I Can't Go On, I'll Go On (6/12)
Title: I Can't Go On, I'll Go On
Author: musicbendr
Rating: R overall; R for this chapter because of language
Pairings: Rachel/Quinn, Santana/Brittany, Artie/Tina, Mike/Kurt, and other various slash, het, and femslash pairings
Length: ~5000
Spoilers: None
Summary: AU. The glee kids are all at a juvenile mental hospital. These are their journal entries. Written for this prompt at the glee_angst_meme.
Warnings: triggers for a spectrum of mental disorders
A/N: Title stolen from Bandslam. This one is longer than usual. Yay! But also lots of angst.
DAY TWENTY-FOUR
TINA
I'm really excited for this date with Artie tonight. Mr. Schue says I'm getting better with the breathing control exercises, so I'm trying to focus on doing those instead of exactly what's going to happen. I've only ever been on one date before and it went fine, but I guess the guy didn't think so because he didn't ask me out again. So it's not like I'll have a panic attack just by thinking about the date because I had fun on my last one, but I think maybe after it's over I'll have an issue. I don't know. Artie's so sweet and he's been so much better since his medication, but everything I've ever read says it usually takes at least a couple of tries to get the right cocktail of meds to make someone functional. He seems almost too perfect right now. I'm a little bit scared the drugs are affecting him like Red Bull, like he'll be fine taking them but crash a few hours later.
Kurt and Mercedes may be more excited than I am over this date if only because it gives them an excuse to go crazy with hair, clothes, and make-up. I don't know if I want to look all glammed up because then Artie might want me to look like that all the time, since that's how boys are. Or at least the ones I know, anyway. Kurt's good, though - really good - with make-up and hair, but I think Mercedes may have better style than he does in respect to the things I like. The two of them together transformed me into some sort of goth princess version of myself, which I think looks really good and close enough to my usual style that Artie won't notice when I go back to my normal clothes.
So now I'm just sitting here, and I'm a little nervous, but I'm focusing on the breathing exercises that Mr. Schue gave me, and that's keeping me pretty calm. But I do kind of feel at the same time like certain parts of my brain are trying to escape or they're pushing on my skull like they want me to have a panic attack and not go through with this. Mercedes is smiling at me now and talking about how sweet it is that Artie is doing much better and how nice he's being to me, and about how he's good to me. Everyone says these things like he's miraculously better, but I just don't know. I see the way Mr. Schue and Ms. Pillsbury look at him as though he's going to jump off the deep end any second. Who knows what might happen tonight?
ARTIE
I hate myself. I'm so, so dumb and I just fuck everything up. It's no use. Even with the medication, I'm still the same. Once a screw-up, always a screw-up, right? I tried so damn hard on this date but in the end it all turned out the same. Why the hell do I even try anymore? Tina was so happy at first and I guess maybe I did a sort of OK job with dinner, which Matt helped me with because he can cook or something. Whatever. And then it was nice for a while, I didn't say anything stupid and Tina laughed at a few of the jokes I still remembered. We talked about my robots because she thinks that impressive and we talked about how one day she wants to sing if she can stop herself from having a panic attack every time she gets near a stage. So it was fine for a while.
But I went and did something stupid - as always. That's like the definition of my personality. As I was wheeling myself away from the table, I hit the leg and shook the table, knocking over one of the water glasses so that it spilled onto Tina's lap. And I flipped. Because I knew she spent a lot of time working to make a pretty outfit and then I went and ruined it. Because I'm useless. She kept saying, “No, it's OK, Artie, it's fine,” but I knew it wasn't. I always mess things up. ALWAYS. She's sopping wet and I should have been comically jumping around because I banged my knee into a hard piece of wood and that's supposed to hurt. Not for me. I was desperately willing to feel something down there, even the slightest twinge. Nothing. I may as well have rammed my knee into thin air, as for the way it felt. Stupid fucking leg that just can't feel anything. If you think about it, HALF of my body is a deadweight so I miss out on HALF of the human experience, right? Right? This is stupid.
So I wheeled myself out of there, back down the hall and away from the living area which Puck had so nicely cleared out for us (I think he just wanted to scare the paranoid schizophrenic who has a different counselor). At least Tina had the decency not to run after me because I know she would overtake me if she even just jogged. My whole life I'm going to have to rely on other people to respect how I am in order to get what I want. I don't know if I can take it for another 70 years. I don't know. And now, I don't even need to be able to walk. I don't care as much anymore. I just want to be able to feel.
KURT
The scariest thing in the whole time I've been here happened tonight. It was even scarier than Mike passing out on the baseball field and in the process ruining that lovely pair of baseball pants he looked so good in...But that's beside the point.
Artie has been incredibly chipper lately, up to the level that Brittany is when she's genuinely excited about something that's not going on inside her head. I thought he just got really lucky with his medication. So far he's the only one who has a working one: Finn's combo of lithium and something else that ends with “pan” or “zine” or a similar suffix didn't do much of anything, and Brittany's anti-psychotics take at least a week to help, so we're just waiting on her.
At dinner, Mercedes, Mike, and I were still forced to eat like small children at Mr. Schue and Ms. Pillsbury's table, have them cut up our vegetables and pretty much force the food down our throats. It's disgusting, that we're being treated as though we're not capable of making our own decisions. I certainly am, but Mike and Mercedes seem to have cracked. Fine. They can be weak and give in to the sadistic torture that “the man” wants them to, but I'm too strong for that. To prove this, I ate exactly what I was told in the exact way I supposed to.
