In Between Days: Raising Jordan (boyxman)✅

Pictures of You

Jordan

That fourteen year old boy, Lucas, cried all the time, day after day, sitting in the corner of the room. I just wanted to shout "Shut up! Shut the fuck up!" But speaking was too hard for me these days. Either I just didn't have the energy or I couldn't find my voice. Counselors sat next to him, trying to console him, telling him lies by saying "everything's going to be okay." Nothing was ever going to be okay. Lies. All lies. I was older and maybe even wiser than most of the patients here. I was almost a college graduate at nineteen (soon to be twenty) while every other patient here was in middle of high school. I didn't belong there. In fact, I didn't belong anywhere.

We all sat in a room that resembled a classroom, attempting to do our schoolwork. I was only there because I was told I had to be in that room with everyone else. I didn't need a tutor; I was perfectly happy doing my own schoolwork in my room by myself. In the beginning of my stay here, counselors let me stay in my room, but then they kept harassing me and harassing me until I gave in to their demands. Tim told me the doctor increased my medication. Maybe the medication helped me get out of bed and speak and obey the counselors commands.

I hated taking medication. I hated being different, but there was nothing I could do about it.

Shut up....shut up....I held my head, covering my ears, as Lucas went on and on. He just wouldn't stop. Why can't they give him medication to shut him up? I couldn't stand it, so I got up and headed to the door. And then there was that other kid who wouldn't sit down. This kid walked and walked, pacing all over the place like he had a running motor inside him. In the back of the room, two teen girls argued back and forth. Last week one of the girls punched the other girl in the stomach. I wanted them all to just shut up.

"Where are you going, Jordan?" the head counselor, Marjory, asked, a black woman from Haiti. She spoke with a thick French Creole accent and wore long braids in her hair and eyeglasses that were at least two inches thick. This room was way too loud and noisy, so chaotic I was about to explode. I didn't know what to say to this counselor. "Are you okay? Can I get you anything?" she asked me. Standing at the door, I pulled at my hair...what was left of it, anyway. Tim cut most of it off except for the top. 

My own counselor, Megan, showed up right before I was about to really lose my mind. She was only a little older than I was, twenty-three or twenty-four. She would have looked younger if she didn't wear so much make-up. Her make-up sometimes distracted me. She liked to wear purple and shimmery eyeshadows with lots of mascara. Her lips were usually painted a deep maroon. Once she wore pink lipstick, which caught me off guard so I wanted nothing to do with her that day. I mean, she always wore dark lipstick. Her reddish brown hair was short and she had this habit of tying the sides up with little barrettes.

"Hey, I was just coming to see you," she said in that annoyingly chipper voice of hers. "Come with me. Let's chat."

Chat. I hated to "chat," but I nevertheless followed her to her little office. For a few minutes I wandered around, pulling at my hair until she told me to sit down. Megan always tried to get me to talk when I didn't want to talk...just like Tim except her job was to get me to talk. Reluctantly, I plopped down on one of the uncomfortable chairs in her office.

"Your hair looks nice," she said. "Did Tim cut it?"

Who else would have cut it? What a stupid question, I thought, folding my arms across my chest.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

"Fine," I said because I knew that's what I was supposed to say.

"You seem stressed," she said like she knew me so well. She had only known me a month.

"I'm fine," I repeated. "It was loud in there, that's all." Even though I didn't look at her, I felt her eyes on me. "You seemed to handle yourself very well. It was to much for you, so you chose to leave. That's good."