Silently Running

I think I broke my therapist.
Today is Wednesday and I’m sitting in my therapist’s office like I have every Wednesday for the past four months. At first it was some mandatory thing by the state, a requirement for the sake of my mental health, but I kept coming because it was really helping my therapist.
The thing is, I’ve given up talking. Not the I’m-a-monk-so-I-have-stopped-talking-to-better-understand-my-God kind of giving up, or even the I-can-no-longer-speak-due-to-physical-limitations kind either. When the accident happened, I’d stopped breathing, and some doctor thought it would be a good idea to cut open my throat and stick a tube in. After they took it out, my throat was sore and they wanted me to go to a speech therapist so I could relearn how to speak, maybe eventually sing. But I don’t feel like talking, don’t deserve to, really. The problem with that? People think you’ve gone crazy if you refuse to speak. And then they require you to see a regular therapist, as if the act of talking to a complete stranger would cure you of any insanity.
But here I am, sitting in my therapist’s office, a month past the required time, and I still haven’t spoken a single word. Instead, I stare as my therapist spills her life story. Somewhere around the third or fourth session, she got tired of the silent, hour-long staring contests and started talking to me about the problems in her life, as if opening up to me would make me comfortable enough to open up with her in return. I have to give her props for originality with that one, but we’ve been at this for months.
“I just don’t know how to talk to her anymore,” she is saying. “My job is all about being able to communicate with people, listen to their problems, help them through trialing times… But I can’t even hold a conversation with my own daughter! I’ve either failed as a parent or as a therapist.”
A tear wells up in her eye and I resist the urge to roll mine. I don’t see the need to point out that she seems to be failing at both at present. She takes a tissue out of the box by her chair and vigorously dabs at the rogue tear before it can leave a trail in her perfectly executed makeup.
“She just loves my ex-husband,” she continues. “She even asked to live with him! Can you imagine? A fourteen-year-old girl would rather live on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico with twenty old, fat, smelly men than stay here with her friends and everything she’s known her entire life! I can’t believe she hates me this much!”
She takes a pad of paper and pen from a small table and writes something angrily. I unfold my leg that has fallen asleep and keep staring. She goes from sad to furious in a matter of seconds. Therapists are fascinating people.
“I gave her life! I’ve kept her fed and clothed all these years while my lousy, good-for-nothing ex-husband traipsed around the country, going from job to job, begging me for money, and not doing a damn thing for his kid! And she’s still choosing him over me! Why do teenage girls hate their mothers so much?”
When she finishes her tirade she realizes who she’s talking to: a seventeen-year-old girl who has recently lost her mother and who is not, in fact, a licensed therapist. Her face goes slack in shock. I’m not sure if I’m offended or just bored, but I get up to leave, only pausing to pluck a book on Freudian complexes off her shelf and drop it into her lap.
I get home at the same time I always do on Wednesdays. Dad’s out back listening to some baseball, so I start dinner. After I put the chicken in the oven and the rice on the stove, I drop the cutting board on the counter to get my dad’s attention. Sure enough, he hears me and is in the kitchen in the amount of time it takes me to put everything for the salad out.
“Hey, Sweetheart,” he says. I lean over and kiss him on the cheek in greeting. He pats my head.
“Read a good book today,” he says, chuckling. My dad is blind. He listens to books rather than read them. I hand him a baby carrot from the pile and toss the rest in the salad. “It was the new Tom Clancy novel. Good stuff.”
I know he can’t see me nod, so I slam the knife down on the board so he knows I’m listening. He just sighs.
“It’s pretty useless having one-sided conversations, Hannah,” he says. I flinch. He never uses my real name unless he’s mad. “This has got to stop. I can’t see you, and you’re not talking. How am I supposed to know you’re okay?” I start tearing the lettuce by hand. I was taught that you do this so the lettuce will last longer. “Your therapist called after you left.” I pause briefly, then continue to throw lettuce into the metal bowl. “She’s concerned about you, too.” I grab a tomato and cut off the ends. “She says if you don’t start talking soon, they may have you institutionalized.” I know he can’t see me roll my eyes. When this comment doesn’t scare me into talking immediately, he sighs again.