Then I spent an hour after dinner throwing up every single little piece in my stomach, just to prove to them how easy it is to get around their useless systems. I think it was the longest purge I've ever done because I was actually trying to get rid of everything. Usually it's just the most recent meal. That time, I wanted it all out. Everything. An empty stomach. And I did. It took forever, but I felt really accomplished when I was done. I was also glad I'd had the intelligence to wear one of my ratty T-shirts and old sweatpants I keep specifically for the occasions on which I throw up, because what happens if I get day old broccoli on my Alexander McQueen jackets? The world ends, that's what.
As I was finishing up, Artie came rolling into the bathroom - well, rolling isn't quite the right word. I think charging might be better. “Excuse me,” I said with an upset tone. “It's called knocking.”
Artie didn't respond, just sat in the doorway halfway in the bedroom and halfway in the bath. “What are you doing, Artie?” I noticed he was back to his angst face which really he was going to regret later in life with all the forehead wrinkles and crow's feet it makes.
“I'm just a fuck up.”
“What are you talking about?”
He turned to me and scowled. “You wouldn't understand. You always look good and you're always perfect. Everyone likes you.”
“What the hell do you know about me?” I snapped at him, because Artie and I may be roommates, but we are not best friends by any stretch of the imagination. “Just because you want to broadcast your troubles to the world doesn't mean we all do.”
“Sorry, Ice Queen,” Artie muttered.
I took a deep breath because clearly he was depressed and I needed to be the more fabulous person, no matter how hard it may have been. And believe me - it was hard. “I'll leave you here to have a Lindsay Lohan style flip out. If you want to calm down and talk to me, I'm going to be sitting on the bed watching whatever's on Bravo tonight.”
So I stormed out of that bathroom and flopped onto my bed. One of the Real Housewives shows was on, but I couldn't pay attention. I turned the volume down in hopes of hearing whatever Artie was doing in there, but nothing came. He couldn't be cutting himself since the counselors took all our razors away at the beginning and we have to shave under their supervision. I didn't hear any crying, and I wasn't afraid he was about to blow his brains out a la Kurt Cobain. My mind wandered to all the other horrible ways he could be trying to kill himself, like chugging multiple gallons of water or drowning himself in the bathtub or punching the mirror and using the grass to cut himself like that one girl did in the Sandra Bullock alcoholism movie. Even watching trashy women make fools of themselves couldn't shake my nerves that Artie was doing something potentially lethal in the bathroom. But despite what some people may think, I am a guy, and I know that boys like to breakdown in private.
It turns out, there was nothing in the bathroom that Artie could use to hurt himself. All he needed was a wall.
I hopped out of bed like the Easter Bunny on crack the second I heard the sickening crunch of something soft and squishy against the cold solidness of the tiles. There was Artie right in front of me, repeatedly slamming his legs into the wall, which now was beginning to gain red specks on it from the amount coming from his legs. I couldn't even move. I didn't know what the hell he was doing. I don't even remember what the hell I was thinking right then. Actually, I do. It wasn't one of those stereotypical “Ohmigod, Artie stop!” reactions in girly hysterics. My thoughts fell into a category of horror way below that one.
I thought: “I'd better flush that toilet and Febreeze the shit out of this bathroom before any of the nurses get here.”
...Yeah. I'm not exactly proud of it either. There Artie bashed, right next to me, his legs into the wall getting bloodier and bloodier as I listened to the bones snapping into bits. He screamed against the optimal acoustics of the tile, “I want to feel this! I want to feel it! Fucking hurt me already, fucking hurt!”, while I dashed around the bathroom and sprayed my various hairspray products into the air. Artie's part in this is all a blur now, like I was watching a movie through the eyes of someone slowly slipping out of consciousness, unfocused and muffled. But my part sticks out in my mind as a striking resemblance to a druggie dumping their latest stash before the cops come in. I keep seeing it from the outside, me watching myself. The next thing I remember clearly is the hospital room about ten minutes later, bawling my eyes out and Mr. Schue's comforting hand on my shoulder, my mouth babbling about everything that happened up to that point. Tina and Ms. Pillsbury sat in the corner with Tina in the throes of a panic attack. Mercedes stood far away from me, occasionally shooting me death glares for the fact that I didn't try harder. They were operating on Artie's legs or something - I don't really know. If they weren't already broken beyond repair, he would be pretty close now, the doctors said. Resetting bones and cleaning up cuts seem to be in store for him now just to get things close to normal. As close as Artie will ever be to normal.
I've never thought of throwing up as an addiction. I always thought of it like a form of exercise - some people go to the gym to lose weight, I throw up. My way works faster and it works better, and anyone who doesn't want to do it is just a scaredy cat or a drone who believes in PC crap. Now I can sort of see it like that, the addiction part, I mean. I don't really have a desire to become a saint because that means I can't laugh at the people who fall on their faces on treadmills or at Rachel's collection of different colored poodle sweaters. But I don't want to not be able to help my friends - like Artie. That scared me. I scared me. I don't want to become a monster.
FINN
Mr. Schue has me on these meds called “mood stabilizers.” I know that sounds really complicated and technical and stuff, but what it means is I stop changing moods real fast and I get to be a normal person. Except, well, they're kinda gross 'cause one of them - lithium - makes me barf all the time and the other one - it sounds like chlorine, sorta - makes me not be able to poop. So Mr. Schue is trying to find some other ones that make things go in one end and out the other, like they're supposed to. He says that this is good 'cause even if I have to run to the bathroom every hour, at least I can talk about my dad without having a spaz out or anything.
