a ominous glow of a streetlight. A woman, dressed in a black gown, tilted backwards at a disturbing angle. Her head was completely laying backwards, which combined with the angle made it impossible to see anything aside from just her neck and dangling brown hair. Her left arm reached foward to me, as her right lays to her side dangling, but keeping with her impossibly tilted body.
I’ve of course seen her before this point, far more frequently as the shorter distance makes it more reasonable for her to be visible. However I had just seen her yesterday, and she was not this close. That’s when I made the connection. It was my birthday.
“What do you want from me!” I screamed with pure rage as tears flowed down my cheeks. The ever steady stillness of the figure did little to scare me at this point. I was angry with its existence. Angry I had to deal with it alone. I pushed foward rapidly as I clenched my fist ready to confront her face to face, but as always, she simply slid backwards at the same speed as me, making no body movements aside from her clothe and dangling hair. Upon seeing this again while in such a state, I screamed at the top of my lungs and began punching the asphalt of the street, blood splattering as pain was no longer present.
“I’ll fucking kill you, you hear me! You’re not going to do this to me! I will fucking kill you before I let you torture me you bitch!” Followed by another scream as loud as I could. Of course, when I regained a slight bit of composure and stopped shaking enough to briefly sit up, there she stood, unmoving, as I turned around and walked home, holding my now fractured hand.
— — —
Time passed as my mother and I become more and more distant. Who could blame her really, she struggled with raising a sick daughter all by herself and her reward was an antisocial train wreck of a child attached to her like a leech.
Nothing prepares anyone for that. She was trapped in a cage of mental whiplash whenever she spoke with me, so pills were of course the next step for her.
Caregiver syndrome is the most cruel, unintentional torture imaginable.
By the time I was in my mid 20’s, functioning with a job the best I could and finally comfortable enough to engage with others, my mother was lost to the distinct void of apathetic numbness that only the magic of modern medicine can provide.
Time passed on as our weekly phone call moved to monthly, then to a couple a year, then to being as lost as she was. Needless to say none of this was benefitting my own numbness, the sense of impending dread as my curse drifted closer and closer, chiseling away my already catatonic willpower.
It felt as though an endless weight was lifted off my chest when she called one day and told me she was off her meds for over a month. Waves of nostalgia poured over me as I finally heard the familiar voice of my mother free from the shackles of addiction. I lived only a state away and in the past the drive had felt too quick, but this time I was bursting with relief ridden anxiety. It had been almost a decade at this point since I’ve seen her like I used to remember.
What would we talk about? What did functional women even care about? What I going to disappoint her with my dead end job? Would she ask for grandchildren? Would she try to help me again? Oh god, what if she tries to help me again? Does she hate me?
None of that mattered when I walked into that familiar house. After closing the front door behind me and turning the corner I froze rigid with needle like burns piercing my mind and body. Just across the room, on the other side of the round kitchen table sat a blurry figure in a wooden chair. Behind it was “her”.
No no no no no no no.
Consistency is ALL I have, it’s all I EVER had, why is she in front of me.
Fuck what is that blur.
Oh god why. Why is she touching its shoulder.
Thoughts battled in my head as I stood petrified, but then I heard the blurry figure speak. A bass filled muffled sound emitted from the sitting being, like the faint sound of talking a couple rooms away but far louder, shaking my entire body with every bizarrely imitated word.
Seeing my curse so up close I noticed its middle and pointer finger pointing at me from its outstreched arm, palm seemingly resting on the blur’s shoulder. I saw graying hair among the shades of brown, and watched as she sprung upwards when the sitting figure stood up and laid down a cup on the table quickly.
I smelled coffee.
“Mom!?”
My blurred mother continued to imitate speech as she slowly approached me, arms upwards in a non threatening way.
All I saw however was that thing coming closer to me than it had ever before, my mind forcing my body to step backwards without letting it out of my sight. I felt my head go light and my eyes began to water, as the thud of my heartbeat reverberated in my dry throat.