“Have it your way,” he says, turning and feeling his way back out to the patio. “Come and get me when dinner is ready.”

My dad and I eat dinner more or less in silence. Occasionally he’ll ask me to cut his meat for him, which I do without saying a word. I won’t be bullied or guilted into talking. The clatter of the fork on his plate lets him know I’m done cutting his meat.
My brother Matt comes home from work as we’re eating and heats up the plate I left him in the microwave.
“How was work?” Dad asks, hearing him sit down.
Matt grunts noncommittally while shoveling food into his mouth. Dad accepts this as an answer and concentrates on finding some rice on his plate. This is one double standard I don’t understand: Matt doesn’t want to talk and we respect that and move on. I don’t want to talk and everyone insists I’ve gone crazy.
After dinner, Matt cleans the kitchen and Dad tells him about the Tom Clancy book while I disappear onto the roof. It’s not a terribly difficult feat as my second story bedroom window opens onto the roof over the kitchen. I sneak onto the roof every night and look at the stars. I bring Wuthering Heights and a flashlight with me so I can imagine I’m in space where no one can bother me and I can read and read until I finally finish the book. But I’m on Earth, and if I read past chapter seventeen, she’ll really be gone for good.
* * *
Matt wakes me up at sun rise. I’ve fallen asleep on the roof again. Luckily it’s flat and there’s really no danger of me falling off. Matt would be upset finding me out here if there were. As it is, he just shakes my shoulder and tells me to shower before Dad gets up and realizes I’ve slept outside again. Dad’s sense of smell has really improved the last few months. He would be able to smell the morning dew on me. But Dad’s still asleep when I get out of the shower, eat breakfast, and head off to school, so there’s no danger of getting caught anyway.
School is just a mindless blur, one unimportant lecture after another for hours on end. I’m not a bad student, and I’d be better if I actually paid attention and tried, but I don’t want to be noticed by my teachers. They all know I won’t talk, and B’s aren’t exactly grounds for concern over my grades, so they leave me alone.
I don’t have any friends. I think I used to, but normal teens are vocal and social, which I’m not really into anymore. Sure, before the accident I was always a contender for Homecoming Court, but now? I’m a lone island amongst a sea of piranhas in the lunchroom. I know they don’t understand. Hell, I don’t expect them to. I can barely understand my life anymore.
After school I go out to run laps on the abandoned track. Our cross country team prefers to do group runs around the small town, so they can’t lose track of how many laps they’ve gone. The track is more for people like me, who don’t really care about how far they’ve gone and just run until they get tired. I couldn’t tell you how many laps I can go, just that I can go for a long time if I keep my pace slow and steady.
Usually I’m out here alone, but today Matt is sitting in the bleachers waiting for me. He works two jobs, so this must be between shifts. His bosses are pretty cool and let him have a couple hours in the middle of the day to himself. They know our dad, and do it as a favor to him. Matt’s a good guy. He’s really stepped up in the house since the accident.
“Hey Hannah,” he says, stepping down from the bleachers. “Going for a run?”
I nod and spread my feet shoulder width apart, bending at the waist and laying my palms flat on the ground. He stops a few feet in front of me and mirrors my movements. He’s still wearing the coveralls from the garage, open down the front to reveal one of the oversized t-shirts I sleep in. It had probably ended up in his dresser by mistake on laundry day.
“The garage is doing good, thanks for asking,” he says. “Your bike should be done soon.”
On my sixteenth birthday, before the accident when Matt actually liked me, he had gotten me a motorcycle he’d found in a junk yard. It was a piece of crap and needed a lot of work, but Matt was up to restoring it, and we found it an enjoyable thing for the two of us to work on together. We even went to get the special motorcycle training and licenses together. After he had left for college, he put the bike in our uncle’s auto body shop, promising to work on it with me whenever he came home for a visit. But then the accident happened, Matt moved home and started hating me, and the bike sat in the garage, untouched and still unusable, despite the fact that our uncle gave Matt a job as a mechanic in the shop. Whenever Matt got into one of his moods, he liked to remind me that that bike was ‘‘almost finished,’’ his way of sticking it where it hurt. This was going to be an awesome conversation. I stretch my quads and stare at him pointedly, trying to move the un-pleasantries along.
