I should have known something was wrong when the trees started talking back.

————

We only became friends because I won at a poker game. He was the ringleader, the star of the show, teaching us newbies how to play our hands, how to hide our emotions, when to place the right bet. I proved to be a quick study, surprisingly good. Or just lucky.

“I have no idea what you’re going to do next,” He said, eyebrows crinkling in confusion.

“That’s because I don’t even know what I’m going to do next.”

“I fold,” He said, throwing his cards down.

He grumbled when he saw that I didn’t even have a good hand.

---

“Where have you been?”

I was cornered, trapped in the space between my car and his. The universe was not in my favor. I should have recognized his car when I parked next to it, elegant and sleek, but I wasn’t paying close enough attention. And to be fair, it has been a while.

I mumbled something half-baked about seeing old friends.

“For a year?!”

I shrugged and looked at my watch. It was time for me to take my medicine, a vast assortment of pills my doctor liberally handed out. Some of them only there to counter-act the side effects of the others. A daily ritual occurring when I wake up, six hours afterward, and then at night.

“And what happened to your car?”

I winced. The bumper was all scratched up from a time I ran into a building. Like an idiot. I accidentally put in drive instead of reverse and ran into a building, messing up my bumper, and promptly freaked out. The poor worker at the fast food restaurant must have been so confused when a short girl ran in, crying, blabbering about running into the building. Luckily, she said that no harm was done. Afterwords, I told my doctor and he put me on more medication to counteract the spaciness from the newest med I tried.

“I may have, run into a building,” I said, the question triggering a floodgate. “And then my doctor gave me a bunch of medicine because I was ‘too distracted’. The medicine made me anxious, and so he put me on antidepressants. Then those made me manic. Wait, I got the order wrong.”

He stared. I unlocked my car.

“Wait,” He said. “Let’s talk.”

I readied myself for his next few words.

---

My mother told me that my family was cursed. That a long time ago, my grandmother met a witch who asked for some shelter from the rain, and my grandmother refused, letting a long silence stretch out between the two before the witch turned and melted back into the storm.

I think we were cursed long before that.

---

There are times when my walls are covered in half-scribbled words, lines and phrasings that were never completed. This is the start of what I affectionately refer to as “the crazy years.”

---

“Let’s run away.” He said, eyes bright. “We could go on a road trip. I could save you from the craziness called your family.”

What he didn’t know was that I was crazy too.

“Okay.”

Crazy enough to agree.

---

The days were melting into each other. I was the eye of a hurricane, my friends circling around me like vultures. I was an expert mediator, wrapping everyone around my finger, enticing and insistent. This is what happens when I unravel my life. This is what happens when I agree. I am all power, all flame.

Until I stayed awake for too many days.

---

“I think the medicine is making me crazy,” I half-whispered to him, half-hissed. The rest of my friends were piled around on the assortment of couches and chairs, scavenged from yard sales and thrift shops. The doctor had put me on antidepressants as soon as I said anything resembling the symptoms of depression. But my moods were spiraling higher and lower.

“You always say that,” He said, draining the rest of his beer.

I wanted to scream. I knew that. I just wanted him to rescue me again, save me from myself. I went to the doctor so I could stop thinking about the darkness inside me, but the medication he gave me made it come alive and fight me.

I took another shot of vodka and pretended not to see the darkness.

---

I was on the roof. Two boys bumbled around me, laughing at my jokes, handing me more alcohol if I asked, helping me balance as I walked along the roof tiles. On one level, I was engaging with them, batting my eyelashes, but on another, I was far away, watching.

The cold air teased my skin, the alcohol keeping me warm within. The clear night beckoned me, and I wanted to get closer, become one with the stars and the moon.

---

At some point, I left. Or had a breakdown.

---

The pills kept growing, kept expanding against my wishes. They were making me crazy. I took my bottle of antidepressants and threw them at the talking trees.

---

I bought the dog to keep myself from dying.

Wait, I can hear you asking, surely there’s more to it than that? Surely you thought it through...

I can assure you that there was no thought between impulse and action.

Dogs are easy. Dogs make you get out of bed, impose easy demands on you. You can’t just lie in bed all day, watching the sun slowly seep through the sky, when you have a living being to take care of.

Also. I don’t have the patience to deal with children. I needed something living that had easy problems, easy solutions.

---

It took him a year to realize I left. How could it be coincidence that his car was parked next to mine.

It didn’t take him long to realize I was lying.

By Slyvia Rose

From: United States