|
|
I sat there, my mother holding my hand, as she began to describe all the injuries I had suffered and all the surgery I had needed to correct those injuries. She told me I had gone through the windshield of the car and the glass had severely lacerated my face and also my scalp, which was why they had to shave off all of my hair. Also, I had been thrown from the car at such a high speed that when I hit the street, it rubbed parts of my arm, legs, and especially may back raw, and I also managed to break my leg, my arm, my ribs , and my pelvis. Pretty safe to say I was in bad shape. The first few surgeries I had were done to relieve the pressure on my brain and to stop some of the internal bleeding the broken ribs and other injuries had caused. They wanted to stabilize me, make sure I didn't take a turn for the worst, and once they determined I could survive it, the doctors were going to fix my broken pelvis...they said it would have to be repaired surgically and a pin or plate placed there to help me walk. Well I guess I was stable enough because they went ahead and did the surgery about two days later. After she told me this, I still wanted to see myself...I wanted to see what I was gonna have to live with, so the nurse handed me a mirror, right side down, and told me to take things slowly and to remember that some scars would need more time to heal.
I nodded my head, closed my eyes, and raised the mirror. I waited about thirty seconds before I gathered the courage to look in the mirror and when I did, I...I burst into tears repeating the word 'no' over and over again. I was a monster...I couldn't even stand to look at my own reflection, how could I expect other people to do the same? I dropped the mirror and sank into my mother's arms crying. I just wanted to die, I didn't want to live like that, I no longer cared what happened to me. In the span of six years, I lost my mother, my best friend, two good friends, and now I looked like...I looked unrecognizable to myself." Rain sank down in the spot she was standing, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She held the picture of her high school friends in her left hand out in front of her. Mark moved behind her and wondered how she had managed to survive through so much turmoil without becoming insane...and this was just the tip o the iceberg. What happened the months and years after the accident probably paled in comparison to the pain she felt right after the accident.
"I staid in the hospital for another month or so, healing and beginning physical therapy to learn how to walk again, just going through the motions. If I pretended like I was getting better emotionally, like I wanted to move on and try and put the accident behind me, then everybody left me alone which was all that mattered to me. I wanted people to stop asking me are you okay, how are you feeling, how are you dealing with the pain, what are you going to do when you get out of the hospital, do you ever feel like killing yourself. All these questions just kept being thrown at me, questions I didn't feel like answering, and I knew if I admitted how I really felt, they would only ask more, so I played the part of the recovering victim. My parents and the psychologist they appointed to me were skeptical as to if I was actually getting better. I wouldn't talk to them about the accident or loosing Cassandra, but I must have put on quite a show because they stopped asking questions and actually bought that I was going to be okay with no real ill effects, emotionally, from the accident. So the doctors sent me home, thinking after a couple months of physical therapy and some counseling about dealing with my appearance that I would just slip back into a normal life again...they couldn't have been more wrong.
It was summer when I finally stepped into my own house, and the first thing my parents and I had to decide on was whether I would be attending summer school and then if I would try and make it back for my senior year or would I wait a year. My parents wanted me to take the remainder of the summer off and pick up school in the middle of the next year, that way I wouldn't have the added pressure of school on my shoulders, but I was thinking way ahead. Between physical therapy, counseling, and school, I knew I wouldn't have a minute to be idle and think about things because I'd be too busy, so I told them I wanted to go to summer school, which was only in two weeks. I did okay at first. I went to school and after that I would go to physical therapy and go home to study. People didn't really bother me that much at school, but I did get a taste what would deal with when I went back to school and from people in general. Some called me names at summer school, some pointed at me and whispered jokes, but the majority avoided me, not wanting to be seen or associated with me. The scars were still pretty bad at that point and I was wearing a wrap around my head so they wouldn't see just how bad the rest of my head looked.
