How I Got Here Read Free Page B

thought I was plain? Did I really care what she thought of me? Well, however stupid it may sound to you, I did care. Not because I wanted her to like me, not even because I was offended that she said I was plain, or that I was nothing, but because of the power she held over me. With a few sweet smiles, some softly spoken lies and her impeccable acting skills, she’d managed to take away my friends, she’d managed to get everyone in that school sending me emails, which were all lined up in my mailbox along with hers, that’s what I found when I got home. 93 emails telling me I was plain, that I was nothing, you hear something enough and you start to believe it, and 93 people telling you that you are plain is quite persuasive. Tell me doctor, how would that make you feel?
    So there it is just as you asked, all written down neatly in black and white for your consideration, what do you think of me now? Do you pity me? I do hope that you won’t pity me, because that isn’t what this is about, I don’t want your pity or your concern, I don’t want your soothing words of comfort, I want to get this over with, so tell me what you think and then I’ll share with you the next part of this story. Then maybe, just maybe you’ll understand how I got here. Maybe, I’ll understand it as well.
    River
     
    Chapter Two
    Session 1
    He lays the pages down on his lap making sure not to crease them, River’s neat curling words are scribbled across each page, in places the black ink is slightly smudged, he can tell that the marks were made by her tears as she wrote this down, the thought of her sitting alone crying over this letter, is almost more than he can handle, but he has to be professional and not let it bother him.
    When he’d first met River on the ward at the private hospital that he works in, she’d been nothing more than another patient, another girl who needed to be treated for some illness, but that hadn ’t lasted long and over the weeks he’d seen that there was more to her, she wasn’t just a symptom that needed to be treated, she was a girl who was clearly struggling to handle what had happened to her, and despite several therapy sessions with the hospitals best psychiatrists, she refused to speak, in fact she hardly spoke a word to anyone, she just sat there in her bed staring out of the window, getting paler by the day and the dark circles growing darker each time he saw her. He had seen her on several occasions since he’d started at the hospital, and in that time he had seen her pull out a leather bound notebook from under her pillow, more times than he could count, and he would watch her as she scribbled away in it for hours. He had always been an observant guy, and he had noticed a lot about her, he knew there was so much that she was locking up, and that it was tearing her apart, and so because he wanted to find a way to help her, he had started sitting with her. He wouldn’t talk to her, or push her to talk, but he would just sit there and let her know that he was there for her, if she needed to talk to anybody then he would listen. A few times she had spoken, not ever about herself, but the first time she’d spoken to him it was because he was having a bad day, and she was worried about him. In that moment he knew that all the other staff were wrong, she wasn’t a lost cause, and he wouldn’t ever give up on her.
    Two weeks after she had first spoken to him, with her kind concern for his wellbeing, she had looked over to him with tears glistening in her eyes, and behind the tears he saw something which brought hope to his heart, he saw trust. Then with a voice that was shaking, one that was a little out of practice from her silence, she had said the words he longed to hear.
    ‘What do you want me to do?’ She had curled her legs up to her chest, holding them tightly as she waited for him to respond, it was a gesture that he’d seen her do a lot, whenever she was feeling particularly vulnerable, or