True Confessions (2 page)

“Kennedy, baby, you ate like a sick bird. Look at this. You left the majority of your food on your plate. This is not acceptable. Not acceptable at all. You need to eat more, dear, in order to get your strength back,” Mother stated, lifting and retrieving the small bamboo food tray from my lap. She had even included a small vase of fresh, colorful flowers to brighten my day. Everyone who knew me knew I adored fresh-cut flowers of all shades and varieties. I would splurge on flowers the way some women treated themselves to a new outfit or shoes.

“I’m not really hungry, Mother,” I declared, changing position and turning away with my back to her. I didn’t want her to see the frustration that was clearly etched across my pinched, crunched-up face.

I understood she meant well, but I only ate as much as I did to please her. I didn’t have an appetite, and I certainly didn’t feel like talking. In fact, I didn’t
feel
like doing anything but sleeping. I wanted to curl up in a tiny, tight ball, pull my covers over my head, and simply sleep my meaningless life away. Sleep was my comfort and salvation.

“Since when did you start leaving my famous scrambled eggs, grits, and country ham on your plate?”

I didn’t bother to answer. I only pretended to be sleepy as I faked a wide-mouthed yawn. I didn’t even bother to cover my mouth with my hand.

“Usually, by now, you are on your second helping,” Mother volunteered, picking up a few discarded clothes from the floor and placing them in the hamper.

“I don’t know what’s going on. I’m kinda tired. I think I’m going to nap for a while.”

Even though I didn’t see her face, I knew Mother was staring at me with that worried expression on her butter-pecan face. It was the expression she tried so hard to disguise when I was looking directly at her.

“Baby, that is not acceptable. You just woke up. You’ve only been awake a little over an hour. We have a beautiful day ahead of us and you can’t spend it sleeping all day.” To prove her point, Mother strolled over to my bedroom window and boldly opened my mini blinds so that the early morning sunlight greeted me with a blinding, direct glare.

I groaned and shielded my eyes with the back of my hand.

“Here, sit up,” she commanded, attempting to fluff up my down pillows, and gently propping them behind my back. She reached for the journal that sat on my nightstand.

“Why don’t you write in your journal for a while?” she asked, holding it out to me like she was offering a piece of candy to a small child.

“Mother, I really don’t—”

“That nice doctor said that writing down your thoughts would help you, be therapeutic. Help you come to grips with this, uh, this situation. Here. Take this and let me go and find you a pen. Or do you prefer a pencil?”

“A pen is fine, Mother.”

Reluctantly, I sat up completely and resigned myself to writing in my new journal. Actually, I had kept journals in the past, especially during my college days when life was so new and exciting. I wrote everything down. Up until that point, I had led a somewhat sheltered life.

Reading and writing were major parts of my life; at least, they were before Drake. Reading took me to places I had never been and enabled me to meet bold and exciting new friends. In my books, female heroines did and said things I could only imagine and read about. They were powerful. Something that I wasn’t.

Maybe if I pleased Mother, cooperated, and pretended to feel better, she would go home, back across town to her townhome, sooner rather than later.

Today was my first full day back home from the hospital and Mother decided on her own that she’d move in with me and nurse me back to my old self. The problem was that I didn’t know if I wanted to go back to my previous existence. I didn’t like the old me.

“There you go, baby,” she said, walking back into the room and handing me the Uni-ball purple pens I adore.

“Thank you.”

“You entertain yourself and I’m going to clean up around here until lunchtime. What do you feel like eating today? I know you are glad to be away from that nasty hospital food.”

I shrugged my shoulders because I really didn’t care. Food was the furthest thing from my mind at the moment.

That didn’t derail Mother; she continued to chitchat. “What about a nice salad and a baked chicken breast?”

“That’s fine.” I attempted to offer a smile.

Mother seemed pleased as she ran her hand across my dresser top. “You really should dust around here. Got dust bunnies everywhere. I found one behind your sofa that was big as a small cat. You know I didn’t raise you like that.”