I spent a lot of time at home, and while many teenagers were hanging out at the mall and enjoying their summer, I helped my father work on cars to pass the time and it's when I decided I would follow in his foot steps and become a mechanic. I knew I didn't want to be a veterinarian anymore, that dream died with Cassandra, and I no longer had a desire to draw or do anything in the art field. Any free time I had was filled up reading books about cars and how to fix them or hanging out with dad at the shop. It didn't take that long for August to come around, signaling the end of summer and the beginning of a new school year. I had survived summer school, though my grades weren't the best in the world they were good enough to get me through it. Well I had a week of 'actual' vacation time before school started and this was when I had my first visitor. At the time of the accident, I was dating this, what I considered at the time, wonderful boy in my class, we had been dating since our sophomore year. I was surprised to see him because he hadn't called or stopped by all summer...I figured he had heard what I looked like from somebody who attended summer school and he was silently telling me we were no longer dating. The first thing out of his mouth was 'Damn, you do look as horrible as they said. I thought they were exaggerating'.
I kept my eyes on the floor because I didn't want to give him the pleasure of seeing how much that hurt me and waited for what I already knew was coming. He gave me the 'I don't think we're meant to be together' and 'Things have changed between us and I no longer want to be in this relationship' routine and hastily said good bye as he high tailed it out of the house. I fell into a chair and listened to his car as it drove away, not really as hurt as I probably could have been because I was expecting it. At least he came by and said it to my face and didn't give me the old 'we can still be friends' bulls##t. As I sat in that chair, I started thinking of all the people who were more than likely gonna do the same thing to me the first week of school and prepared myself for a lonely year.
I'm not gonna even bore you with the details of the s##t I went through that year...I'll sum it up in a few sentences for you. I became the butt of many jokes and many pranks. The one thing they loved to do was to grab the wig I had started wearing and run off with it, making me chase after them...the nights I cried myself to sleep over that one. There was also a bet going around to see if a person could find out if the rest of my body looked as bad as my face...that one, I later learned, was started by my ex-boyfriend, can't believe I actually cared for the son of a b##ch. And then there were a bunch of other little things that made life a living hell and started to take their toll...I began eating less, sleeping less. All the guilt I had over the accident that I had pushed back into some dark corner of my mind had found it's way out, and most of all I was missing Cassandra. She was no longer there like she had been for six years and I really needed her...I needed her shoulder to cry on, I needed to hear her laughter, I needed to hear her say that everything was going to be okay...and to know that a drunk had taken her away from me and her family, a drunk somebody could have stopped from getting in a car but they didn't because letting him drive away was better than listening to some harsh words and getting into a potential fight just made it all the worse. I was so depressed and headed for a well deserved breakdown, but I hid it. I hid it for an entire school year...my parents were even oblivious to it, only noticing that was losing weight...until I crashed the day of graduation.
I had already told my parents I wasn't going to march in my graduation, but we were still going to have a small celebration dinner that night and Cassandra's parents were also going to be there. Well, I woke up that morning and found my parents gone and already at work...nothing unusual, so I took a quick shower and sat in my room, reading and listening to the radio. For some reason, early that afternoon I pulled out some old photo albums and sketches I had made of Cassandra and of us together and I started thinking about how my life was gonna be. I had lost too many people who were important to me, I trusted nobody, and I didn't want anybody to get close because I knew they were only going to hurt me. I was facing a life of taunts and stares...and I thought to myself why even bother with it, it's not worth healing with, and it wasn't a life I wanted.
So I made a decision...I went to my parent's bedroom, pulled out my father's gun, returned to my room, and closed the door. I sat down on the bed with the gun and stared at it for what I guess had to be hours. During this time, I heard nothing that was going on around me...I didn't hear the music, I didn't hear the traffic, I didn't even hear my parents come home. They didn't bother to knock on my door because it wasn't out of the ordinary for me to stay in my room listening to music or reading when my parents came home from work. So while they were downstairs reading mail, paying bills, watching the news, and planning what to cook for my party, I was upstairs minutes away from taking my own life. I thought it was the only way out of that mess...or at least it was the easiest, but I was too scared to do it, so I was slowly working myself up to it.
My mother started to get worried when I didn't come downstairs to help with dinner. She knew I was planning on helping her and there was only two and a half more hours before Cassandra's parents would be showing up so alarms started going off in her head. She came upstairs to my room and started knocking on the door...of course I didn't hear her. So she knocked again, saying my name and when I didn't answer that time she opened the door. Later Cynthia told me she had to take a couple of minutes to compose herself and think of what she was going to say...she wanted to run over to me and rip the gun out of my hands but she didn't know how I would react and she also didn't want to alarm me by yelling for my father.
