after the psychward

   I convalesce at my parents home on an air mattress, in my old room. The walls are bare. They never had anything on them. There is a dresser with nothing in the drawers with a television sitting atop it that I don't touch. I lie in bed in the brine of my own terrible thoughts. I am mentally unwell. This is what mentally unwell people do. I think about high school and the paths my friends took. I gravitated towards other troubled kids but plenty of them managed to end up living the similar lives to the ones we were told would make us happy. There were the kids from the really nice families, too, who had golden retrievers and sent Christmas cards and took their kids on college tours, girls played soccer or did cheer and the boys played baseball or football. I think about those kids sometimes. They used to come into the bars I worked at. The girls have Botox, nose jobs, boob jobs. The boys wear collared shirts with Sperries and play golf. Everyone went to college for a "business degree" which, every time I hear it, makes me want to dry heave for how unimaginative and banal it all is. The boys will take over dad's business, or get into finance, or start some capitalist venture that no one needs but all of his friends will support. The girls will get married and mold their children until cookie cutter versions of themselves and their husbands. They will one day send Holiday cards, since inclusivity is all the rage, and consider the way their generation has rebelled against the former in doing so. They will be a version of happy that is synonymous with complacent.

  I didn't really want that life. I know this. I would've always experimented, would've always traveled, would've always wanted to date someone a little rough around the edges because it gave them character. I don't doubt that I would've gotten tattoos. I might've bought a motorcycle, had I been on the right path and had the money. I would've still backpacked across the states, which had always been a dream of mine. I would have used drugs, gentle at first and then I would've dove right in. In a lot of ways, I know I'd've been the same. But I might've done it with some structure around me, guidance to help me understand how not to use my body and emotions as leverage for people to love me. To feel as though my talents had merit. To know exactly how much shit I should take and when to step back. To not question whether or not I belong in the conversation with the other, cleaner, better people around me. I wonder, if any, who among them have felt like this. It isn't fair to pretend their immune to the pain of life, I know that, but I wonder sometimes. I wonder what people think when they see that I've gone around trying to cobble together a little bit of life together in strange places with strange people. What would you have done in my shoes? Would I have ended up like you, would you have ended up like me? I go onto Instagram and look at the lives of the people I barely know and wonder what the greatest thing they've ever conquered has been. It does little to help me feel better. I make a post about being back in town. I use a few-month-old selfie where I'm smiling and you can see my teeth. 

  A girl messages me. She is of the aforementioned group. She asks me if I'd like to hang out. I find it curious that the universe would send her to me, after my long tirade against her kind. I find it curious that I might interest her. I agree to a date. 

   I have been home for a while but I have not yet been to Del Ray, which is irritatingly busy. It takes me a moment to park. I'm using my dad's Explorer which lurches forward every time I press the accelerator. I miss my car and hope it hasn't been broken into. A friend of mine with a ragtop got their slit open a few months ago. Let's save the cutting for me, shall we? I implore the universe. It is with this sardonic plea that I see Jill walking down the road towards our agreed-upon meeting place. She is short and curvy. She has wavy brown hair that flows down past her shoulders. She is wearing a little black dress. She checks her phone and doesn't see me. I watch her for a moment. In school, she'd been a cheerleader. She hung out with guys who didn't like me until they realized I was going to all the raves for free. Then I became cool, but never popular. Or at least, some of them deigned to remember my name when I went to shows. Jill always said "Hi" to me. She'd been a bit of a bitch back then, that was well known. She dated a notorious douchebag. But then she got into marketing and started working promotions for a small club in Miami that booked pretty big House music artists. She got humbled by not being the hot girl of the high school anymore. She had to work for the respect she got, and as a woman, couldn't lean on her sexuality to get what she wanted anymore without being the butt of many jokes. Our lives have been adjacent in many ways. I remember all the shows I've seen her at. She was always attractive to me, but her appearances in my life corresponded to many pivotal moments for me. We ran in the same circle the summer I tried mushrooms for the first time. She was at the show where I finally broke things off with my first girlfriend, and then at another, years later, when I solidified my relationship with Lydia. To grow up with someone, yet so far apart, has only left questions niggling at my subconscious. Yet I doubt we will have anything to talk about. I pull down the sleeves of my long sleeved shirt and wonder what she'll say if I take her home later, and she sees the ragged surfaces of my forearms. 

  We sit across from each other. I cross my arms on the table and lean forward on my elbows. I order Sake for us but she isn't drinking. I figured she would. This is the first thing that surprises me. She tells me about a recent surgery she had, cosmetic, but is open with her insecurities. She speaks with a valley-girl accent, which annoys me, but the things she says are honest and true. She speaks of the death of her mother a few years previous. I find myself telling her about my dad and brother. "I get it now," she tells me, "I can see why you had to get as far away as you could." I say nothing, so she continues. "It's so funny, you only see a small side of a person on Instagram. I had no idea. I also thought you were going to be like, super LA." I grumble at this. "Well, I left." Even though I haven't consciously made the decision yet, I know when I say this that it is true, and that I am never going back. I am thrown off into silence for a few moments where my brain processes this without thinking any thoughts at all. I realize, also, that I am nervous. Because I have known Jill for nearly all my life, even without ever really knowing her, I feel at ease. It feels as though we are two atoms who split apart at the creation of the universe and have suddenly joined into the same object again. What have you been doing this whole time? It's funny see YOU again! Or maybe, two soldiers who were in the same landing craft during D-Day who run into each other on an island in the Pacific years later. You didn't die? Me neither! We pick at our sushi and glance at each other from across the table. I am wary. She is coy. 

  As we finish, she asks me about my plans for the future. "I don't know," I say. "I've applied to some random jobs across the United States. Maybe I'll go to Wyoming or Alaska. Wait out the end of the world. Explore a bit." I wonder if she thought I was here to stay. She continues to smile at me and betrays no inner thoughts or turmoil. She is, in fact, staring at me while I speak. I jerk back defensively. "What?" She shakes her head. "Oh, sorry -" I toss back a shot of Sake and wish it were stronger. "Do you wanna go across the street?" I name another bar. She agrees, despite not drinking. I buy her meal. I sign the check and scribble my name as I always do. Its the first letter of my name followed by a flourish of the pen. The faster I sign, the cooler it looks. There is little game left to play. Jill clings to my arm as we cross the street and I can feel the tips of her fingers on the fresh lines scrawled into my arms. One of my wounds reads kill me. Someone recognizes me from across the street and yells my name. I raise a hand without looking. "Look at you! Gone for years but people still know you," she teases me. Is that what you see? You see a regular ass person just like yourself, don't you?  I want to run away from this girl, from this date, from this town - never be seen again. But I don't. I kiss her on the sidewalk, in full view of everyone who might see me. Her lips are soft and her tongue is sweet. I pull back and look into her smiling eyes. They remind me of cherry coke.