It's one of those weird things that I can't really remember right - my dad, I mean. Like sometimes I remember him teaching me how to play baseball or football and sometimes I remember him yelling at my mom so loud I had to go in my room and shove pillows over my face. Once, when I was really little and really stupid, I stuffed so many on top of me and held them down too hard so I almost got suffocated. I think. I told Mr. Schue that it was hard for me to remember because I didn't think that my dad could be both those people. You know, a complete jerk and the coolest dad ever. Mr. Schue said to look at myself, since I'm kinda in between those things, too. So was my dad like me or just, like, really confused? I don't know. Mr. Schue doesn't either. It's kinda frustrating, to be talking about this again and getting nowhere. Everyone thinks that I have the easy problem because if I talk, it'll just go away or something like that. No way. I don't even know what to do with this at all. It's stupid, and even though the meds are working, they're making my life hell in a different way.
My dad was great - that's the way I want to remember him. But if I keep thinking about him like this, am I gonna get better?
DAY TWENTY-FIVE
ARTIE
This is so fucking horrible. Here I am in the damn hospital for something I can't even tell is wrong. Supposedly I have horrible breaks and cuts and bruises that should be hurting me right now but I can't feel a thing. Nothing. Zero. Mr. Schue said that I can try imagining it or something, but that's stupid. I wish I had that phantom limb syndrome - the one where it still feels like you have your amputated limb. I know I don't have any amputated limbs and phantom limb syndrome is painful and awkward, but at least I'd know something's there. At least there wouldn't be just these two jelly rolls hanging off my legs.
I just want to fucking feel something again.
DAY TWENTY-SIX
RACHEL
Noah Puckerman is the most loathsome, odious, vile, despicable, misogynistic, arrogant, overrated muscle head I have ever encountered. I cannot even believe I saw anything positive in him, though I now suspect it was a fluke to due my location in my feminine cycle. I refuse to allow his cheating ways to affect my psyche. Noah was caught earlier this morning with one of the female nurses who believed his ridiculous story that he was a new male nurse. Ugh. Excuse my disgust at his unethical means of soliciting sex when he should be focusing on healing his gross personality issues. Although I suppose the nature of his disorder is the kind where he doesn't realize there's something wrong. In a way I pity him, but I am much too concerned with his loose treatment of women to feel an abundant amount of sympathy for his plight. As usual, I must hold my head high and continue to act like the star I am.
QUINN JONATHON
Hello bitches, it's Jonathon here and I am not fucking around today. I'm finally out of Quinn's repressive hellhole of a body and I made the most of it. First with Kurt, then with Tina, then with one Mr. Noah Puckerman. Oh, you heard right: I believe that Mr. Noah Puckerman may find himself in a rather compromising position with Mr. Jonathon Wild soon enough. I'll let the ladies swoon now.
I know you're impressed, but like my mother always said, you got to leave the best for last. So we'll start off with Kurt, who is adorable and precious, but no where near my type. Two queens don't make a relationship, they make an explosion. Wise words of wisdom to live by, if you're a queen. Anyway, it was after Artie's attempted suicide or something that I heard about, but I'm still kind of sketchy on the details. Reports range from him smashing his legs into the bathroom wall to programming one of his robots to kill him in his sleep after fucking up his legs first. Both sound pretty wild to me. Kurt saw the whole thing - and could have stopped it - but wouldn't say anything about it. He just talked and talked and talked about the whole eating disorder issue and how badly he wants to get rid of that now that he's seen what it can do. And I told him about my own much less intense struggle with weight, when Quinn was in the ninth grade. She was trying to become a cheerleader and I said, “Not with that body you won't.” So I did her the courtesy of working out whenever I got the body. As a boy, I build muscle mass faster, so by all means she should have been incredibly grateful since my determination got her on the squad. But that was around the time she started to hate me, which I don't understand because I made her look fucking fabulous.
“You're going to blame yourself,” I told Kurt, “and that's good. Feeling guilty means you know something's wrong. Now you need to feel guilty enough to fix it.”
Kurt was still crying, like he had been this entire bitching/therapy session. “But when will that happen? When someone dies in front of me? I don't want that for anyone, except for Rachel. No,” he adds after a pause. “I wouldn't even want it for Rachel.”
“So you see there's a problem?” I asked cautiously.
He wiped his eyes and looked right at me. “Yeah, I guess I do. I think that I'll have to work on it with Mercedes and Mike, and maybe, if it doesn't hurt my pride too much, apologize to them.”
“Don't stress yourself, little buddy.”
Then we debated who was hotter: Zac Efron or Channing Tatum. All in all, I'd say that Kurt is moving forward.
Tina dropped a fucking bombshell on me - I don't even know where it came from. I was finishing talking with Kurt and she just grabs me and shoves me into a deserted hallway with a creepy flickering light. “Jonathon, I have something to say, and I thought since Kurt trusts you, maybe I should, too.”
“OK. Go for it, doll face,” I said in my most smiley voice. Clearly she wasn't about to gush about how Artie was the love of her life.
She took a deep breath and her hands started shaking, making us both look at her like she was a cancer patient dying in front of our eyes. Fucking creepy, I'm telling you. “When I was little, my older brother used to come into my room in the middle of the night.” Oh shit. I thought I knew where that was going, but no. “Most of the time he would just sit around and talk to me about fire and all the things he wanted to do with it. N-n-nothing bad, he just wanted someone to...to listen. So, um, then he g-got bored with talking. So he started to burn things. And s-s-sometimes, it would-would burn me. But he s-said I couldn't tell.”
I didn't even react. How could I? I'd never even heard of something like happening to anyone, and there are some pretty intense things you hear in gay bars. I could tell it was taking everything she had not to go into a full-on panic mode, so I put my hand on her shoulder to keep her a little calm. “What happened next?”
“He-he-he burned m-my whole bedroom,” Tina whispered. “And I, and I - ” She couldn't talk anymore so she rolled up her shirtsleeves to show me the healed burn scars coating her upper arms, kind of like wrinkly red patches all over her skin. And then a few on her stomach, too. I only hugged her tightly as she completely broke apart, what with the tremors and the dizziness and the hyperventilating. I sat there and held her, because there was nothing else I could do.