“Okay, could you shut my bedroom door behind you? Please?”

There it was again. That look. I saw that look flash across her pretty face again. Just for a quick moment, a second. If you weren’t careful, you’d miss it. That look that said she was afraid to close the door. Afraid of what I might do to myself behind closed doors. Frightened I might try to hurt myself again.

“Mother, I’ll be fine. I promise. I’ll call you if I need anything.” I even managed a faint, small smile again.

Hesitantly, Mother left my bedroom and closed my door, with an inch left ajar. That inch spoke silent volumes. I heard her moving around in my living room and tiny kitchen. Drawers were opened and closed. Water was run in the kitchen sink. I lay back and closed my eyes as I felt that familiar blackness attempt to engulf me; completely overtake me. I pulled my comforter around me like a cocoon of protection and security. My temples were throbbing.

Meanwhile, in the living room, the vacuum cleaner started up, with Mother humming loudly in the background. Crooning one of her favorite tunes, “Amazing Grace”. Then, I heard the familiar sounds of a morning talk show coming on. There was definitely no sleeping now. I looked down and once again examined my brand-new leather journal and thought
why not
. It had tons of blank, lined pages to write on. Maybe if I wrote some of my thoughts down, I could make some sense of the turn my life had taken. But where to begin? I remembered a college professor telling us that every story has a beginning, middle, and ending. Simple enough. I’d start at the beginning.

My name is Kennedy and I’m a coward. Coward. Such a small, simple six-letter word. A word that has applied to me for most of my life. I know I’m a coward. Always have known. I accept that fact just like I accept air to breathe for my very existence. I’ve been afraid of so many things during my twenty-eight years of life. Ask Mother and she’ll tell you how, as a child, I was afraid of spiders, snakes, rats, hairy monsters, and, the biggest one of all, the dark. Like most children, I was a big scaredy cat when it came to dealing with those imagined or unimagined fears and things that go bump in the night.

For most people, when we become adults, our fears subside. Not me. I’m still afraid. I’m terrified of not being loved. I’m afraid of not being wanted. Of saying the wrong things. I’m afraid of showing my true nature. I’m afraid of saying no and standing up for myself. Bottom line, I’m petrified of living life to the fullest for fear of someone disapproving. And that’s how all my problems begin and end. Plain and simple, I’m a coward because I realize these things and won’t do anything about them. It’s easier to turn a deaf ear and hope they’ll magically go away. Not.

Don’t let anyone tell you any different. It’s easier to take your life than to deal with your reality. Taking your life, committing suicide, doesn’t take an ounce of courage. The courage is in living and tackling your issues head on.

I guess you’ve figured it out by now. I survived my suicide attempt—thanks to Mother. You see, she calls me every Sunday night at exactly seven o’clock P.M. on the dot. Rain or shine. She never fails. You can set your watch by her, almost to the second. We use this time to catch up on our individual weeks, even though we don’t live that far from one another. The majority of the time, it is Mother who goes on and on about something or another. I usually listen and make a comment here and there to let her know she still has my captive, undivided attention.

I consumed the bottle of pills at approximately 6:45
P.M
. Talk about a pathetic case of crying out for help. Could I have been any more obvious? When the cordless phone sitting on my nightstand started to ring at exactly seven o’clock
P.M
., I couldn’t ignore it. With each ring, the noise became louder and louder as it wracked my nerves to no end. I just had to pick up the receiver and hear her voice one last time. By seven o’clock, I was slipping fast into an unconscious state, but I had enough strength to murmur a faint greeting.

You can figure out most of the rest. As I had predicted, even through my haze, when I heard Mother’s voice, I told her everything the best I could in my foggy state of mind. I stumbled on about Drake and how unworthy, undesirable, and unhappy he made me feel.

Mother kept me talking, awake, sent help, and saved my life. She was able to dial 911 on her cell as she talked and listened to me on her home phone. The doctor on call in the emergency room pumped my stomach, and then I rested as comfortably as I could for the remainder of the night.

