“How are you feeling today, Zander?” I hear my therapist ask in his monotone way as he looks over my folder. I sit on the couch with my arms crossed over my chest and a blank stare at a random wall.
Does he even give a shit? I doubt it. It’s part of his job to make sure I am so-calledhealing. How much of what is in that folder is fudged? Is it prettied up, so it paints me in a better light? Wouldn’t put it past this crew.
I flick my eyes to his for a brief second then shrug as my gaze flicks back to the darkened spot on the wall.
Someone did a shitty paint job.
My pain can be intense at times, and I don’t sleep much unless I drink myself that way. It happens more often than not nowadays.
The mid-forties balding man in his fancy pink polo shirt is there in his beige chair, sitting nicely prim and proper, acting like he’s ready to go golfing the second he’s done with me. He seems to care little about my situation. I wonder how many people he sees on a daily basis. Many of us get lost in the suffocating void with no help.
Typical.
No wonder why so many turn to other means of a feel-good factor. I know I have mine waiting for me in the cupboard at home.
He prescribed sleep meds, it only warps the nightmares, shifting them to where I’m me being chased by wolves, or Afghani’s have captured me, ready and willing to torture. Then again, it could be a side-effect of pairing it with alcohol. That right there is why I don’t take them.
“I’m fine.” My response is just the same as it always is but maybe I just want to mock the man's tone. No more than a handful of words ever crosses my lips when I’m here.
Is there any point to these sessions? I mean,let’s be real.Honestly, how should I feel after everything that’s happened?
I’m numb, emotionless, lost in that void I mentioned.
There is no help for me.
I don’t need these shit meetings; they don't help.
I’m ready to go home. Am I, though? Home isn’t all that great either.
With my career path now tanked and no fiancée to come home to, I relied on my family the first couple weeks and they aided me throughout my surgeries, only now, as I look deeper and see their sadness, and their fucking pity, I find I’m nothing more than a burden. So, I shut them out.
I do not deserve them.
I’m better off like Owen. Dead and buried.
It be for the best, they don't need to see what a fucking mess their son and brother has become.
I’m a castaway, just likeBattle Bornby Five Finger Death Punch it rings true. Exhaustion weighs heavy, my mind obliterated, my body unable to endure anymore.
They have no clue what I have been through, they can't relate, nor do I want them to.
Fucking hell, I just need an escape, escape from the pain and the misery, and all the fucking heartache.
I want my brother back.
I want it all to end.
No, I’m not talking suicide, although – I just want– *sigh* I don’t know anymore. I’m at the bottom of the barrel, scraping at the edge with no way to climb out. Maybe that is dark contemplation of what lay in store for my future.
I give a mental shiver as a tinge of lingering hope clings to my subconscious.
What else is out there for me? Military life is all I know, all I’ve trained for, and now that I’ve been honorably discharged, something Inever fuckingwanted, I have to ask myself, where do I go now?
I vaguely hear the doctor’s ramblings as my thoughts stray to when I came home. The amazing people in my hometown came together to celebrate my beingalive, making me a local celebrity of sorts. My smile firmly in place as I waved at the on-lookers while the float slowly made its way down the main drag. I wanted to be anywhere else that day, but I had an image to uphold and people to impress.
What a fucking disappointment I am.
It was all just a façade; deep down inside my fucked-up mind I was screaming, no one heard it though.