And now for a 180, I met a Mr. Noah Puckerman in the dining hall. We exchanged some brief flirtations before I asked him to my room the next time I was around, because currently Rachel was in there crying herself to sleep over his transgressions. I told him I didn't care. And he told me he couldn't wait. Score one for Jonathon.
PUCK
So Quinn may be a hottie with a body but it's a fucking chastity temple. No way in. But I found her alter ego - Jonathon - is way into me and will totally blow me. “He” probably won't let me fuck “him” 'cause “he's” a “dude” and dudes don't have pussies. Which is true, but Jonathon's just a confused little twit inside one delicious female body. Next time he comes around, the Puckster's gonna get laid.
QUINN
Dear God,
I hope You don't hate me after You hear all of this. I mean, I know it's already happened and You've already seen it, but I want You to understand how I was feeling, and why I did what I did.
It started in group therapy after dinner with Puck and Rachel, like always. Rachel was busy ignoring him because he didn't want her exclusively, and he was busy not caring. Her sulky attitude must have been getting to him because he said, “Berry, lay off the angst factor, OK? Just because I dumped you doesn't mean you have to slit you wrists in a corner.”
“Noah! I am not upset over our break-up,” Rachel assured him confidently. He cocked an eyebrow in disbelief and by this point we were all busy trying to conspicuously or inconspicuously watch the explosion. “I am disappointed that you were too afraid of the emotional connection between us to stick with the relationship. Instead you became a scared little boy and ran off!”
“Please,” Puck scoffed. “You were nothing more than a hot piece of ass for me to grope.”
That was the wrong thing to say. I mean, I know it was directed at Rachel and she kind of needs a swift kick in the head, but that's low. Rachel looked like one of those cartoon characters who get hit in the head with a frying pan and then teeter back and forth before falling. And fall she did.
Metaphorically speaking.
She started yelling. Horrible, shrill, ear-splitting yells that proved the effects of sixteen years of voice lessons. I didn't even understand half of what she was saying, something about Slushies and kickball and glasses and Twilight. It was like she needed all of us to listen to the (most likely petty) injustices committed on her, but there were just so many her brain couldn't decide on which one to tell. We were all frozen as she went off on Puck in true mad woman fashion, her arms waving wildly around and her cheeks red and maybe a couple of tears in her eyes. She stomped off to our bedroom furiously still chanting to herself under her breath. I understood why. For Rachel, the fantasy that she is the perfect total package has been slowly chipped away here: I yell at her, Finn yells at her, Kurt and Santana actively hate her, and Puck just broke her heart. I guess being inadequate for Puck must have been the final straw and her illusions are beginning to fall apart. Which in the end is a good thing; she'll be tolerable, maybe even likeable, once her head gets shrunk down to a normal size.
~
I got back to our room an hour later or so, and she was still crying on the bed. Well, more like dry heaving because I guess she'd dried out her tears.
“Leave me alone,” she muttered the second I closed the door.
“Make me,” I shot back because I'd been busy piecing together what exactly happened with Jonathon, and that always made my head hurt.
Rachel sniffled and said rudely, “That was inconsiderate, Quinn. Clearly I am hurt, and you should respect that.”
“But you're better than everyone. How can they hurt you?”
“I'm not hurt,” she snapped. “That was an incorrect word choice. I am mad with being surrounded by people who do not deserve my company. No one here understands me! No one ever understands me! They're jealous, so they throw Slushies in my face or heave me in the pool or break my heart in front of the entire school just to have a good laugh.” Rachel punched her pillow, and I let her be. There seemed to be some things in her past she needed to get past, so I allowed it to happen. For once I acted like a good person toward her. “Everyone is jealous of my ability to sing and still maintain a flawless persona! No one appreciates perfection! They shove pick it last for gym, write incriminating and falsified messages on the bathroom walls about it! I am stronger than them, Quinn, and I am stronger than you!” The last word was uttered with this kind of defiance I hadn't expected from her mostly because it sounded so final. She'd never had a friend in entire life, it seemed, and I think that behind her facade of narcissism that's really all she wanted. It sort of broke my heart in a disgusting way I'd rather not think about right now. Like what I did next. I definitely don't want to think about that.
“You are,” I whispered to her. “You're stronger than I am. You know why? I was the weak one hiding in a cheerleading uniform, but you were brave enough to wear your stupid cat sweaters and knee socks.”
“I know I'm stronger than you,” Rachel replied, wiping away the tears as though she hadn't been milliseconds away from a breakdown just a moment ago. “I never doubted that. I doubt those around me and their ability to be useful in any capacity. They're just so worthless!” She slammed her tiny fist into the pillow, sending out a puff of detergent into the air. “No one understands my talent!”
I didn't really know what to do with that, so I left her to cry to herself and scream about no one understanding her and about how strong she was. Maybe she is strong in her own way; but not strong enough. We're all here because something cracked us and made us hurt like this. I don't know if it's stronger to sustain the delusions against a world that so badly wants to correct them, or to fight for reality against your own mind. I honestly don't know.
But what I do know, and what I have to apologize to You for, is that after I came out of the bathroom and cried herself into a peaceful sleep, I found myself thinking that she looked kind of...beautiful.
DAY TWENTY-SEVEN
BRITTANY
I thought I could stop them, but I can't. I keep hearing them when I try to go to sleep, and they keep me awake. I hear them talking about how they're going to ruin everyone's lives. They're going to hurt my friends, or even kill them. They're going to hurt Santana. The medicines are talking about killing all of my friends. Santana's sir sertan certanlin is talking about making her kill herself. She's always protected me. Now I guess it's my turn to protect her.