“Dad’s worried,” he finally says. “He thinks you should start going to a new therapist.” I cross my right arm over my chest. “Someone who can actually get you to start talking. Maybe even make you normal again.” I roll my eyes and turn away from him. I’m a new kind of normal now. He’ll just have to get used to it. “Do you even see how much you’re hurting Dad? He thinks it’s all his fault and you’re not doing anything to change that.” I stretch my calves and try to ignore him. He’s upset because he can’t control what I do, and that bothers him. “God, you are so selfish!” he screams at my back.
I stand, still facing away from him, and take out my iPod. He won’t get anywhere by yelling my faults at me. Cranking up Coheed and Cambria, I spin on my heel and take off down the track, flipping him the bird as I go. I half expect him to give chase and force me to listen to him. He’s bigger, stronger, and faster than me so it wouldn’t be very difficult for him. But by the time I round the first lap, he’s nowhere in sight.
I like running. While a lot of people like running because it clears their head so they can think, I like it because I don’t have to think. I’m no longer trapped in my own thoughts, my body and the strain it is under during a run take front stage. I concentrate on my breathing and listen to any aches or cramps, easing my joints out of hibernation so they feel fluid in the motion, feel every little jolt of pain that shoots its way up my legs when I get closer to my breaking point. I listen to my muscles. I feel the lactic acid work its way into me. I can almost feel the endorphins kicking in. It’s one of the best feelings in the world. The music is only there to keep me from getting distracted by the outside world. I don’t run with anyone. It’s just me and everything I can feel. I just keep going, silently running, until I find peace in myself.
This peace doesn’t last, though. As soon as I get tired, my mind starts to work again and I find myself thinking about all the same things that my subconscious obsesses over. There’s still no one at the track but me. The sun’s going down, but this time of year the sun sets pretty early, so I’m not alarmed. Matt will be at his second job by now, so it’s safe to go home. Dad knows I run, so he won’t be worried.
I stop at the gate separating the track from the parking lot and look around. My heart’s still going at a rapid pace, my breathing erratic. All the horrible thoughts and memories flood back into me, not erased by my run but returning after having been temporarily pushed to the back of my mind. Most of the time, it’s easy to ignore the little thoughts and go about my day. Usually running numbs my mind even after the fact, and everything is easier to deal with. But today, I don’t know. Everything I’ve been avoiding is coming to me, and I don’t want to deal with it. This is why I don’t talk: I can’t admit that it’s getting to me.
I take one quick glance around the deserted parking lot. The school is far enough that if anyone is there, they won’t be able to see me. I suck in a greedy breath and hold it for a second. And then let the scream tear its way out of my lungs.
* * *
It’s Friday night, and instead of going to a slumber party and having an awful time, I’m watching loud, violent movies with Dad. Luckily, most modern day movies are of the if-you’ve-seen-one-you’ve-seen-them-all variety, so Dad gets by on dialogue and the sounds of fighting and explosions. When Matt gets home, he’ll give him a play-by-play on the action. As it is, we manage just fine.
Using perhaps the greatest invention known to man, I place an order for pizza online for dinner. The internet is great. A quick text to Matt, and he agrees to pick them up on his way home from work. A normal Friday night.
I’m curled up in a ball on one of the couches, Dad on the other, when Matt comes in with our pizza and a few other surprises. He hands Dad a package of Dibs, an ice cream that’s covered in chocolate in bite sized pieces. They are a favorite for me and Dad. Ever since the yelling at the track yesterday, Matt’s been playing nice. Dibs are a good start. To me, he tosses a bag of chocolate covered almonds. He’s really trying to play nice.
Matt doesn’t disappoint with the play-by-play for Dad, speaking around mouthfuls of pizza, only pausing to take a swig of soda every now and then.
“What’s going on?” Dad asks excitedly. “That sounds like it knocked the wind out of him!”
“Actually, he’s dead,” Matt says.
“Damn,” Dad responds. On screen, James Bond shoots at someone. “Did he get him?”
