Surrendering
Chapter
15: Over the Edge
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January 28th
Once again I woke up next to Fred. I was in my own room, so I couldn’t escape anywhere.
I was feeling empty inside. Insecure and ruined. It wasn’t the fact that I’d slept with Fred. It was the fact that I’d done something against my will. I couldn’t blame this on Fred, since I hadn’t told him about my feelings. He still thought that I’d been up for it, since I’d agreed on sleeping with him again.
Fred moved next to me. “Good morning,” he whispered to me.
“Hi,” I answered quietly. I felt abused, but not by him. By myself, for not standing up for what I believed in. I abused myself by not letting him know that I didn’t want to sleep with him.
I might seem rough and tough and icy and hard as stone, but I’m a huge fake.
A huge fucking fake.
“Look, about yesterday,” he continued. Why did he act like everything was normal? Why wasn’t he more nervous?
“Don’t worry about it,” I replied. “It’s okay.”
Fred laughed. “This will sound stupid, but I wasn’t planning on this either. To have sex again, I mean.”
He put his arm around me and pulled me closer. I wanted to get out of there. I wanted to be some place else, some place were I could feel safe. I know that I consider Fred’s arms as the safest place on earth, but I was in complete denial.
“Did it hurt?” he asked, and I closed my eyes. Yes, but not so much physically, it was the mental part that hurt the most.
“A little,” I admitted. He’d asked the same thing yesterday, when we slept together after he kissed me. Later last night he showed up, he wanted to talk to me. I decided to get out of the conversation by sleeping with him. I have a new weapon for avoiding Fred’s concern. I can sleep with him, and he’ll drop it.
To do so can’t be healthy.
“You know, if you wanna talk about it...”
“I’m fine.”
“You say you’re fine, but every time you say that, I know you’re lying. Don’t shut me out, Cecilia. You keep pushing me away, and it’s only hurting yourself.”
Since when did he become a therapist?
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth, I want you to tell me the truth.”
You can’t handle the stupid truth, idiot.
Fred gazed at me. “Why did you sleep with me last night?” he asked suddenly.
What was I supposed to answer? ‘Because you wanted me to’? He wouldn’t like that answer.
“Cecilia? Seriously, say something.”
I couldn’t say anything. It hurt too bad to be able to say the truth. That he was almost taking advantage of me. I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t make him a guy like that.
“Cecilia, yesterday when I asked you if you were okay with this, were you lying?”
I began to cry. I was already crying inside of me, but now he would know it too.
“You were, weren’t you?” he said, sounding upset. “Why did you sleep with me then?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“For Goodness sake, Cecilia. You can’t sleep with me when you’re not sure that you want to. Why didn’t you tell me? You never tell me anything!”
He was really mad now, and I could understand that. He had all the right in the world to be pissed at me.
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “Please Fred, you don’t understand.”
“I do understand,” he said while getting dressed. “You sleep with me even though you don’t want to. Why? Just to make me happy?”
He must’ve seen the expression on my face, because he got even more upset. “Fred, that’s not true!” I said.
I knew I’d screwed everything up. I’d made a huge mistake. Why did I have to ruin everything?
“People don’t do things like that. Not normal people. Only people with some sort of problem, and I think you have a serious problem, Cecilia.”
Yes, I do. And I can’t tell him.
“I didn’t know...” I began. “I thought... I thought you wanted me to... You’re not him. I thought... I thought you were going to... leave me if I didn’t...”
I couldn’t think straight, so I just kept talking. Fred just stared at me. “What are you talking about? Who’s ‘him’?”
I jumped down on the floor and walked backwards to the door. Fred reached out for my arm, but I pushed him away, like I always do.
“He tried to... He tried to... He wanted to hurt me, and he hit me, and he wanted to sleep with me. And I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I just figured that you wanted to sleep with me for the same reason. So I let you.”
That was more information about myself then I’d ever told him before. Just a few sentences, that summed up my whole relationship with Fred.
“Who?” he asked. “Who did this to you?”
“He didn’t! I was just... No one did it. He just... He was there, and you are here, and it never makes sense. I hate this!”
I threw one of my books right into the mirror next to me, and the shatters flew all over the room. I don’t know why I did that, maybe because I’d been watching an episode of Dawson’s Creek earlier?