Author: musicbendr
Rating: R overall; R for this chapter because of language
Pairings: Rachel/Quinn, Santana/Brittany, Artie/Tina, Mike/Kurt, and other various slash, het, and femslash pairings
Length: ~5000
Spoilers: None
Summary: AU. The glee kids are all at a juvenile mental hospital. These are their journal entries. Written for this prompt at the glee_angst_meme.
Warnings: triggers for a spectrum of mental disorders
A/N: Title stolen from Bandslam. This one is longer than usual. Yay! But also lots of angst.
DAY TWENTY-FOUR
TINA
I'm really excited for this date with Artie tonight. Mr. Schue says I'm getting better with the breathing control exercises, so I'm trying to focus on doing those instead of exactly what's going to happen. I've only ever been on one date before and it went fine, but I guess the guy didn't think so because he didn't ask me out again. So it's not like I'll have a panic attack just by thinking about the date because I had fun on my last one, but I think maybe after it's over I'll have an issue. I don't know. Artie's so sweet and he's been so much better since his medication, but everything I've ever read says it usually takes at least a couple of tries to get the right cocktail of meds to make someone functional. He seems almost too perfect right now. I'm a little bit scared the drugs are affecting him like Red Bull, like he'll be fine taking them but crash a few hours later.
Kurt and Mercedes may be more excited than I am over this date if only because it gives them an excuse to go crazy with hair, clothes, and make-up. I don't know if I want to look all glammed up because then Artie might want me to look like that all the time, since that's how boys are. Or at least the ones I know, anyway. Kurt's good, though - really good - with make-up and hair, but I think Mercedes may have better style than he does in respect to the things I like. The two of them together transformed me into some sort of goth princess version of myself, which I think looks really good and close enough to my usual style that Artie won't notice when I go back to my normal clothes.
So now I'm just sitting here, and I'm a little nervous, but I'm focusing on the breathing exercises that Mr. Schue gave me, and that's keeping me pretty calm. But I do kind of feel at the same time like certain parts of my brain are trying to escape or they're pushing on my skull like they want me to have a panic attack and not go through with this. Mercedes is smiling at me now and talking about how sweet it is that Artie is doing much better and how nice he's being to me, and about how he's good to me. Everyone says these things like he's miraculously better, but I just don't know. I see the way Mr. Schue and Ms. Pillsbury look at him as though he's going to jump off the deep end any second. Who knows what might happen tonight?
ARTIE
I hate myself. I'm so, so dumb and I just fuck everything up. It's no use. Even with the medication, I'm still the same. Once a screw-up, always a screw-up, right? I tried so damn hard on this date but in the end it all turned out the same. Why the hell do I even try anymore? Tina was so happy at first and I guess maybe I did a sort of OK job with dinner, which Matt helped me with because he can cook or something. Whatever. And then it was nice for a while, I didn't say anything stupid and Tina laughed at a few of the jokes I still remembered. We talked about my robots because she thinks that impressive and we talked about how one day she wants to sing if she can stop herself from having a panic attack every time she gets near a stage. So it was fine for a while.
But I went and did something stupid - as always. That's like the definition of my personality. As I was wheeling myself away from the table, I hit the leg and shook the table, knocking over one of the water glasses so that it spilled onto Tina's lap. And I flipped. Because I knew she spent a lot of time working to make a pretty outfit and then I went and ruined it. Because I'm useless. She kept saying, “No, it's OK, Artie, it's fine,” but I knew it wasn't. I always mess things up. ALWAYS. She's sopping wet and I should have been comically jumping around because I banged my knee into a hard piece of wood and that's supposed to hurt. Not for me. I was desperately willing to feel something down there, even the slightest twinge. Nothing. I may as well have rammed my knee into thin air, as for the way it felt. Stupid fucking leg that just can't feel anything. If you think about it, HALF of my body is a deadweight so I miss out on HALF of the human experience, right? Right? This is stupid.
So I wheeled myself out of there, back down the hall and away from the living area which Puck had so nicely cleared out for us (I think he just wanted to scare the paranoid schizophrenic who has a different counselor). At least Tina had the decency not to run after me because I know she would overtake me if she even just jogged. My whole life I'm going to have to rely on other people to respect how I am in order to get what I want. I don't know if I can take it for another 70 years. I don't know. And now, I don't even need to be able to walk. I don't care as much anymore. I just want to be able to feel.
KURT
The scariest thing in the whole time I've been here happened tonight. It was even scarier than Mike passing out on the baseball field and in the process ruining that lovely pair of baseball pants he looked so good in...But that's beside the point.
Artie has been incredibly chipper lately, up to the level that Brittany is when she's genuinely excited about something that's not going on inside her head. I thought he just got really lucky with his medication. So far he's the only one who has a working one: Finn's combo of lithium and something else that ends with “pan” or “zine” or a similar suffix didn't do much of anything, and Brittany's anti-psychotics take at least a week to help, so we're just waiting on her.
At dinner, Mercedes, Mike, and I were still forced to eat like small children at Mr. Schue and Ms. Pillsbury's table, have them cut up our vegetables and pretty much force the food down our throats. It's disgusting, that we're being treated as though we're not capable of making our own decisions. I certainly am, but Mike and Mercedes seem to have cracked. Fine. They can be weak and give in to the sadistic torture that “the man” wants them to, but I'm too strong for that. To prove this, I ate exactly what I was told in the exact way I supposed to.
