I'm So Sorry

Chapter Two

Shannon

My name is Shannon.

So now you know my name. But you don't know my story.

It's not a thrilling tale. It's not a completely unusual tale. But I can't stomach the idea of the world knowing all of my secrets. They're called secrets for a reason, we all hide things because we don't want people to find out about them. We keep secrets to protect ourselves, because showing off too much is grounds for danger.

I'm not going to sit here and sugarcoat the story for you, we all know that shit is pointless. I'm just not starting from the beginning, because why start somewhere you don't remember being? Starting at the beginning of a story is basically telling you that the world was perfect and then it wasn't. And sure, things did start well. Fantastic even. We were all close, we were all friends and we were all happy. But I don't even know how this started, how the walls of our friendship began to crumble and crack so quickly and without a single sign of warning. It's like all of us woke up one day and decided that the world needed to be darker, and that everyone had to fight.

I don't know what telling our story will do, I don't know if this is supposed to help or this will make everything worse. Saying all the words out loud makes me terrified and ashamed and knowing that my secrets and the other eight people in this group will also no longer have secrets terrifies me. But it's gone too far at this point. We're suffering, all of us. The sooner we try and fix our problems, the sooner that we finally accept everything, the sooner we can move on.

If we're even capable of moving on.

But I'm not going to start from the beginning. I'm just going to start from today. I'm just going to tell you today.

You follow along as best as you can.

And to everyone reading this, whether you're one of the nine or someone who's found our story...

I'm so sorry.

Jessie

I shiver.

It's not cold outside right now, being June, but it's just something I've come to get used to. Shivering. Shivering as I get out of bed, or when walking down the street, or sitting in class.

Shivering.

It's basically a side effect of my PTSD, that's what my therapist told me when I saw her for the first time. I'd gone to her office, a room at the end of a long stretched hallway, that was about as big as my own bedroom, with dark brown walls and dark furniture and a large wooden desk and a black carpet. I'd thought all of this was a joke when I had sat down on the deep red couch, inhaling the smell of cookies in the air, which must have been the scent she was burning from her candle.

Dr. Waters is a kind, skinny African American woman in her late thirties, with a smile wider than any other I'd ever seen. Her smile was kind and bright when I first entered her office. It dissipated as I told her my story.

I told her why I was in her office, why I'd been sent to her, and the events leading up to being in the hospital for the day prior. She looked horrified, like the events had happened to her, and not me. Like she was experiencing it all on her own, and playing back my words like an old movie. She pitied me, which is the one thing I hate about all of this. The pity. But what was I going to do? Sit there and say, "No, Dr. Waters, I don't want you to pity me. I came here to help get over it, not to have you pity me. It's okay, please don't look at me this way."

I entered her office that day with a black eye that's gone now, a bruise upon my cheek that still hasn't faded, cuts on my arms and legs from the glass and bite marks on my neck. Not hickies. Bite marks. Ones that were difficult to hide, one's that I had to cover carefully with flannel shirts and my medium length blonde hair.