“I can’t stay here. I have to leave. I can’t deal with this. I can’t...” I stuttered. And then I left.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
I walked all day. It was beginning to get dark, but I refused to head back to school.
I wondered if anyone was out looking for me. Fred was the only one who knew that I was missing.
Much stupid things have I done in my life, but this must be one of the worse. Why did I have to leave like that? Now my parents would be notified, and I would have to explain why I ran away, because I couldn’t stay out here forever.
Darkness scares me; remember?
It was beginning to get cold too. It was very cold for being California.
This was it. I had nothing more to lose. Fred knew about me. He’d ask about me. He wouldn’t rest until he knew everything, and I swore to myself that I was never going to tell anyone.
I’m a dramatic person. That’s why I went up on the bridge. I wanted to be drastic. When I stared down into the dark water, I began to think if I should maybe put a stop to it all, right there.
When I was younger, right after I got back from my last summer in New York, I tried to commit suicide. I think it was a hasty thing to do. I remember walking up to the railway, and just waiting for the train to pass by. I never told anyone about this, but I wasn’t supposed to stay on the track when the train went by. I think I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to kill myself.
My brother showed up and pushed me off the track. I owe him my life for that. He’s the only one who knows about my suicide-attempt. He agreed on keeping quiet, if I agreed on going to a psychologist. We both knew that if anyone found out, I’d be taken away from my family.
The reason for that was that earlier that year, my younger brother tried to assault me. I knew that if I didn’t do anything, he’d go after my Mom too. So I protected myself by hitting him with a chair. He almost broke his neck, and everybody took his side. Not my family, but the society. They all wanted me away from my brother, because I was considered as a ‘problem’. My brother got away with it. I was sent to New York over the summer to live with Brian Chase, his parents were friends with mine. They all blamed me, and I thought I was a lost case.
So I did all those stupid stuff that later on destroyed my life.
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I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Why did I even consider on doing something as stupid as what I was about to do?
Darkness scares me. Heights scare me. Standing on that bridge scared me, because I had no idea what was going to happen. It was like I didn’t even control my own actions.
Even though I’m terrified of heights, I climbed up on the ledge to the bridge. My heart was pounding so badly, I was sure it was going to leave my body. Maybe it’d already left? Because I couldn’t feel one thing.
A cold breeze made me bounce back to earth again. I glanced down on the water. The dark, deep water. I wasn’t seriously considering jumping, was I?
“Don’t do it,” I whispered quietly to myself. I was shaking hard, I almost couldn’t hold on to the pole next to me.
Something was different from before.
Have you ever been threatened at gunpoint? It’s not at all as in the movies. It’s definitely not a moment where you should go all MacGyver on the villains. When someone points a gun at you, you’re bound to be scared to death.
When I was in New York that happened to me. It wasn’t an actual threat, just a simple street mugging. But I didn’t get scared when that gun was pointed at me. I was relieved. I thought ‘great, now this will all be over’.
Like I said, I exaggerate a lot.
Some drug-addict in New York really didn’t ruin my life. My younger brother destroyed it for me.
My drug-addiction didn’t involve any heavy drugs, like heroin or crack or something. Just pain killers and ecstasy. I wasn’t addicted for real, I just began taking them in the end of one summer, and I stopped taking them before I started school that same summer. One month, not more.
My eating disorder wasn’t too serious either. I never got treated for it; I managed to put it behind me all by myself. It couldn’t have been too serious then, could it?
Maybe my interpretation on these first few weeks with the team is completely wrong from what really happened? Have I exaggerated every little moment? In what universe do this story exist? My universe, or the real one?
I realized why I was standing on that ledge. Because I was too afraid to move on. If it’d been two years ago, I would’ve jumped already. Maybe not, I’m too chicken to do anything like that anyway. But I would have considered it, I’m sure.
I was just scared now. Because the difference between now and then was that I didn’t WANT to jump. I wanted to get down from that ledge and get back to my friends and to Fred.
Why couldn’t I get down from there?
The answer was pretty simple. I was too afraid to move. I’m afraid of heights. I almost passed out from staring into the water, twenty feet down under me. And it was cold; I couldn’t move my hands from the pole.
