“I don’t know, I guess. It just wasn’t worth it anymore,”

I looked down, hoping she wouldn’t say a word, but all she could do was scribble on her yellow notepad with her pen. She was writing so hard, and I knew exactly why. I was lying. I knew exactly why I did it, why I thought it was a good idea. But I guess it will take me a bit to learn not to lie. My name is Jenevieve Vega, the everyday sixteen year old girl. But I’m not so normal. At this moment I am in the Institute of Living. It’s not all that bad here, only the fact that I am constantly being poked, checked on, and watched as if I am a hurt baby bird. Oddly, all of it feels like a needed distraction.

“You are free to go, Miss. Vega,”

A quiet “Okay” was all I could muster out of my small body. My feet shuffled on the old blue carpet, stained from the feet of past patients. I made it to my assigned room and sat on the twin bed. Nothing of that place reminds me of home.

So instead I took a nap, which lately has been the only thing keeping me occupied. As I closed my eyes I drifted off into a deep sleep, escaping from the coldness around me. A wise man once said that all that we see or seem is just a dream within a dream. This one felt all too real.

It was the second time I looked up that I saw him. He was sitting upright right at his desk, two seats left of me and three seats up. Being the talker that he was, he leaned over his seat to whisper to a friend across his desk. I suddenly felt fuzzy, with shivers flowing from my feet to my arms.  I didn’t move, I couldn’t. He was just as amazing as I had remembered. His glassy green eyes reflected from the flecks of light shining on them. His brown skin, even under the fluorescent lights, glowed. I could tell him out of a crowd of two million. I am obsessed with him, well was. If only I had never met him.

“Jenevieve, um Miss. Jenevieve? Are you inside? We have a visitor,”

And just like that, my daydream was gone with the sound that was someone at my door. I wondered, who could possibly be here to see me?

The door squeaked open and she walked in. I feel bad for wishing it was the devil himself.

Tiffany, my best friend of five years side steps beside the nurse and shuffles into my four by four room. I watch as she stiffly sits on the side of my bed. I could feel my lungs tighten and my throat close. Tiffany looked almost sad, and I couldn’t help but wonder why. The room is still, until I dare break the silence to greet the nurse at the door and close it.

A few seconds went by, then maybe a minute or two. I bent my head down and began to blankly stare at the cut above my left wrist. I think Tiffany did, too.

“You look, great Jene, really,”

Her eye twitched a little, fingers started to feel the fabric of the blue quilt on my bed. I could hear the pity in her voice. I knew I looked a mess. My tight coils were in a messy bun. The constant lack of sun had turned my almond skin grayish, as if it was blending into the walls.

“Thanks, Tiffany. You look good too. How’s school treating you?”

“Um, it’s kinda hard without you there. I miss you bestie”

“I wish I wasn’t here either, believe me”

Right after it slipped out of my lips I regret it. The air in the room got tense and she looked at me, mouth open as if her words were ready to spill out.

“Jene, uh, are you okay? Here?”

I couldn’t bare to hear the quiver in her voice as she looked up at me, her blond tendrils covering her eyes. I was glad for this.

“I...I don’t know. I’m sorry I said that Tiff, really,”

My head shifted to the floor. This generic response was not enough, even I could tell. I swallowed my rising tears down my throat along with whatever feelings I was holding on to.

“It’s all for the best, right? All the people here are just trying to help you get better. And I want you to get better too,”

A light sigh escaped from my chest. I knew she meant well, but my time in the institute was not what I had wanted. If anything, I had not even wanted to be anywhere.

That’s why I did it.

Thanks to my amazing talent of losing focus, my mind soon drifted away from the conversation. As Tiffany attempted to recall a story about a fight at lunch, I thought about all the small things that lead to my stay here.

Ever since I was a little girl, I had a thing about wanting to be loved. When I was six, I had this wild crush on a little boy, who of course did not like me back. One afternoon during nap time, I snuck over to him and cut off a lock of his hair. I never knew what compelled me to do it, or why I liked him so much. About two years later my dad died. I loved my dad a lot, and when he left it was like there was a dark void in my heart, growing wider until it stretched out as wide as the sky and swallowed me whole.

I guess one could say that I broke.

I began to search for love wherever I could find it. Spending my money, lying to get attention, gaining massive crushes on people who I thought would reciprocate my love for them. All of this just to feel love, even if it did not last long. This brings me to Andrew.

After changing schools for the second time in two years, I met Andrew. It did not take long for me to start to like him. It was like I knew everything about him without ever speaking to him. It is now that I realize that I had made all of that stuff up, just telling myself all the things that I was convinced I knew about him. It had only taken a few months, and I had made up a plan to get Andrew to myself, my someone to love that would never leave.

And fast forward a few months, I was standing outside of his house, for God knows why. I can try to explain.  

I was exactly a step away from his bedroom window. As I peeked into his blinds, someone rolled up the driveway. It was his mom. I knew she never got home at this time, and I had immediately realized who could have told her I would be here. She recognized my face.

“Hey you!”

“Please! No don’t!”  

My pleading was not enough. She swiftly pulled out her phone and began to dial a number. One thing lead to another, and I was in the woods. Running. It was not till I reached a small cliff did I skid to stop.

All I could hear was my loud, heavy breathing. Coming out deep from the bottoms of my chests to the tip of my lips, rolling off into the dark. Pebbles fell from the corners of the cliff, making little noises as they fell to the bottom. It was here that all my thoughts stopped.

I closed my eyes and spread my arms open and my ebony curls started to sway in front of my face. I was at the edge, ready to jump. There was nothing on my mental, not fear, not even my constant need to be loved. There, in the October breeze and the coldness of the Evergreen trees above my head none of it was important.

“No more, not ever. Not ever, not ever, not ever, no, no, no, no, no,”

This mantra was all that I needed.

That was until I heard a blaring roar, breaking my mantra, shattering me. From the dark came a crevice of red and blue lights. I didn’t need to even step back before a hard hand had grabbed me out of my daze and pulled me closer to the noise.

“What are you doing out here this late young lady?”

I was silent. The questioning was getting intense, even for me. Why was I in the woods, I couldn’t answer this. What could I have said that would be appropriate? Did he want to hear that no one loved me, and because of that I had to leave? My family, everyone. That I had to go because that was the only way my lifelong quest would stop. This mess I had tangled up for years was now just a big knot, and the only way to fix it was to cut it at the source and throw it away?

I was sure that he did not.

After giving him my name, the officer had flashed the light in my face, and it had turned me blind. I shivered, not only from the cold but from the thought of me possibly going to jail.

And just like that, I arrived at the Institute.

So my plan did not go...as planned. As I sat in my room in the Institute, with Tiffany sitting beside me on the hard bed I realized something. Everything happens for a reason. There had to be some good reason as of why I was in a mental health institute.

It was not until after being in the Institute for a while I learned that finding love was not the only way that I was going to fill that endless void in my heart. It had not worked, and it never will. There had to be an end to this literal madness.

One step at a time, I guess.