Then I spent an hour after dinner throwing up every single little piece in my stomach, just to prove to them how easy it is to get around their useless systems. I think it was the longest purge I've ever done because I was actually trying to get rid of everything. Usually it's just the most recent meal. That time, I wanted it all out. Everything. An empty stomach. And I did. It took forever, but I felt really accomplished when I was done. I was also glad I'd had the intelligence to wear one of my ratty T-shirts and old sweatpants I keep specifically for the occasions on which I throw up, because what happens if I get day old broccoli on my Alexander McQueen jackets? The world ends, that's what.
As I was finishing up, Artie came rolling into the bathroom - well, rolling isn't quite the right word. I think charging might be better. “Excuse me,” I said with an upset tone. “It's called knocking.”
Artie didn't respond, just sat in the doorway halfway in the bedroom and halfway in the bath. “What are you doing, Artie?” I noticed he was back to his angst face which really he was going to regret later in life with all the forehead wrinkles and crow's feet it makes.
“I'm just a fuck up.”
“What are you talking about?”
He turned to me and scowled. “You wouldn't understand. You always look good and you're always perfect. Everyone likes you.”
“What the hell do you know about me?” I snapped at him, because Artie and I may be roommates, but we are not best friends by any stretch of the imagination. “Just because you want to broadcast your troubles to the world doesn't mean we all do.”
“Sorry, Ice Queen,” Artie muttered.
I took a deep breath because clearly he was depressed and I needed to be the more fabulous person, no matter how hard it may have been. And believe me - it was hard. “I'll leave you here to have a Lindsay Lohan style flip out. If you want to calm down and talk to me, I'm going to be sitting on the bed watching whatever's on Bravo tonight.”
So I stormed out of that bathroom and flopped onto my bed. One of the Real Housewives shows was on, but I couldn't pay attention. I turned the volume down in hopes of hearing whatever Artie was doing in there, but nothing came. He couldn't be cutting himself since the counselors took all our razors away at the beginning and we have to shave under their supervision. I didn't hear any crying, and I wasn't afraid he was about to blow his brains out a la Kurt Cobain. My mind wandered to all the other horrible ways he could be trying to kill himself, like chugging multiple gallons of water or drowning himself in the bathtub or punching the mirror and using the grass to cut himself like that one girl did in the Sandra Bullock alcoholism movie. Even watching trashy women make fools of themselves couldn't shake my nerves that Artie was doing something potentially lethal in the bathroom. But despite what some people may think, I am a guy, and I know that boys like to breakdown in private.
It turns out, there was nothing in the bathroom that Artie could use to hurt himself. All he needed was a wall.
I hopped out of bed like the Easter Bunny on crack the second I heard the sickening crunch of something soft and squishy against the cold solidness of the tiles. There was Artie right in front of me, repeatedly slamming his legs into the wall, which now was beginning to gain red specks on it from the amount coming from his legs. I couldn't even move. I didn't know what the hell he was doing. I don't even remember what the hell I was thinking right then. Actually, I do. It wasn't one of those stereotypical “Ohmigod, Artie stop!” reactions in girly hysterics. My thoughts fell into a category of horror way below that one.
I thought: “I'd better flush that toilet and Febreeze the shit out of this bathroom before any of the nurses get here.”
...Yeah. I'm not exactly proud of it either. There Artie bashed, right next to me, his legs into the wall getting bloodier and bloodier as I listened to the bones snapping into bits. He screamed against the optimal acoustics of the tile, “I want to feel this! I want to feel it! Fucking hurt me already, fucking hurt!”, while I dashed around the bathroom and sprayed my various hairspray products into the air. Artie's part in this is all a blur now, like I was watching a movie through the eyes of someone slowly slipping out of consciousness, unfocused and muffled. But my part sticks out in my mind as a striking resemblance to a druggie dumping their latest stash before the cops come in. I keep seeing it from the outside, me watching myself. The next thing I remember clearly is the hospital room about ten minutes later, bawling my eyes out and Mr. Schue's comforting hand on my shoulder, my mouth babbling about everything that happened up to that point. Tina and Ms. Pillsbury sat in the corner with Tina in the throes of a panic attack. Mercedes stood far away from me, occasionally shooting me death glares for the fact that I didn't try harder. They were operating on Artie's legs or something - I don't really know. If they weren't already broken beyond repair, he would be pretty close now, the doctors said. Resetting bones and cleaning up cuts seem to be in store for him now just to get things close to normal. As close as Artie will ever be to normal.
I've never thought of throwing up as an addiction. I always thought of it like a form of exercise - some people go to the gym to lose weight, I throw up. My way works faster and it works better, and anyone who doesn't want to do it is just a scaredy cat or a drone who believes in PC crap. Now I can sort of see it like that, the addiction part, I mean. I don't really have a desire to become a saint because that means I can't laugh at the people who fall on their faces on treadmills or at Rachel's collection of different colored poodle sweaters. But I don't want to not be able to help my friends - like Artie. That scared me. I scared me. I don't want to become a monster.
FINN
Mr. Schue has me on these meds called “mood stabilizers.” I know that sounds really complicated and technical and stuff, but what it means is I stop changing moods real fast and I get to be a normal person. Except, well, they're kinda gross 'cause one of them - lithium - makes me barf all the time and the other one - it sounds like chlorine, sorta - makes me not be able to poop. So Mr. Schue is trying to find some other ones that make things go in one end and out the other, like they're supposed to. He says that this is good 'cause even if I have to run to the bathroom every hour, at least I can talk about my dad without having a spaz out or anything.
