/ / M E D I C I N E / /

Chapter One

   "Don't forget to make a wish babe." Jenna stood behind me, draping her arm across my shoulders. She held me tighter, but I could feel nothing emotionally. I couldn't even tell if she touched me. It's been quite awhile since I could. The last time I felt, I cut it away. Unwilling to deal with it only to be faced with nothing. Simply nothing.
     Sound good to anyone? Yeah well, It did to me too. Until I unwittingly unraveled the reality of it all, and I now understand why they say, "I'd rather know pain than be numb." Because the complete absence of emotion leaves you feeling almost inhuman. Like an alien wandering aimlessly into nowhere. An alien that everyone avoids, because why would talk to an alien? They don't understand your world. They just don't get it. And they're right. We don't get it. But damn it, if they only knew how badly we wanted to.
     I hesitated as I stared at the small, flickering flame. My head was a mess of unfinished thoughts and I had so many things to wish for. I drew in a small breath, then blew out the candles. I wished that I could change. I wished that I could feel genuinely happy without the use of unprescribed medications. I wished for it to happen quickly for I felt my days were ending with no pause, escaping without me even getting the chance to notice and I would soon run out of it. The wish was useless though. Why was I even wishing? Miracles don't exist and wishes don't come true. No, wishes were just pleas into thin air, begs that nobody would hear.
     My friends clapped and Jenna began to cut into the cake. She passed out plates and gave me the first slice. Everybody was laughing and talking around me, but I felt like there was a great difference between us that separated me from them. As if I was quarantined into some glass box, I could see and hear them, but held back by some invisible force. Maybe they knew I was alien to them.
     I hardly touched my cake. I wasn't hungry for food, I craved a high. I was somewhat sober now, and falling out of a high is the worst feeling. It leaves my void feeling even more hollow. I got my high and time ran past me again.
     As I awoken from my wasted blank, hours had gone by and the sun had set. Jenna sat before me. She was telling me some story that I couldn't remember the start of. I just nodded and laughed when it felt appropriate. As her story came to an end, she smiled at me so genuinely that it made me feel a bit jealous and even a little sick.
     "I love you." She said as if she were mesmerized by me.
     I gave her a crooked smile in return. "I love you too." Lie.
     She leaned in closer and kissed me. I kissed her back feeling nothing but a stomach ache and her lips tighten into a smile against mine.
     "Happy birthday baby." She murmured against my lips.
     I said nothing in reply and only kissed her again to prevent any talking. She comprehended it as if I wanted more of her and straddled my lap. She sped up the kiss. I couldn't keep up with the rapid movement of her lips and tongue, so I pulled away from her and gently took her off of my lap. I rubbed my eyes.
     "No Jenna, not tonight."
     Jenna pouted and crossed her arms like a child. "You say that every night Matty. Is there someone else? I think you fell in love with some other girl."
     I laughed. I wasn't even sure of my feelings for her, and the thought of love for another girl didn't even exist. I shook my head and let out another lazy laugh.

      "No love, most certainly not." There was a definite double meaning in that phrase that I did not intend.

     "Then why won't you have sex with me Matty?" She asked still pouting. 

     I hesitated. I couldn't tell her that my disconnection from society and human interactions made sex uncomfortable for me, she wouldn't understand that. I couldn't tell her that I watch myself, as if in third person. That my lips move, and my tongue forms words, and my ears hear the sentences spilling blankly from my mouth, but it isn't me saying them. That the cracking voice is not my own, and the hand gestures are forced by the pulling of the strings of a puppeteer. I try to take back control of my body, but the more I fight it, the further I slip inside my head and I can't get out. I can never tell her that.
     "Why are you hesitating? What are you keeping from me?" She was insistent for an answer.
     I shrugged. "I'm not keeping any secrets babe." Lie. "I just have a bloody migraine." Lie.
     Jenna sighed softly and pulled me down beside her on the bed. She wrapped her arms around me and laid her head on my chest. I played with her hair because I knew she liked that and in moments like this it felt right to do. She crashed from her high and fell asleep on me. I stopped playing with her hair and looked up at the ceiling above me. It used to be an eggshell white ceiling. However, years of smoking under it had left it tinted a yellowish color. Water damage left cracks in the paint. The walls matched the ceiling almost identically. They were worked out by time and countless parties.
     I laughed softly to myself. I had left a broken home and moved into a broken house. I guess I wasn't made for happiness, and faking just makes me even more drained. I feel like an empty mouth, starving and without words. In this moment I wanted to fill my empty mouth with moscato. The only thing holding me back from that was Jenna. It was ironic really. At my first intervention, my mother called Jenna an enabler because she was doing the drugs with me, supporting my addictions with her own. My father had said I was slowly ruining myself, but he hadn't even known that I was already ruined before the drugs. I hardly spoke throughout the meeting. I was scared of humans because I was human, and I know the terrible things we are capable of. I am no longer human, but a monster now, an alien. We're all monsters and aliens in our own ways, but I scare myself.
   Fuck this, I need to sleep or I'll never stop sinking into the bad thoughts that already consume me.