The Empty Parking Lot Across the Street

Part 3

Two months had gone by since I met Jake at the Halloween spook alley and the new year came. We had probably snuck out only about five times. It seemed to have happened more than that though because of the time that had gone by. We were limited nights we could see each other. My grandma didn't feel great about the sleepovers at my house next door that I was having on a regular basis.

One night he actually asked me to be his girlfriend... I was so shaken and nervous by the question that I had to turn the offer down. It's not like I didn't want to be his girlfriend, I just had never been in a relationship before. I was still only 15. I was raised by a religious family and still had some of those values anchored in me. I explained to him that I didn't feel like it was good timing and truthfully joked to him saying, "But ask me again after January 6th." I would be the age my family allowed me to date at.
I still wondered why he would never hang out with me like a normal person. I realized that I didn't know any of his friends. I didn't know that much about him at all. I knew he liked cuddling and where he went to school. I got him to come hang out with me and my tomboy friend at the mall one evening. He avoided any sort of physical contact with me. It seemed a bit shady. I tried to hold his hand and he only accepted the gesture for a few minutes. We left the mall when he spotted a girl he knew on his ballroom team. He tried really hard to not let her see him. It was weird.
With the unknown character and shady behavior emanating from him, I had the right to be curious. I would never ask him anything though. I let it slip off my mind and remained clueless. There was little contact. I felt like I was not in his best interest anymore, or if I ever was. I hadn't seen him for a while, and then he decided he wanted to see me again. This time, I had been going through a wave of anxiety and panic. He said he needed to see me because he was feeling down and told me to sleep over at my house. There were so many thoughts going through my head. It was a couple days after my birthday, so I thought maybe we'd finally become a thing. My sister, who had been covering for me every time I went out just in case, suspected he might be using me. She is two and a half years older than me with more experience with boys and didn't want to see me go through some sort of heartbreak.
Unfortunately, I felt like I needed to see him regardless of what his intentions were at this point. I proceeded to get my grandmas permission to sleep over, but this time she snapped at me and didn't want me to go. I went anyways, using the poor excuse that it was my own house even though I was technically living with her. That was the start of the panic I started to feel. I knew she was probably going to tell my dad all about it as soon as he got back from the store, and she did. My dad confronted me and called me out saying he was going to stay upstairs until I went to sleep suspecting I was sneaking out. I denied the accusation, but he refused to go to bed.
While this was all happening, Jake was updating me on his situation getting ready to come get me. I was in major freak-out mode downstairs in my house. The smart me knew I should stop seeing Jake because it didn't feel right anymore, but the needy me fought back with loneliness and excuses. A panic attack hit me and I was crying on the floor of my sister's room waiting for her to get home. Every other minute, I would get a text from Jake asking me if I was good to go, or if my dad was asleep. My hands wandered the floor looking for something, anything to hurt myself with. My breathing was not normal anymore, nor was my brain function.
I spotted a bottle of liquid prescription medicine that my sister had been taking for a recent knee surgery she went through. My iPod lit up with another text from Jake informing me that he was going to get on his way to my house. My muscles tensed and I couldn't get myself to breathe for a few seconds. I flung myself down helpless on the floor bringing the screen to my view. I told him I couldn't come, he questioned me, and I responded with, "Just DON'T come." That would be the last text he received from me for a while...
My hands held the medicine above my mouth that wouldn't open to let the liquid enter. I intended to do anything to put myself in a hospital. I attempted a second time almost opening my mouth and gave up throwing the bottle to the ground and screaming on my hands and knees. I made my way upstairs with the bottle to inform my dad of the almost-incident. I was supposed to be open and vocal about my problem with depression and self harm to him because it was already hard for him to parent us since our mother had died 3 years before. I kept my composure until he asked me what was wrong, which ended with my dad and oldest brother taking me to the emergency room to save me from myself.
I was to stay the night there and decide if I wanted to go to a psychiatric unit and be an inpatient for up to as long as two weeks. Everything in me told me to stay away from reality and go to the unit to get away from Jake for a while. Another part of me thought he would go crazy trying to figure out what the heck happened to me, and I was more than okay with that. To me, it meant he might think about me more. So the next morning, I was transferred away.