It's one of those weird things that I can't really remember right - my dad, I mean. Like sometimes I remember him teaching me how to play baseball or football and sometimes I remember him yelling at my mom so loud I had to go in my room and shove pillows over my face. Once, when I was really little and really stupid, I stuffed so many on top of me and held them down too hard so I almost got suffocated. I think. I told Mr. Schue that it was hard for me to remember because I didn't think that my dad could be both those people. You know, a complete jerk and the coolest dad ever. Mr. Schue said to look at myself, since I'm kinda in between those things, too. So was my dad like me or just, like, really confused? I don't know. Mr. Schue doesn't either. It's kinda frustrating, to be talking about this again and getting nowhere. Everyone thinks that I have the easy problem because if I talk, it'll just go away or something like that. No way. I don't even know what to do with this at all. It's stupid, and even though the meds are working, they're making my life hell in a different way.
My dad was great - that's the way I want to remember him. But if I keep thinking about him like this, am I gonna get better?
DAY TWENTY-FIVE
ARTIE
This is so fucking horrible. Here I am in the damn hospital for something I can't even tell is wrong. Supposedly I have horrible breaks and cuts and bruises that should be hurting me right now but I can't feel a thing. Nothing. Zero. Mr. Schue said that I can try imagining it or something, but that's stupid. I wish I had that phantom limb syndrome - the one where it still feels like you have your amputated limb. I know I don't have any amputated limbs and phantom limb syndrome is painful and awkward, but at least I'd know something's there. At least there wouldn't be just these two jelly rolls hanging off my legs.
I just want to fucking feel something again.
DAY TWENTY-SIX
RACHEL
Noah Puckerman is the most loathsome, odious, vile, despicable, misogynistic, arrogant, overrated muscle head I have ever encountered. I cannot even believe I saw anything positive in him, though I now suspect it was a fluke to due my location in my feminine cycle. I refuse to allow his cheating ways to affect my psyche. Noah was caught earlier this morning with one of the female nurses who believed his ridiculous story that he was a new male nurse. Ugh. Excuse my disgust at his unethical means of soliciting sex when he should be focusing on healing his gross personality issues. Although I suppose the nature of his disorder is the kind where he doesn't realize there's something wrong. In a way I pity him, but I am much too concerned with his loose treatment of women to feel an abundant amount of sympathy for his plight. As usual, I must hold my head high and continue to act like the star I am.
QUINN JONATHON
Hello bitches, it's Jonathon here and I am not fucking around today. I'm finally out of Quinn's repressive hellhole of a body and I made the most of it. First with Kurt, then with Tina, then with one Mr. Noah Puckerman. Oh, you heard right: I believe that Mr. Noah Puckerman may find himself in a rather compromising position with Mr. Jonathon Wild soon enough. I'll let the ladies swoon now.
I know you're impressed, but like my mother always said, you got to leave the best for last. So we'll start off with Kurt, who is adorable and precious, but no where near my type. Two queens don't make a relationship, they make an explosion. Wise words of wisdom to live by, if you're a queen. Anyway, it was after Artie's attempted suicide or something that I heard about, but I'm still kind of sketchy on the details. Reports range from him smashing his legs into the bathroom wall to programming one of his robots to kill him in his sleep after fucking up his legs first. Both sound pretty wild to me. Kurt saw the whole thing - and could have stopped it - but wouldn't say anything about it. He just talked and talked and talked about the whole eating disorder issue and how badly he wants to get rid of that now that he's seen what it can do. And I told him about my own much less intense struggle with weight, when Quinn was in the ninth grade. She was trying to become a cheerleader and I said, “Not with that body you won't.” So I did her the courtesy of working out whenever I got the body. As a boy, I build muscle mass faster, so by all means she should have been incredibly grateful since my determination got her on the squad. But that was around the time she started to hate me, which I don't understand because I made her look fucking fabulous.
“You're going to blame yourself,” I told Kurt, “and that's good. Feeling guilty means you know something's wrong. Now you need to feel guilty enough to fix it.”
Kurt was still crying, like he had been this entire bitching/therapy session. “But when will that happen? When someone dies in front of me? I don't want that for anyone, except for Rachel. No,” he adds after a pause. “I wouldn't even want it for Rachel.”
“So you see there's a problem?” I asked cautiously.
He wiped his eyes and looked right at me. “Yeah, I guess I do. I think that I'll have to work on it with Mercedes and Mike, and maybe, if it doesn't hurt my pride too much, apologize to them.”
“Don't stress yourself, little buddy.”
Then we debated who was hotter: Zac Efron or Channing Tatum. All in all, I'd say that Kurt is moving forward.
Tina dropped a fucking bombshell on me - I don't even know where it came from. I was finishing talking with Kurt and she just grabs me and shoves me into a deserted hallway with a creepy flickering light. “Jonathon, I have something to say, and I thought since Kurt trusts you, maybe I should, too.”
“OK. Go for it, doll face,” I said in my most smiley voice. Clearly she wasn't about to gush about how Artie was the love of her life.
She took a deep breath and her hands started shaking, making us both look at her like she was a cancer patient dying in front of our eyes. Fucking creepy, I'm telling you. “When I was little, my older brother used to come into my room in the middle of the night.” Oh shit. I thought I knew where that was going, but no. “Most of the time he would just sit around and talk to me about fire and all the things he wanted to do with it. N-n-nothing bad, he just wanted someone to...to listen. So, um, then he g-got bored with talking. So he started to burn things. And s-s-sometimes, it would-would burn me. But he s-said I couldn't tell.”
I didn't even react. How could I? I'd never even heard of something like happening to anyone, and there are some pretty intense things you hear in gay bars. I could tell it was taking everything she had not to go into a full-on panic mode, so I put my hand on her shoulder to keep her a little calm. “What happened next?”
“He-he-he burned m-my whole bedroom,” Tina whispered. “And I, and I - ” She couldn't talk anymore so she rolled up her shirtsleeves to show me the healed burn scars coating her upper arms, kind of like wrinkly red patches all over her skin. And then a few on her stomach, too. I only hugged her tightly as she completely broke apart, what with the tremors and the dizziness and the hyperventilating. I sat there and held her, because there was nothing else I could do.
