I Am Happy... - Evil Angel97 (essential reading TXT) 📗

problems. You adopted Jordan. Which I think is one of the most amazing things you could ever do. You're much more accepting than my family. And I feel a lot of stuff..." I let the sentence hang there. Looking up I could see his mother thinking about this. I was about to say something else, but was cut off by Dane. 

"Well, that's good to know. What is it that your parents don't like? Your sexual orientation? Your clothes? Your hair? I apologize. I'm a therapist. My wife was a guidance counselor and has a degree in psychology. We have the habit of psycho analyzing people..." I just shrugged my shoulders. This was nothing new to me. I was in the guidance counselor's office two or three times a week.

I didn't know what to say. I could answer all of these by themselves. I could lie. But, for some odd reason, I chose to tell the truth. Which is why I said, "They don't like me... They don't like what I am." I immediatly saw Isaac react to the 'what' phrase again. But this time he didn't say anything. Immediatly I felt somebody grabbing my hand and leading me to the couch.

When I looked up I was looking directly at Jordan. Why was he doing this? I looked up to see everybody else was leaving the room. I almost called for them to come back. But instead kept quiet. I looked back to him and could see his eyes searching my face. After my expression gave away nothing he immediatly went to my arms. Crossed defensively in front of me. Sleeves pulled down to cover my hands.

"I'm going to tell you something. And I want you to listen. Okay?" I nodded numbly. I didn't want to listen. But I didn't have much choice apparently. "You are not a what. You're a human being. You are not an it, a thing, an object of any sort. You have a pulse. You breathe. You move. If you were an object would you be able to do any of those things?" I thought about this for a minute before taking a shaky breath.

"No? Right? No. I don't know... I guess..." I let these stumble out of my mouth for reasons that are still unknown to me. He looked at my face. I expected to see pity, sorrow, anger. Any kind of emotion would have been better than the understanding look he was giving me. 

"No. You wouldn't. Now, I want you to uncross your arms and roll up your sleeves." At that I immediatly started to object. "No. I'm more comfortable with my sleeves down. I'm fine. Really..." I tightened my muscles up and folded in on my self so I wouldn't have to look at his face. It was a minute before I heard his voice at my ear.

"Casey. Look up for a minute. Please. I'm going to show you something." Something about the tone of his voice made it sound almost as if he were begging. I didn't unfold quite then though. I stayed like that for a minute longer before he said, "Casey, either you look on your own, or I'm going to make you look. Come on. It'll be okay." His voice was gentler now. I raised my head slowly I could see he had taken off his jacket and shirt, leaving only a thin undershirt. I recognized it immediatly.

The slash marks running up and down his arms. Scars that had healed long ago, but would never even out with the surface of his skin. The tell-tale scars showing that he had burned himself with something. There were even bite marks. "Casey. Do you see this? I took mine off. Come on. Let's see it." I slowly grabbed my sleeve and started pulling it down so I could take my shirt off. Glad I had chosen to wear an undershirt. 

He sat back on his heels while I pulled it over my head and set it on the couch next to me. Not knowing what to do with my arms, I immediatly followed instinct and folded them so the marks were hidden. "Let me see your arms. Please. I want to show you something. It's okay. You're safe here." He reached out and tentatively touched my leg. I jerked it back and slid a few inches away from him.

"Okay. You don't like being touched. Is that just being touched in general? Or do you want a warning before I make any physical contact with you?" I shrugged my shouders and I heard him take a breath in. "I think you know. You're just afraid that you're going to have the wrong answer. Right?" I was amazed at how right he really was. 

With tears forming in my eyes I nodded my head yes and instinctively reached for my hood to cover my face. But then realized it wasn't there. "Okay. Now, I'm going to tell you something. There are no right or wrong answers here. This is just what you're feeling. As long as you're honest, there'll be no problems. Okay?" I could hear the tone that his mother had used earlier when she apologized for startling me.

"Okay... Okay. Yes, I prefer a warning. I don't like being touched in general. But I prefer a warning over people just grabbing me." I looked at him and could see a mix of emotions cross his face. 

"All right. Now. Give me one of your arms. I'm going to grab hold of your hand and use the other one to point things out on your arms. Okay?" I nodded my head and slowly extended my arm. He gently took hold of my hand and took his other finger to start pointing out old scars. "See these? These are all finished stories. You started a whole novel when you made that cut. They're healed now. Eventually you might not even know they're there."