So she slowly walked over to me, frightened out of her mind, and knelt in front of me, ready for a long, hard night. I only became aware of her when she touched my hand. My mom started asking me what was wrong and why I thought a gun was the only answer, and for the first time, I answered her truthfully. I sat there and talked about everything that had bothered me over the year...how I was treated at school, how I was treated by people outside of school, how I couldn't stand to look at myself in the mirror, how I no longer trusted anybody, and how I didn't want to live this life. In the middle of all this, my father came upstairs, and he and my mother started talking to me about what I wanted to do now and if there was anything they could do to help me. I started thinking about that as I stared at the gun...I knew I wasn't going to kill myself, no matter how much I wanted to, I knew I couldn't do it because I would have done it my then. And then there was the look in my parents' eyes that ultimately made me change my mind, seeing how afraid they were and knowing I was the cause of it. I handed the gun over to my father and layed my head in my mom's lap when she moved beside me. I told her the one thing I wanted was to move out of that city as far away as possible...I knew I was asking a lot but I felt I would only get worse if I stayed there...and then I would do whatever they wanted. I would talk to a psychologist, I would spend time in a place where I could work out my problems...anything. I expected her to say 'why don't we try and work things out here' because she had family there and so did my father...and even though they were engaged at that point, my father had no reason to leave...yeah, he loved me like his own daughter, but when it came down to it, I wasn't a part of his 'real' family. They both eased any doubts I had by telling me they would start looking for a new home, new jobs, and a place where I could take the time to properly heal and confront my problems and I didn't need to bother myself with guilt over asking to move because I was the most important thing to them. My mom staid with me that night, even after I fell asleep, and the first thing my father did the next day was to get rid of that gun.
I spent my last day in Colorado at Cassandra's grave. It was actually the first time I had gone there and my parents wanted to come with me, but I convinced them to let me go by myself. This was something I had to do on my own...and nobody wants an audience around when they're saying goodbye. I remember bringing red roses to place on her grave...we both hated red roses because everybody always assumed that every woman loved red roses, but we didn't and if anybody else got them for us, we would always roll our eyes or make comments under our breath, but we gave them to each other all the time on out birthdays...it was kinda like a personal joke between us.
I set the flowers at the foot of her grave and then knealed beside her tombstone, reading the inscription and removing a few weeds that had made their way on the stone. I felt awkward talking to a headstone at first but it didn't take that long for me to shed my shyness. I told Cassandra about all the things that had happened since the accident, how I was treated like an outcast now, how I thought of killing myself, how hurtful some people we thought were our friends were to me, and then I told her I was moving to try and find some way to move on past the accident and everything around it. The remainder of my time was spent remembering all the things we did together and what we had planned to do in the future, and before I left, I promised her I would return whenever I could. I kissed my hand, touched her tombstone, voiced how much I missed her and loved her, and I left.
On my way to meet my parents, I stopped and said goodbye to Cassandra's parents, telling them where I was going and why. Her parents were very happy to see me and said to take care of myself and to stop by if I ever came back to town. With all of that settled, I drove back home to my parents and told them I was ready to leave and start things over in a new home.
It took us forever to reach Nolensville, a city just outside of Nashville and we were all tired...I had to drive my dad's car, my mom had to drive her car, and then my father drove the moving van. Talk about the trip from hell, when we finally arrived, we didn't know whether to jump up and down, or just fall asleep in the cars in the driveway. Our first meal in the house was McDonald's...I remember that because the fries were cold and gross, and after we finished that, we started unpacking. A couple of friends of my dad came over and helped us unpack...actually these were the people who recommended the woman who would become my therapist. She was evidently highly regarded in helping people who were scarred physically in accidents or fires regain some semblance of a normal life and learn to live with what happened to them. His friends told me this woman had helped their daughter, who was burned quite severely in a house fire, and even though she still dealt with ridicule from some people, she found some very devoted friends she wouldn't have given a chance before seeing this therapist.