And now for a 180, I met a Mr. Noah Puckerman in the dining hall. We exchanged some brief flirtations before I asked him to my room the next time I was around, because currently Rachel was in there crying herself to sleep over his transgressions. I told him I didn't care. And he told me he couldn't wait. Score one for Jonathon.
PUCK
So Quinn may be a hottie with a body but it's a fucking chastity temple. No way in. But I found her alter ego - Jonathon - is way into me and will totally blow me. “He” probably won't let me fuck “him” 'cause “he's” a “dude” and dudes don't have pussies. Which is true, but Jonathon's just a confused little twit inside one delicious female body. Next time he comes around, the Puckster's gonna get laid.
QUINN
Dear God,
I hope You don't hate me after You hear all of this. I mean, I know it's already happened and You've already seen it, but I want You to understand how I was feeling, and why I did what I did.
It started in group therapy after dinner with Puck and Rachel, like always. Rachel was busy ignoring him because he didn't want her exclusively, and he was busy not caring. Her sulky attitude must have been getting to him because he said, “Berry, lay off the angst factor, OK? Just because I dumped you doesn't mean you have to slit you wrists in a corner.”
“Noah! I am not upset over our break-up,” Rachel assured him confidently. He cocked an eyebrow in disbelief and by this point we were all busy trying to conspicuously or inconspicuously watch the explosion. “I am disappointed that you were too afraid of the emotional connection between us to stick with the relationship. Instead you became a scared little boy and ran off!”
“Please,” Puck scoffed. “You were nothing more than a hot piece of ass for me to grope.”
That was the wrong thing to say. I mean, I know it was directed at Rachel and she kind of needs a swift kick in the head, but that's low. Rachel looked like one of those cartoon characters who get hit in the head with a frying pan and then teeter back and forth before falling. And fall she did.
Metaphorically speaking.
She started yelling. Horrible, shrill, ear-splitting yells that proved the effects of sixteen years of voice lessons. I didn't even understand half of what she was saying, something about Slushies and kickball and glasses and Twilight. It was like she needed all of us to listen to the (most likely petty) injustices committed on her, but there were just so many her brain couldn't decide on which one to tell. We were all frozen as she went off on Puck in true mad woman fashion, her arms waving wildly around and her cheeks red and maybe a couple of tears in her eyes. She stomped off to our bedroom furiously still chanting to herself under her breath. I understood why. For Rachel, the fantasy that she is the perfect total package has been slowly chipped away here: I yell at her, Finn yells at her, Kurt and Santana actively hate her, and Puck just broke her heart. I guess being inadequate for Puck must have been the final straw and her illusions are beginning to fall apart. Which in the end is a good thing; she'll be tolerable, maybe even likeable, once her head gets shrunk down to a normal size.
~
I got back to our room an hour later or so, and she was still crying on the bed. Well, more like dry heaving because I guess she'd dried out her tears.
“Leave me alone,” she muttered the second I closed the door.
“Make me,” I shot back because I'd been busy piecing together what exactly happened with Jonathon, and that always made my head hurt.
Rachel sniffled and said rudely, “That was inconsiderate, Quinn. Clearly I am hurt, and you should respect that.”
“But you're better than everyone. How can they hurt you?”
“I'm not hurt,” she snapped. “That was an incorrect word choice. I am mad with being surrounded by people who do not deserve my company. No one here understands me! No one ever understands me! They're jealous, so they throw Slushies in my face or heave me in the pool or break my heart in front of the entire school just to have a good laugh.” Rachel punched her pillow, and I let her be. There seemed to be some things in her past she needed to get past, so I allowed it to happen. For once I acted like a good person toward her. “Everyone is jealous of my ability to sing and still maintain a flawless persona! No one appreciates perfection! They shove pick it last for gym, write incriminating and falsified messages on the bathroom walls about it! I am stronger than them, Quinn, and I am stronger than you!” The last word was uttered with this kind of defiance I hadn't expected from her mostly because it sounded so final. She'd never had a friend in entire life, it seemed, and I think that behind her facade of narcissism that's really all she wanted. It sort of broke my heart in a disgusting way I'd rather not think about right now. Like what I did next. I definitely don't want to think about that.
“You are,” I whispered to her. “You're stronger than I am. You know why? I was the weak one hiding in a cheerleading uniform, but you were brave enough to wear your stupid cat sweaters and knee socks.”
“I know I'm stronger than you,” Rachel replied, wiping away the tears as though she hadn't been milliseconds away from a breakdown just a moment ago. “I never doubted that. I doubt those around me and their ability to be useful in any capacity. They're just so worthless!” She slammed her tiny fist into the pillow, sending out a puff of detergent into the air. “No one understands my talent!”
I didn't really know what to do with that, so I left her to cry to herself and scream about no one understanding her and about how strong she was. Maybe she is strong in her own way; but not strong enough. We're all here because something cracked us and made us hurt like this. I don't know if it's stronger to sustain the delusions against a world that so badly wants to correct them, or to fight for reality against your own mind. I honestly don't know.
But what I do know, and what I have to apologize to You for, is that after I came out of the bathroom and cried herself into a peaceful sleep, I found myself thinking that she looked kind of...beautiful.
DAY TWENTY-SEVEN
BRITTANY
I thought I could stop them, but I can't. I keep hearing them when I try to go to sleep, and they keep me awake. I hear them talking about how they're going to ruin everyone's lives. They're going to hurt my friends, or even kill them. They're going to hurt Santana. The medicines are talking about killing all of my friends. Santana's sir sertan certanlin is talking about making her kill herself. She's always protected me. Now I guess it's my turn to protect her.