Suddenly I felt a hand pulling my jacket. I yelped and almost fell over.
“Cecilia, get down from there.”
I slowly turned around, away from the water and the terrifying height. My God, someone cared enough to get me down from there?
“I... I can’t... I can’t do it,” I stuttered.
“It’s okay, I’ll help you.” Fred reached out his hand towards me, and I grabbed it. He was so warm. My hands continued to shiver.
“I’m... I can’t do it. I can’t jump,” I whispered. “I’m too scared. I’m afraid.”
It struck me at that very moment. Up until then, I couldn’t have cared less if I was dead or alive. But I was standing on the ledge and I couldn’t be more scared. Not because of the height, or because I might fall. I was scared of dying.
“I’m scared of dying. I don’t wanna die,” I cried.
“That’s good,” Fred lowered his voice. “You should be scared of dying. Let’s just get back in, okay?”
I nodded. Fred put his hand on my arm and pulled me into his embrace.
“Let go of the pole, Cecilia.”
I was still frozen to the stupid pole. Why couldn’t I let go?
I was just about to jump down from there, when I slipped on a slippery spot. I lost my grip of Fred’s hand and fell. Backwards, right towards the water.
Don’t ask me what happened after that, because I’m sure someone else knows better then I do. I lost my conscious.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
I opened my eyes slowly. Everything was fuzzy.
There was a strange sound somewhere close. A beeping sound.
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
Very annoying.
Well, to sum up the situation, I was at the hospital. With a terrible headache, several bruises and a broken rib. I’ve broken ribs before in my life, but it still hurts very much.
It’s not hard to understand that I fell into the water; I even knew that right after I got my conscious back. The question was, why was I still alive? Shouldn’t I be dead?
“How are you feeling?” Fred asked. He was sitting beside me, looking awfully concerned.
“Fi... I mean, I feel okay. It hurts a little. Are you still mad at me?”
“Don’t think about that,” he told me. “As long as you’ll be okay, I don’t care about anything.”
I burst into tears. He was way below my surface.
“Cecilia, don’t worry about it, I’m not angry at you. Maybe you should try to sleep? I’ll leave.”
“No, please don’t,” I begged.
Fred nodded. “Okay.”
I fell asleep. I can’t remember what I was dreaming about. Maybe it was about Fred. Anyway, when I woke up again, Fred was gone, but Travis was there.
“Hey,” I whispered.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. I bet I’d hear that a lot for a long time.
“I’m fine,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Kidding? Everyone is really concerned about you, even Nish.”
“Wow,” I joked. “Even Nish? Was I near death, or what?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Travis said. “Seriously, Cecilia.”
“Oh,” I mumbled.
He was right. They were all concerned. About little, worthless me. They all asked about me, and they all cared how I was doing. Well, maybe not all, but most of them. Even Nish.
Fred told them that I’d been in an accident, so they don’t know how things really were. I explained to Fred that I didn’t tried to commit suicide. I was just trying to find out if I was as depressed as I thought I was. Clearly I wasn’t.
I think I’m glad this all happened. Otherwise I never would’ve found out if I was as mentally disturbed as I thought I was.
I actually talked to Fred. I told him about everything. Not exactly everything, but enough to make him happy. I told him about New York, about Johnny, about Brian and Mikey. About everything that happened.
Charlie came to visit me, with some of the others from the team. They were all trying to cheer me up. Like I was one of them. They treated me like an equal. I’ve never been an equal ever before.
So I made a few decisions, then and there.
I decided from that moment on to stop feeling sorry for myself, and stop shutting people out. Like I said in the beginning, I can have fun, but just not for any longer amounts of time. Well, this time I’m going to force myself to be happy for a long time. Maybe through the whole stay here in L.A.
I can fake my life. I can be cheerful, I can laugh and I can even say funny things once in a while. Only now I’m going to be a cheerful, up-beat person, so they won’t discover what sort of fraud I really am.
But it would only be another cover. It will be my way of hiding in the ‘dark’, hide from people and never let them see the real me.
Because I’ve already made it clear that they’ll never see the real me. They’ll never find out about me. I won’t tell them. No one will ever know.
That’s my final word.
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