So I found myself just two days after we had settled in the house sitting in the office of Dr. Jane Wilkerson, not expecting her to be able to help me but hoping she could. When she walked into the office, I almost left then and there. Dr. Wilkerson was a strikingly attractive woman...blonde hair that was layered and framed her face, green eyes, thin...basically the kind of woman other women just hate. I looked at her and thought 'yeah right, she's really gonna be able to help me...she doesn't know anything about being in my place, nothing about what I've gone through...she's damn perfect'. My thoughts must have been written all over my face because she came over to me and said 'It's the same thing every one of my patients think about when they see me...this woman thinks she'll be able to help me...but don't be fooled, I do understand what you're going through and I will be able to help you'. I looked at her, gave a small amused laugh and rolled my eyes, saying 'How could you POSSIBLY understand what I've been and still am going through? You have no idea...I mean, look at you...you, you have no idea what it's like to look like this'. She nodded her head and said 'No, I don't personally know what it's like to be in your shoes, but my sister did. She was in an accident just like you when she was 20 and suffered injuries to her face when her head went through the passenger side window. My sister had always been very proud of her looks...she made every guy turn their head and every woman envious of her...and when her looks were taken away, she felt like she had nothing left.
Friends dropped her, people shunned her, and even though my parents, my brother, and I gave her all the love we could and tried to help her, she took her life four months later. After her death, I knew I wanted to go into psychology and help people like her who think there's no hope, who think they'll never find people to trust or love...because I know they can and I wish a therapist like me had been there for my sister'. I listened to what she said and my first, rather harsh, opinion started to change, though I was still skeptical at the end of that first session. I told my mom about her and my doubts and she told me to at least try a few more sessions, so the next day I was back in her office.
When I arrived, Dr. Wilkerson's secretary showed me into her office because she had stepped out for a moment. While I was waiting, I began to snoop around her office, looking at some books on the shelves, diplomas on the wall, and a picture of her and another woman I guessed to be her sister on her desk...and it was when I was holding that picture that I heard a faint whimpering. I kinda looked around trying to find the source of it, but as soon as I heard it, it disappeared. A couple seconds later, I heard whimpering again and localized it to a spot behind the desk, and when I looked over the desk, I saw a big box with a German shepherd puppy in it. At first I was very angry because I thought she had talked to my parents about how Cassandra and I met and she was trying to use that to get me to talk to her, but once I calmed down a little, I remembered I had never told my parents about the dog...only that Cassandra had come up to the front porch I was sitting on and struck up a conversation. The whimpering of the dog brought my eyes back down to the box and I saw he had now propped himself up on his hind legs, with his front paws hanging over the side and his tail wagging...looking at me with eyes that pleaded 'pick me up! pick me up!'.
So I did and sat down on the couch with him as he licked my face and wiggled around on my lap. I started laughing and smiling...probably the first time I had done that in over a year, the first time I FELT like doing that. You can always count on an animal to make you smile or brighten your mood even when it's the last thing in the world you want. Dr. Wilkerson walked in at that point and commented on how I found her little misfit who had refused to act right that morning so she brought him to work. I was telling her how he was begging to be held and decided to oblige him. Then I said, 'A German shepherd puppy was the reason I met my best friend, Cassandra'. She asked who Cassandra was and I began to tell her. I told her the whole story in that one session with her dog in my lap, and at the end of the session. She outlined my course of therapy. I was going to meet her four days a week...and that's how I slowly began to take control of my life again.
I continued to see her over the following three or four years, and I can't explain how she did it, but I no longer had any thought of killing myself and I accepted how I looked and that some people would never be able to get past it. I had my good days and my bad days, but the good days began to out number the bad ones. While I was still seeing her, I started attending school part time to become a mechanic/technician. She and my parents thought this would be best because I wouldn't be overwhelmed but it wouldn't prolong my education that much because it was only a two year program. When I felt up to it, I would also accompany my father to work and help him when I could and also learn at the same time.
While I had made improvements in those areas...going out in public without being ashamed, attending school, being able to communicate and interact with people...I still hadn't bothered to try friendship again. Dr. Wilkerson worked with me over and over in that area, trying to ease me into letting people in, telling me not everybody was like my old friends from Colorado, that I would eventually want to have someone besides my parents to talk and be with...but I told her it wasn't something I wanted. I wasn't ready to trust anybody, not yet, and the only thing I wanted to concentrate on at that point was graduating, finding a job, and finding a place to live...friends, if they were in my future, would just have to wait until later. After I graduated, I was only seeing Dr. Wilkerson once a week, I had started working with Dad, and I found a house to live in. I was doing okay, adjusting well to living on my own, and that's when I met Michael."
