Chapter 9: Nightmares

It was the same dream. The same damn dream. I kept trying to tell myself that it's just a dream, it's not real. Wake up now. WAKE UP! It didn't work, I couldn't wake up. I had to go through it. The ending was just slightly different each time, but the beginning was always the same. Floating in that stupid lonely ocean. Knowing that those ghosts were going to grab me, yet unable to change anything. I couldn't make myself swim away. I couldn't even make myself turn so I would be facing them. Always the same. Always facing the sky, watching those stupid clouds, knowing they were coming...

It was the twenty-fifth consecutive night that I had that dream. Each of the twenty-five slightly different in the ending than the one before, but always concluding with me waking up screaming in a pool of my own sweat. My screams were less and less violent now. At least this morning's "scream" was more of a shocked whelp than a scream. Even my parents were slowly growing used to it.

I rose up from my bed and took a shower. Got ready and went to school. The guys no longer came to my house to wait for me to go to school. It's not because they didn't want to, but because I had asked them not to. I told them that I needed a little space before coming back to our normal routine, unfortunately I don't think they understood very well. But they did accept it. Hell, to be honest with you, I don't even know if I understood myself very well on this subject. I think it's partly because I wasn't ready yet to deal with people. I wanted to get some aspects of my routine back before I ventured into it full-fledged.

Unfortunately, this didn't including school. Since I had already missed over four weeks I was falling too far behind not to go back as soon as I could. Naomi thought that was a great idea, and cleared me to return to school. She said it would be a good step to have me do "normal" things again.

School was hard to deal with. I wasn't Mr. Popular before, but at least I was well liked by many and known to most. Unfortunately, this also made me a large target for the rumor mill. I saw the stares. I heard the whispers. I knew what they were saying about me, and it hurt. But what could I do about it? Some of what they were saying was true. I was crazy. I did have some serious mental problems for a little while. But a lot of it was not true. Actually, some of it was ludicrous. I remember one day at lunch where I overheard the table next to me talking about how I was actually committed to a mental institution, but broke out. I had to laugh at that because if I escaped, don't you think people would be looking for me? And it wouldn't be too hard to find me at my old school! Besides which, why would I go back to school?

The hard part of all of this was being the pariah. I was no longer known as the friendly, fun-loving good guy. I was now known as the crazy guy. But I dealt with it as best as I could. Maybe after a few more weeks it would die down and be easier, but so far it really hasn't calmed down that much.

I go through my normal routine. I go to school. Return home and work on my assignments for a little bit. Then Naomi comes at around 5:00 and we have our one hour session. After that it's dinnertime. And then back to hitting the books before bedtime. It was starting to feel good doing things again. It was even enjoyable talking to Naomi, she made me realize a lot about myself. But today was not one of those enjoyable days. We were talking about one of the things that started all of this... Cynthia.

"Ok, so up until last week, we went through the reasons why you should live. Are you comfortable with that now?"

"Yeah. I get it. And I didn't realize before that when I made a vow to do something, like with my parents and Christmas, it was actually a reason to live."

"Yes Chris. When you promise to do something. And if you are serious about your promises, then those are some of the things that you can use to push yourself through the tough days. Especially with your personality, you like to accomplish things. You like to go through with the things that you say you are going to do. So a promise like the one you made to make Christmas special next year for your parents is really good for you."

"Yeah, I know that I wouldn't kill myself before I made my parents happy at Christmas again."

"Well, let's just keep on making more and more vows so that you don't EVER think about killing yourself."

I chuckled. "Aren't you supposed to make me happy enough to not even entertain the thought of killing myself, whether there are vows or not?"

She laughed with me. "Well, yes, but I figured this was the quicker route first."

We talked a little more about vows and keeping my mind busy with things to do, but then the mood of the conversation changed with her one question.

"Ok, now that we have that out of the way, let's deal with some of the problems you were having before that caused this. Tell me about Cynthia."

My smile turned downwards immediately. She noticed this and jotted a few things down on her notepad. How did she know about Cynthia? Well, during our sessions a couple of weeks ago she had asked me to tell her a short statement about all the people that I come in contact with (other than the slight acquaintances). So I began listing all the family members that I normally see. Then it was all the friends and fellow schoolmates. For the schoolmates I listed it by the classes that I have, and the people that I talked to in each class. Cynthia's name naturally popped up. But for some reason, Naomi keyed in on her name. I don't think I said Cynth's name any differently than any other person's, but somehow she must've heard something in the tone by which I mentioned her, because she stopped me immediately and asked me to describe Cynthia. I told her about Cynthia and it seemed to satisfy her. We never spoke about Cynthia again until today.