I was oddly intrigued at this. I watched him move on to some that had happened in the past year. "These, these ones still have room for improvement. Maybe some revisions? Maybe there's some corrections that need to be made. They're almost done. But not quite." The next he moved onto were ones within the month. "These are very new. You've barely made a dent in anything with them. You're always looking back at them. Always thinking what you could have done differently. How you could change them."

Slowly, so I knew exactly what he was doing, he traced the ones I had made that day. "And these," he said tracing over them, "are only titles, dedications, and a summary. Not even started. But there's an idea there. Do you see that?" I looked down through blurry eyes and saw his finger resting gently on my wrist. 

"Yes. I see. I guess. You're saying that every one of them has a reason for being there. That each one of them I started something and that I can finish them." He nodded his head slowly and rested his hands on my knees. My first instinct was to jerk back. He held his hands firmly in place and then, after a minute, he removed them. 

"I'm going to tell you something. And you're probably going to reject it. But, it worked for me when I was in foster care, and I think it'll work for you. Okay?" I nodded my head slowly, unsure of what he was going to do. "Okay. I don't like being touched either. I'm going to say that. I was abused by my dad after my mother died. I was taken out of my home after if going on for four years. I was sixteen when they took me out. You would have been?"

I looked up and thought. "I don't know. How old are you now?" 

"I'm eighteen. Two years older than Isaac. If you're his age, then you're sixteen. Right?" I nodded my head. After a second I added, "I'll be seventeen in a few days." 

"Okay. Then you would have been fourteen. I'm going to guess that things had just started happening. You were getting sick of everybody and everything. Right?" I nodded my head again, afraid to speak for fear of crying.

"Okay. Now, I had been cutting for about two years when they removed me. Nobody knew about it until I got put on a probation for cutting curfew and skipping school too many times. They wouldn't let me wear long sleeves because they were afraid I'd hide a knife in them. When my foster mom saw them, she almost fainted. The first thing she did was rush me to the emergency room. Afraid that I was slowly dying.

"After they checked me out and said everything with them was okay, they evaluated me for a month and came back saying that I was depressed, had anxiety, and that I was on the brink of being bi-polar. They put me into therapy and fed a bunch of medications down my throat. I didn't like that. I felt like I couldn't do anything. Everything was moving in slow motion it seemed like. 

"After they decided I was safe they slowly started weaning me off of all the medications except for something they called an "emergency prescription". This was for if my anxiety started acting up and I needed one. I never took any of those pills. I didn't want to go back to that other world where nothing is real. And here I am today. Still depressed. I still have anxiety. And I still have that bottle of pills sitting in my room. And you know what? Because of the house that I'm in now, I haven't even thought about cutting for a year and a half."

I felt him reach his hand up to my face. I flinched as he tucked a lock of hair behind my face. "I want you to stop cutting. Okay? And the next time you come over here, for every new cut you have, I am going to hug you for one minute. Understand? This is what they did with me. It was to get me to stop cutting. And it was to get me used to human contact. Kind of a reverse psychology sort of thing. But, it worked. I still don't appreciate being touched. But it's not nearly as bad." 

I looked up to him and closed my eyes as a tear rolled down my cheek. "Why? Why do you want me to stop? You don't have to put up with me. You don't have to worry about whether I'm going to wake up tomorrow. So why are you so concerned about this?" I could see him trying to think of something to say. When a few minutes had passed I looked him in the eye and said, "Exactly.You can't think of any reasons. Because you couldn't think of them. So, I leave you with the question: 'Why not?'. Because that's the only thing there is to say..."

I leaned back and closed my eyes. Hearing him exhale deeply I opened my eyes. He was just sitting on the floor watching me. I had put my shirt back on and had assumed my defensive position as before. I could see his eyes searching my face. Again, I reached behind me to pull my hood up again. And again I discovered it wasn't there.

"Why do you do that?" I jumped at the voice. I looked at Jordan and saw him looking at me inquisitively. 

"What? Do what?" I saw him slowly lean backwards until he was resting against the chair behind him. 

"Reach behind you like that. And then when you pull your hand back you look disappointed and scared. That's the second time you've done it." I thought of how I could explain it to him. I couldn't think of something technical, so I just said, "It keeps me safe... When I want to block everything out. And I don't want to see what's going on in the world, I pull my hood up. It