It Hurts

Can you truly hate yourself?

At exactly 6 am every day the lights turned on and some cheesy song like "walking on sunshine," or "here comes the sun," always a fricken sun. They force you to breakfast and pill people get in a big line where they give you your exact pill amount, with a small glass of water that tastes slightly off, or maybe it's the cup.

After a week Evan can safely say he hates it. Nothing has changed except for everyone knows there's something wrong with him. Therapy sucks, this time they won't let him leave without talking about something and then they don't let anything go, he said how he doesn't like how he looks and now he has to write 10 things that are great about his body. His roommate is completely unresponsive which just makes him feel a constant pity, he tried talking to him once and just got a blank stare with a few blinks. A few people have attempted to talk to him, and honestly, to his best ability he has responded, but after they notice he is completely and utterly boring with no interest in spilling his secrets, they leave him alone.

But today in the cafeteria there is a whisper and chat all around, he catches "Murphy," and "back," which doesn't help his confusion.

After thinking about where he wanted to sit for at least 10 minutes

Alana, one of the girls here for cutting herself sits down at Evans's table of solitude. He should have expected it, she always made rounds and talked to everyone.

"Hi, I'm Alana!" She extends her hand, Evan panics and wipes his hand on his pants before thinking better of it, they are sweaty and gross anyway. He opts to wave instead.

"Hi, I'm Evan." He politely adds.

"I know," she responds cheekily and starts rapidly talking a mile per minute. He tries to follow her, he really does, but instead, he can only focus on how the air conditioning seems to be hotter than usual, and how he probably smells gross and looks funny. He honestly can't remember if he brushed his hair before leaving.

"Is what do you think?" She finishes, Evan snaps back to try and nod discreetly. Thankfully, this seems to be the correct answer because she agrees with him and starts eating lunch.

Then the doors burst wide open, all eyes snap to a skinny boy with cheekbones and long dark brown hair, he has black skinny jeans and a Rolling Stones faded t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. Overall he looks like the kind of person who Evan would usually avoid, however, he comes to sit right next to Alana and props up his feet on the table, getting dangerously close to Evans's mashed potatoes.

"Hey Alana," he smiles at her, "I'm back!" But it sounds more like, "I'm baaaaaaaack!" As he draws out the drama.

She frowns disapprovingly at him, "you just left, What'd you do this time." 

The boy raised his arms defensively, "nothing!"

Alana raised an eyebrow and the boy rolled his eyes, "Alana I swear, I'm in for anger issues, not drugs or suicide attempts okay?"

Evan tried not to let the shock at his blatant shock show as this boy just revealed his problems like it was nothing. However, he must've made a sound of recognition because the boy's eyes snapped to him, hair flowing like a Princess.

"What you got a problem with that?" He snapped angrily.

"No! No- I'm just, in for uh-" Evans mind was racing as fast as his thumping heart, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, kept repeating in his brain so instead he said, "alcohol abuse, I was just shocked."

The boy seemed to deflate a little, nodding at this. He leaned back against the chair, "I'm Connor."

"Evan," he replied, satisfied that he could say his name and not mess it up at least.

Alana looked him up and down, "you don't look like an alcoholic."

Connor nudged her, but Evan responded way too quickly, "that's because! Uh- it was my idea! So I had already been off it for a while, but the urge was too tempting and I- I kept having slip-ups."

Connor and Alana nodded like that made sense and Evan let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. This was easy, people would ask Alana why he was here, she'd explain, and people would stop asking questions. Lying was easy, telling the truth or even ignoring was harder.

Connor turned back to Alana and continued their conversation, every once in a while including Evan in a small way such as, "what do you think?" Or, "that can't be true, right Evan?" While Evan figured it was to be polite, who'd wanna talk to him? He appreciated being included for once.

Eventually, breakfast was over, and a big crowd formed around Connor asking him questions. Seemingly everyone knew Connor except for Evan, which was fine he supposed.

One of the kids, Bryan, with no impulsive control, grabbed Evans's leg while walking out, which was incredibly awkward and shocking for Evan, especially when the nurse made Bryan apologize. Though after he threatened to kill Evan and his family for not reciprocating his feelings and Evan wondered if there were a lot more problems with Bryan and figured it made sense he was here if he threatened Evans family that easily, though it still shook Evan and he had a hard time sleeping.

Before crawling in bed he walked over to his roommate who was staring into space.

"Hey?" He said, but his roommate didn't respond. He never did, but Evan always found he blinked faster when Evan talked to him so he told him about his day and then after an hour the nurse came in and forced Evan to sleep.

The world felt so much bigger when Evan talked to his roommate, who he didn't have the name. If that's the kind of thing that could happen, why was Evan even here? What was the point?

Though late at night, he woke up from a nightmare, sweating and crying, but when he looked over, his roommate had sat up and looked straight at him, Evan stared back and they seemed to have no idea what to do.

This went on for 20 minutes before Evan said, "I'm okay." And his roommate immediately lied down and stared once again. Evan had no idea if he slept, if he did it was during Evans therapy or something.

With that, he went back to sleep.