CHAPTER 1

My heart beat so ferociously that my hands went to either side of my ribs to keep them from unhinging. I could hear the beat ringing in my ears, but there was silence. My mouth went dry preventing me from talking. Time froze. I froze. I sat there with my head in my hands processing what had just happened, struggling to comprehend it. My world, or what I had convinced myself and my friends to be my world, had just crashed around me. Thoughts flood my brain, my vision blurs and without warning my legs give way as I collapsed on my bed. Tears began to roll down my cheeks on to my pillow. Part of my heart wishes that when I wake up tomorrow it will just have been a dream. The other half of my heart is relieved, relieved that what i’ve been exposed and I no longer have that constant weight hanging over me, although from here on in won’t be a smooth road.

The past few hours went by as if it were only a few minutes. I knew it would end some day. It was too good to be true. Deep inside myself I hoped that the day all was revealed I would have been long gone and I would have cut ties with those around me, like I have done to people before. My only problem being that some people are too hard to remove from my life.

Wondering what I did that was so wrong? I lied, more like compulsively lied, for three years. I told stories presenting myself favourably. I decorated my personality. Long story short, I made up a group of non-existent people, claimed they were my friends and made them that popular group that had it all. Although, when things seemed like they were fading, I painted myself as a victim, lying about some inadmissible things. For what? To be that person everybody wants to be. To be the person I wished myself to be.

The next morning I woke up, instead of my heart beating it was my head. My eyes were red and swollen and my head lay on a pillow drenched in tears. I was exhausted and my body ached as I shuffled in my bed, trying to get comfortable. I fought with myself over checking my facebook messages. I want to but I dreaded to think what’s there or more like what’s not there. I drowned in my thoughts, slowly drifting back to sleep. Until my mother decided it was time to get up and stop drowning in my sorrows. She didn’t know about the past three years. I never lied to her but I knew I had to tell her what I had done. After all, my actions had left me with nobody else. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I rather being alone. Nobody to lie to or nobody to hurt. I push people away as soon as I feel them becoming close to me. So I opened up. I told my mother everything and got no reaction, other than one of disgust.

There are no words to describe how the next few days played out. After passing out a few times, my parents decided maybe it was time to worry and that they should bring me to see a doctor, which led to the conclusion that I had a borderline personality disorder! “Great”, I thought to myself. Now I have another reason to be branded odd. Not only was I going to be known in school for the girl who lied about her life but I’m also going to be the girl who is “not right in the head”.

Then time came to go back to school. If I had the choice I would have never gone back. Knowing that the school had been in contact with my parents and that they knew what had happened made it worse. I would have to face up to people and be conscious of the looks and whispers as I walked by. It was too much. Voices in my head telling me I shouldn’t be there because it was causing bother for others. So I broke down. I was assured by teachers, guidance counsellors that,  “as time goes on, people will forget and it will get easier”. Wrong! Concentrating became harder and I drifted off into daydreams during class, not aware of the goings on around me. Sitting in a classroom on my own was not fun either. I ran myself into the ground, well more like into the hospital. My body became dehydrated and stress caused major problems for my health.

Now I sit here, staring at a picture with a quote that reads, “Accept what is, let go of what was and have faith in what will be”.  I’m lost in thought, processing what it could mean to me. Mark notices that I’m staring at the picture, letting me sit in silence and in deep thought. I take in my surroundings. A room no bigger than four metres by three metres. Plain walls where pictures of nature hung in various places. A small desk, in front of a bookshelf, where a laptop rested beside a pile of paper. I’m sitting on a small, brown, leather couch, comfortably. Mark sitting opposite me, at the same level, on a single chair. “What do you think?”, he plucks up the courage to ask me, in a questioning tone, as he shifted in his seat to. What do I think? With a simple answer, I reply, “I think it’s time to do just that”.