Borders & Rules

Chapter 21

This is bullshit.

I touched the letters and smiled when I read the first words. There was still something left of Kevin and I was glad to finally read something else than just the few words he had written in the hospital, even though I wasn't in these notes yet.

I still had something to get to know of him. It was like he was still alive. Or a part of him was. And I was so curious to get to know the Kevin I had never gotten to see.

My therapist wants me to keep a journal. So here you go. The headline also applies to the whole book, not just to today's entry. (Yes, that's literarily important and no, it's not just important because he gave me a minimum daily word count for my entries.)

It's bullshit to think that writing about something that makes me feel horrible, will make me feel better. Doesn't make sense at all. And since Mr Davies isn't gonna check these notes, I'm just gonna say it. He probably doesn't want to do the work himself and expects me to get better on my own. But, surprise: I don't feel any better.

According to Dr Wilson, he had started taking notes when he was eleven. I didn't think those words sounded like an eleven year old boy. I probably would have written about trivial things at the age of eleven. Kevin started with the hard facts of his life right from the start. He wrote phrases like, no one wanted me in this world, so why do I have to stay?

His real mother never wanted to be found by him, but with a few not-so-moral tricks he found her anyway. Only to have her tell him he was an unwanted child. Not only this—and I thought this was worse enough—but it got worse and worse the more I read.

I don't know how to feel. Not only am I unwanted, I'm much worse. I'm a child born out of horror.

I read that phrase at least five times before I finally understood what he meant. And was only confirmed when reading on. Kevin's mother was raped by the age of sixteen. Sixteen. I was almost sixteen, and she had born a child at that age? She hadn't even been thirty when she had met Kevin again. About the same age as Dr Wilson. I imagined Dr Wilson having a son who would be eleven. That was sick. To be honest, if I were Kevin I wouldn't know how I should feel either.

There were phrases in his notes that looked like actual notes, not journal entries. Quite often I read words in the margins that made no sense. Todo lists made up of teenager tasks. Clean up the room. Bring out garbage. Math Homework. I've read the word Graham so many times that I'll probably never associate it with anyone other than Kevin ever again. And only found out later that it was his real mother's surname. Kevin Graham.

Kevin was an A student. He was good at many things, not just at school. Apparently he was also good with mechanics and technology. He once wrote in great detail about how he fixed a car with his foster father. It was so adorable that I wanted to cry when realizing again that he wasn't alive anymore.

But his greatest passion was books. Not fictional. He read books about history and esoteric and things I didn't even know the name of. And he had been only twelve, probably. He once spent a whole page talking about his zodiac sign. I probably know every trait of a Capricorn by heart now.

I wanted to continue the notes but I couldn't. Naomi once told me if I ever feel emotionally overloaded I shouldn't push myself. And I felt miserable right now. These notes... they were different than the notes of the hospital. They were dark. Suffocating. Even as he wrote about happy times, the mood was strange. No goals. No dreams. No future. He just lived. In comparison the hospital notes were painful in a whole different way—they were a burning pain in my chest—but just because I was in there. Because I could have made things differently.

So I forced myself to stop reading. For now. I decided to read the notes only in moments I was mentally prepared. And I was not even close to mentally prepared right now. But maybe I'd be able to read more after my meetings with Naomi. Soon.