“No…” I croaked out in a heaving breathe.
“God no, get off of her, please god get off of her…”
My eyes began to be sore from how wide they stared at the figures neck and chin, my forehead muscles begging for a release as I took a shuffling step backwards.
“Please I beg you, let her go, take me… it’s always been me. For the love of god let her go, please.”
There was unwavering silence.
“Please!”
I screamed at it and felt the inevitable clog in my throat as the tears coated my horrified face. Once my mother took one more step towards me I felt every ounce of suppressed panic and fear I held against the figure flow into my chest as I bolted out the door, barely conscious. I quickly hopped in my car and slammed my foot downwards, taking off from the driveway and slamming my passenger side mirror into the mailbox. I needed to get away, for more than one reason.
I looked backwards with intent once I was on the road, and much to my relief the figure was behind me again. My bargain had worked and she was away from my mother. I steadied my hyperventilating and braced for the drive home. I didn’t know what to do. If there even was anything to do.
When I finally returned home, I found multiple voicemails from my mother. I paused for a second, glaring at the receiver before shakily hitting play. The muffled sounds burst loudly from the machine as I screamed and fell over from pain, a mistake I quickly regretted as the horrible sounds invaded my entire apartment as I laid helplessly on the ground in a ball.
It sounded like imitated crying. My mother overdosed two days later.
— — —
“It killed her Aaron, I told you…”
“Okay Shelly, I understand. Look, let’s just meet up so we can talk and get your mind off of it, for old times sake.”
I paused for a couple seconds.
“Just talk, for old times sake right?” I murmured.
“Of course Shelly. Like I said, I’m not a physician anymore but I’d like to think I am your friend.” He said in an optimistic tone.
“Okay.”
No one can blame him for how overly cautious he spoke to me on the phone. I was a checked out recluse for months after my mother died and for all he knew I was just a ticking bomb myself, primed to ignite at the slightest nudge. But Doctor Aaron cared, he always did.
I can’t imagine how he felt when he saw me stumble into the quaint diner outside of the city. This 30 something woman he last saw as a child, meekly approaching his table while gazing to her sides in paranoia. Though despite my rough appearance, I couldn’t be happier to just talk to someone about nothing important. I could never form new bonds later in my life, so all I really had was my past.
“Hello Doctor Aaron.” I said sheepishly while smiling, taking a seat across from him in the booth.
I saw a familiar glow spread across his now wrinkled face.
“Shelly, it’s so great to see you. It really is.” He said with the gentlest smile.
I suddenly felt guilty making him meet me in a place like this instead of coming to his house to meet his family. After what happened at my old home I felt like my already fragile sense of reality crumbled, with the slightest drop of my guard inviting more instability.
There really was no winning, because once my guard was dropped my brain would thrust “her” into my memory, but I had a lifetime of experience pushing her into the few guarded places still lingering in my subconscious. Aaron and I had a great dinner together while he discussed his daughter’s pregnancy and how much that had happened in my neighborhood over the years. It was a beautiful, melancholic evening as we watched the cars drive down the interstate through the large diner window beside us.
Of course, I faltered for a brief moment.
Just once when the thought of her came into my mind, I caved in and looked behind me. There she floated, towards the entrance of the diner. I loathed that she was inside of buildings with me now, they were such a welcome sanctuary for so much of my apprehensive life. As I turned back around to face the table, hardly phased by her grotesque image, Aaron had taken notice. My heart caught in my throat as my eyes opened wide.
No no no no no.
Aaron’s warm demeanor changed to a professional charisma.
“Shelly, I know this therapist that speciali-“
The overwhelming bass shook my body as my ears began ringing in the highest pitch imaginable. A blur of muted colors sat 2 feet in front of me as her dead skin and dangling hair violently manifested behind it.
