Backlash

I’ve tried reading, but the words bounce around the page like Dad when he’s had too many cups of coffee. The doctor warned me there might be some neurological effects from the overdose. He said that hopefully they’ll just be temporary, but only time will tell. Great. Imagine if they’re not. That’ll make going back to school even worse. Now everyone will call me Stupid Lardo.

So I’ve been watching a lot of daytime TV, mostly kid programs, because in those, everything has a happy ending. Even though I know that’s a lie, that in reality everything goes downhill once you get to middle school, and things never really get tied up in a neat bow after half an hour in real life, it’s better than watching Maury or Jerry Springer, where the whole point of the show is to see people whose lives are so messed up that they’re willing to find out who is really the father of their baby on national TV. Why would anyone want to find out something that personal in front of an audience? Don’t they ever think about how someday that poor little baby will be a teenager and see his or her screwed-up parents fighting on YouTube?

I’ll take Sesame Street over that in a heartbeat.

While I’m counting with the Count, I list the reasons why I wish the pills had worked.

1. I wouldn’t have to face going back to school.

2. I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life being known as the girl who tried to kill herself and failed at that, too.

3. I wouldn’t have to remember, and so, because of that, and here’s the biggie:

4. I wouldn’t have to feel. Anything. Ever again.

But what I’m doing is putting me on Dr. Hospital Shrink’s Naughty List, because I’m not supposed to be engaging in “destructive negative thought patterns” like this. Instead, I’m supposed to be making a Gratitude List of three things I’m grateful for every day.

I was like, “How am I supposed to do that? My life sucks. That’s why I’m here in the first place.”

Dr. Hospital Shrink just smiled and nodded, like yeah, yeah, he’d heard it all before.

“It doesn’t have to be a big thing, Lara. It can be something as small as being grateful that you got the right flavor Jell-O on your di

“If I liked Jell-O, which I don’t.”

“But you get the idea,” he persisted. Dr. Hospital Shrink was a

As much as I pretended not to, I did. This was my list for the first day:

1. I’m grateful for water. I’m thirsty.

2. I’m grateful that Mom and Dad went home to shower and change so I had a break from them sitting by my bedside, sighing and making me feel like I’m their Problem Child.

3. I’m seriously grateful for toilet paper. That activated charcoal they gave me to help get the drugs out of my system is making me poop a lot, and it’s making my poop beyond gross. Like, I mean, even more beyond gross than poop usually is. It’s totally black, like coal.

This episode of Sesame Street is brought to you by the letter W for Waste of time.

Making the list hasn’t been getting easier, even after being out of the hospital for a week. I’m still stuck on number one for today’s list.

Oh wait:

1. I’m grateful for Sesame Street so I don’t have to watch “Mothers who sleep with their son’s girlfriend’s brothers” on The Jerry Springer Show.

One down. Only two more to think about in the endless hours that stretch between now and when I go to sleep and this all starts over again.

2. I’m grateful for naps, because they help pass the time and let me forget.

Except when they don’t. Except when I dream about Christian.

Last night I dreamed that he did ask me to his dance and I bought that ivory dress I loved on Wanelo. He looked hot in his tux, and he told me I was beautiful when he slipped a pretty corsage of tiny pink roses with a small spray of baby’s breath onto my wrist — the touch of his hands on my wrist sending shivers up my spine.

In my dream limo, he put his arm around me and rested his hand on my bare shoulder, gently touching my skin with his fingertips. He whispered in my ear that he loved me and this was going to be the best night ever. In my dream, I believed him, my heart beating faster in excitement and anticipation, because just by being there with him and having his arm around me, it already was.

But when the limo pulled up at the dance, it wasn’t at his high school; it was at my middle school. And all these people outside dressed in tuxes and beautiful dresses were holding big signs that said Lardo and Lardosaurus. I was scared Christian would see them and change his mind, so I tried to kiss him to distract him from the signs. But instead of leaning in to kiss me with his perfect, warm lips, he pulled away from me in horror.

“Why would I want to kiss you?” he asked, his handsome face distorted almost beyond recognition by disgust and loathing. “Lardo. You repulse me. I would never want to be seen with you in public anywhere, let alone a dance.”

“But … why?” I pleaded, reaching for him, still feeling the warmth of his fingers on my skin. “A few minutes ago, you said …”

“The world would be a better place without you in it, Lardo,” he said, and he was no longer handsome. His eyes made me shiver, but with fear, not anticipation; his mouth was a thin line of cruelty. But worse still were the words that came out of it. “You should just do us all a favor and kill yourself.”

I woke up, my heart racing, with tears streaming down my cheeks. In the stillness, in that lonely quiet of three in the morning when no one else was awake, I cried into my pillow so my sister wouldn’t hear through the wall, and I wished once again that the pills had done their job.

And the question that I asked myself, over and over, as I tried to get back to sleep, staring at the shadows on the ceiling was: What did I do wrong?

Until I understand that, making these stupid gratitude lists is just a homework assignment in fakery, because I’m mad that I still have to wake up every day to a world where nothing makes any sense.

No way am I going to be able to come up with number three today. Linda, the therapist I see now that I’m out of the hospital, is just going to have to deal. Just like she expects me to. Just like everyone else thinks I should.

Mom knocks on the door: her attempt at pretending I have privacy. I’m not allowed to shut it anymore in case I harm myself. They’re protecting me from me.

Even when I shower I have to leave the bathroom door ajar, which is totally awkward when Dad’s home. My parents promised that when I take a shower he’s not allowed to come upstairs.

But still … the faint draft coming in from the open door reminds me that I’m not to be trusted.

Now I know how zoo animals feel, always watched, always observed, never able to escape except in their heads. Except now everyone’s trying to watch me in there, too.

“Lara, honey?”

“Yeah?”

She inches into my room and takes a seat on the edge of my bed. I shove the stupid gratitude journal under the covers. No way I want Mom prying into that.