Property of Billie Eilish (✓)

009

I have a new obsession with trees.

I want to be a tree. They're carefree and they're good. They don't worry about anything, they just take all the waste of the world and turn it into something new and beautiful. I want to be a tree.

I'm in the yard right now, and there are trees everywhere. I stared at them for a very long time before deciding to write. If I were a tree, what kind would I even be? Maybe an oak? I like the sound of birch. I can't decide.

I feel like something is stuck in my heart. Was that strange? like an idea, a feeling. It's stuck in there. I couldn't pull it out. Maybe it was about the trees.

Trees, trees, trees, trees.

I like how that word looks. Trees. T r e e s.

I just laughed out loud, and I scared one of the other patients. My laugh sounds funny. So does my voice. I'm a human robot. I'm the opposite of a tree. I want to be life but I'm just a stupid ticking time bomb robot thing.

I didn't even sleep last night. I couldn't sleep. I was cold, even through the room was warm. A bone cold type of thing. I had my dog to keep me company. Her name is pepper.

Pepper comes around whenever she wants to. She likes to roam around and bark at people, but they never react because she's not real. She's a hallucination, I know that for a fact.

I only see her when things are bad. Things are always bad, but when she's around it's like things are worse.

I don't know how long I'm going to be here. Probably for a while. I was kept for six months last time, but I wonder how long it'll be this time. Hopefully less.

I had a girl try to talk to me today. She's got manic depression. Normally people like her don't stay in psych wards more than a week, but she's in her depression phase right now, and she keeps trying to kill herself.

That's what she told me while I was looking at the trees. She told me everything about her. I guess she thinks I'm mute. I didn't mind letting her vent to me, get all her secrets out. It felt good, to do good for someone.

When she left, she asked to see my wrist, and I let her. When she flipped the bracelet over I didn't flinch. We're all ruined here. There's no use in hiding it.

Her lips parted, and I felt my heart start to speed up. Once we made eye contact, her face shifted into a look of pity. I closed my eyes and yanked my wrist back. I was sick of that look. I see it everywhere.

Even my own parents give me that look when I walk by. It makes me want to throttle them. They don't know what to do with me. I heard them whisper to each other in the kitchen at night. They want me to go somewhere else. Part of me wants them to go to an open field full of stones.

My brother is understanding, though. He loves me a lot, and I love him even more. Sometimes he takes me out for ice cream, or if I'm lucky, he takes me to the arcade. He's very busy with work, so I don't see him as often as I'd like.

I only have two minutes left in the yard, and then we have to go back inside for group therapy. They sit us all in a circle, sometimes in chairs, sometimes on the floor- and they ask how we feel. I get a whiteboard, because I don't like to talk.

Everyone already knows my answer. It's the same every time. Every Wednesday and Sunday at 3:19, I write the same thing down.

Tortured.

Not physically- but mentally. I am tortured.