I screamed, so loud that the blur covered it’s ears and imitated a scream as well. An immense sensation of burning bile swam up my body as I began vomiting the little food I ate all over the table and leaned towards the window of the diner, my head desperate to overcome the dizziness. I wish it hadn’t.
After a couple of slow blinks, the blurry figure was now in the booth with me and had its hand on my shoulder, but all I saw in my peripheral were two pale fingers and her thrown back head towering above me.
My brain gave out and I began to thrash wildly as a dizzying heat embraced all of my limbs, punching and clawing anything near me, begging for her to get away. With both my brain and body confined in that cramped booth, in pure horror and desperation I punched at the diner window to break it to no avail. With my sense of touch being devoured from intense panic, the last thing I felt was the blurred Aaron grasping my arms viciously. My vision rapidly dimmed from my brain’s overstimulation in the moment, so I did the only thing I could think of, slamming my head into the window before I could be forced to witness how close she was to me.
Naturally, I woke up in the hospital a day later. Aaron had left me a voicemail when I eventually returned home, and despite what had happened the first time I did so, I promptly pressed the play button.
“I’m uh… worried about you of course.” Aaron’s monotone voice came to life in my apartment.
“Yeah, I’m sure you know you need help. I believe everything can be treated but I’m hesitant to offer… solutions considering all that’s happened with your mother and the uh… well yeah.”
I watched the receiver with a blank stare, my chest feeling just as barren.
“This’ll be the last time you hear from me, good luck Shelly.”
I didn’t budge for half an hour as I stood staring, my labored breathe breaking the now silent atmosphere.
I had heard his voice clear. He really was done wanting to help. Thank god, for his sake. Thank god.
And so I went on the next 6 or so years of my life numb, disconnected and alone. Aside from her of course. Always occupying the room with me at this point, no mental willpower would ever keep her isolated as she now lingered only a couple of feet behind me. If I turned too fast when I wasn’t indulging her, I’d see her hair flying sideways in the corner of my vision, forcing me to acknowledge. Violently stopping in place a couple feet away. Pointing at me. Leaned backwards as always.
The depression was an endless, nauseating void that engulfed me and stole away what little comfortability and passions I had ever had. I’d sit in the corner of the room, sometimes to force her into the wall behind me, or sometimes after thinking of her so I could stare at her in the middle of the room for hours, numb and consumed in self pity.
I had crashed my car the day after one of my birthdays when I realized she was now in my backseat, constraining me into jobs closer to my place so I could walk to work. Compared to now, it was still possible to make an attempt at a functional life. That was until my next birthday, when her outstretched fingers are now just out of reach from my elbow.
I was finished then.
This year I haven’t worked or done much of anything at all, I’ve succumbed to it like I always knew would inevitably happen. It just came quicker than expected you know? Somehow. But then I found salvation.
While walking home after getting groceries, I smiled emptily when I saw the black gown in the display window.
— — —
At least I picked something comfortable I guess.
She never killed my mother, I did. That woman was my rock when I needed her most, but I couldn’t be there for her when she needed me. Hell, I was the cause of it all. I’m so sorry mom. She hid you from me because you really did want to help, even after you suffered detoxing alone. Even after I screamed and ran from you. I’m so, so sorry.
I keep looking down at the thing’s hand, and finally just now realized what’s it’s doing with its fingers.
It’s all pretty obvious in hindsight isn’t it. The fact my hair prematurely grayed out due to constant anxiety. That I had to learn to use a mouse left handed when computers first got popular due to my self inflicted fractured right hand. None of this makes any sense and frankly that’s okay. She was never real, but I made her real with my decisions, and finally accepted her with that bottle of sleeping pills I took.
I’m looking at my arms as I slowly feel my body bracing, the sensation of heaviness consuming them as I type this out. I can’t help but visualize my right arm drooping down to my side as I slump backwards here soon. Man, clicking the post button really is the last thing I’m ever going to do.
Funny, I can’t stop thinking about Danny. Life was so much better back then when I didn’t know death was coming closer.