I vaguely recall Mother faithfully by my side, holding my hand and uttering soothing words in between her muffled, hidden sobs. I turned my head away because I couldn’t bear to see the sadness in her brown eyes, unhappiness that I had placed there. The nurse asked who Drake was because she said I called out for him a few times in my fretful sleep. I dreamt of darkness, pain, suffering, and the devil coming to take me away. I awoke in a cold sweat, shaking, and a scream on the tip of my tongue.

Through it all, or at least the parts I can partially recall, I wondered what he, Drake, would think of my failed attempt at taking my own life. He was constantly reminding me how I never completed anything, outside of work. I’d start a project and never see it through to completion, or I’d have so many different things going on at one time that I could never give 100 percent to any one task. Oh well, I guess this is the perfect example of not completing a project. I am alive and breathing, even if I am not well.

Day two after my suicide attempt was spent in the hospital. I was a bit more coherent, even though I didn’t want to speak with or see anyone. If I had had the power to disappear, I would have. All I desired was to burrow under my drab hospital sheets and sob. However, I couldn’t cry because that would upset Mother too much and she’d start crying. It pained me to see her upset. Over the last few years, Mother has shed enough tears for the both of us. She took her divorce pretty hard, but that’s another story for a different time.

The hospital sent their in-house psychiatrist to visit me. He was an older white man with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. His eyes reminded me of the tropical waters of Jamaica; you could get lost in them. He was rather animated and talked with his hands. He dropped by and asked a ton of questions about what I was feeling, took a lot of notes on a yellow legal pad, and eventually gave me a business card with the name of a psychiatrist for me to see after I was released. Dr. Mitchell, (I think that was his name) suggested I start keeping a journal to help sort out my thoughts and deepest feelings. Before exiting my room, he gently squeezed my shoulder, gave me a sympathetic smile, and that was that.

Mother was acting so strange, like this never happened. Like it was all an unintentional act. Like I accidentally swallowed a bottle full of prescription pills. I may be a coward, but Mother is afraid of handling things. If it is something she doesn’t want to address, she will act like it doesn’t exist. Case in point, my attempted suicide. If ignoring that brought her peace, so be it.

No one knew what happened to me at my job as a senior relations service representative for a telecommunications company. You know what? Even if they had known, they probably wouldn’t have cared. I pretty much went to work, performed my job responsibilities, and went home. I had not accumulated many friends in the three years I’d been there. As far as they knew or were told, and this included my manager, I had been out sick for a few days. That was believable, because lately the flu had been going around and everybody was catching the bug.

Drake.

Drake. I never wanted to set my eyes on him for the rest of my life. If I never, ever saw him, that would be too soon. I don’t know what led me to believe that I’d make a difference in his life and he’d fall hopelessly and helplessly in love with me. What made me think that I’d possess him someday? Drake could never be possessed by a mere woman. I think he secretly hates the female population and only tolerates and uses us for his enjoyment and pleasure.

Day three after my suicide attempt had me being released from the hospital, and going home to an empty apartment with an even emptier life. Still pretending everything was peachy keen, Mother had cleaned up my apartment, stocked my refrigerator with nutritious, healthy organic foods, thrown out every bottle of pills I had in my medicine cabinet, and even had a homecoming gift waiting for me: a leather-bound, tan, lined journal with hundreds of pages to fill with my confessions.

Dr. Mitchell may be right. If I write my feelings down, maybe I can make sense of my life as it’s laid out in front of me in black and white. The only way to do that was to start from the beginning. What was that quote? The past holds the clues to your present.

Like Mother, I could pretend too. I could pretend to feel better because there was no way that I was going to visit that shrink and get a crazy label attached to me. I’m not wacky; I simply had a momentary lack of judgment due to depression. However, I was determined to make a fresh start without Drake in my life and in my dreams.