Rain paused long enough to laugh at the memory. "He had come into the shop to talk to a friend, and when he saw me standing maybe a foot away, he came over, said hi, introduced himself, and tried to strike up a conversation. Of course I just said hi and walked away quickly...first, because I didn't know who he was and second, because I wasn't used to that reaction..he treated me like a normal person, never focusing on my face or staring. Past experience had warned me against people who were too nice because they were usually after something, be it tears or my humiliation.
Right before he left, I happened to look back in his direction and right when I did, he gave me a smile and a wave which, for reasons I didn't know, I returned. I expected to never see him again, summing it up as one of those freak occurrences, even though it did make my day, but that wasn't exactly what happened.
Michael came to the store off and on during the next couple of months, especially during lunch time. I figured he was only coming in to talk to his friend, but I noticed how he started spending less time with him and more time with me during lunch. Our conversations went from just saying hi to asking how the other one was to talking about football and finally talking about each other. I was cautious with him but I actually never worried about him hurting me or thought I was just being strung along and headed for another disappointment. So I was kinda lucky to have Michael as my first real friend after the accident...he was really good to me and I trusted him. I trusted him so much that after, I think, six or seven months he knew everything about me and I knew everything about him. I still gave him a hard time, seeing if there was a hidden reason for his friendship, but when I couldn't find one, I stopped playing games and trusted he would never do anything to intentionally cause me pain. Now I can't tell you why I let him in so quickly when I wouldn't give anybody else the time of day before, I guess it's because I never felt like I should have ran away from him and I just went with it.
Well because things went so well with Michael, I decided to accept an invitation to dinner from a guy I worked with whose name was Jason. He was nice and fun to be with like Michael, so I said why not...maybe if things went right I would not only have a best friend in Michael but also a person to love in Jason...and things WERE great, for a while anyway, but like everything else in my life at that point, I was headed for another disappointment.
One night Jason and I went out to eat, we had been dating for around six months, and when we came back to my house, we decided to pop a movie in the VCR to waste away the rest of the evening. While he was waiting for me in the living room, I went to my room to change into some sweats and a T-shirt, and I was just about finished when..." Rain stopped and before Mark had a chance to react, she was standing and placing the pictures back on the mantle.
Mark looked at her with curiosity. "When what, Rain?" "I don't want to talk about that, okay?" She was still looking at the mantle and had yet to turn around. Mark, not wanting to push to hard and guessing if he needed to know she would tell him, dropped the subject. "Okay, whatever you want."
Rain finally faced him. "After what happened with Jason, I no longer wanted to work with him, so when a new job opened at Michael’s shop, I immediately took it. My father also left soon after I did."
"He must have done something serious."
"It was serious to me...and very hurtful and embarrassing." Rain walked over to a window and gazed out at the early morning sky. It wasn't that long before Mark was standing behind her and she felt his arms around her once more. She reached up and laced her fingers with his and Mark squeezed them gently. "The ironic thing was I never would have taken the job if that hadn't happened...even if Michael had offered because I was happy where I was. However, the thought of having to see Jason everyday made me change my mind. I guess fate had a hand in things..." Rain leaned against Mark and took a deep breath...~Almost finished~.
"It took me a while to get over what Jason did but I did get over it...with a lot of help from Michael. We became extremely close during that time and I figured I had him as my best friend, why bother with trying to become friends or anything more with anybody else, and I decided to just close myself off to everybody else. 'Better to only have one good friend than to risk being hurt' is what I told myself as one year stretched into two which stretched into four and so on. I didn't feel like I was missing out an anything by not having many friends or a boyfriend. My parents and Michael wondered how I survived like that for over seven years without feeling alone and the only answer I could give them was I just did. But I have to wonder myself how I could have lived like that now that I see how happy I am with you...I can see how much I was missing out on and I'm very thankful you never gave up on me."
"And you're very welcomed." Mark whispered.