“Sure,” Matt says. I smile.
After an explosion: “How big was that?”
“Blew up an entire Embassy.”
“Damn. What’s he doing now?”
“Surrendering.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. Slow plot stuff coming on now.”
“Skip to the more exciting stuff.”
“The movie’s on TV, Dad. Can’t skip ahead.”
“Damn.” Dad gets up off the loveseat.
“Where you going?” Matt asks.
“I’ll be right back,” Dad says. Matt and I exchange a look. Sometimes ‘‘I’ll be right back,’’ is Dad-code for ‘‘I’m going to bed.” Sometimes it really does mean he’ll be right back. There isn’t a way to tell which until he either comes back or disappears until the next day. It would be a shame if he went to bed before we could indulge in the Dibs Matt picked up.
Matt settles back into the couch and turns his attention to me when a commercial interrupts the great James Bond, picking up the book I have wedged between my feet and the couch.
“You’re still reading this?” he asks, examining it closely. He runs his finger down the spine, well worn on one half and practically new on the other. I can almost see his thoughts crossing his mind. “You haven’t made it very far.”
I snatch the book away from him. He stares at me, then figures it out. “That’s the book you and Mom were reading.”
I get up and walk up the stairs to my room. He follows me. “Are you just rereading it? It looks like you haven’t made it past the first half.” I try to close my door behind me, but he puts his arm in the way and forces it open. “You read that book almost every night, Hannah. You were never that slow of a reader before.” I give up trying to force the door close and walk over to my window, pushing it open. “That’s where you and Mom left off, isn’t it?” I climb out the window, but Matt follows me. “This isn’t healthy, Hannah.” I sit down, facing away from him. He sighs, stays back for a few moments, then comes and sits close to me.
We sit in silence for what feels like hours. I can feel tears prickle in my eyes, but I force them away every time they come up. I don’t talk, I don’t cry, and I certainly don’t do it all in front of my brother, the responsible one who moved home to take care of us after the accident. How can I feel bad about things when he doesn’t? He’s not crying, so I’m not crying. He does put his arm around my shoulders and pulls me to his side.
“I miss her, too” he whispers. He gently plucks the book out of my hands. “I don’t know why you’re choosing not to deal with it, but I understand. It’s hard moving on.”
I take back my book and clutch it tightly against my chest.
“You need help, Hannah,” he says softly. “I’m sorry about what I said at the track. I forget what it must be like for you. You’re not even talking, so I don’t know how you’re feeling. I want to help you.” I don’t even breathe. I don’t want to be dealing with this right now.
“Hey!” Dad calls from inside the house. “I said I’d be right back!”
“Be there in a sec!” Matt calls back. He stands and goes back inside. “You coming?”
I don’t move.
* * *
It’s Wednesday again and I’m lending my services as amateur psychologist to my therapist once more. I even brought a pad of paper and pen with me. I’m getting some pretty serious practice.
“My daughter came home with purple hair the other day,” she says. “She looks like a freaking grape.”
I draw a bunch of grapes attached to a body on my notepad. I’d give my work an A for effort by a C in execution. I never wanted to be an artist anyway. I wonder if my therapist’s daughter actually looks like my drawing.
“I pay over a hundred bucks to get her hair stripped and dyed back to blonde when sh dyes it black last month, and this is how she repays me.” She takes an orange out of the lunchbox that’s sitting next to her and tosses it from hand to hand. I get up and hand her a wastebasket that’s near me. She puts it between her legs and starts peeling the orange so violently she’s practically ripping it apart. I feel for the orange.
“My ex is undoubtedly the one who let her do this,” she continues. She stuffs a huge wedge of the orange in her mouth and I’m afraid she might choke and I wouldn’t be able to do anything because I’m not CPR certified and if I crack her ribs trying to save her she might sue me, but no, she’s fine and still talking around the enormous amount of pulp. “He probably bought her the dye job with the money I send him for spousal support.”
She holds out a mutilated piece of orange that still has part of the peel on it. I shake my head and she pops it in her mouth peel and all. I suppress the urge to giggle.
“And that’s another thing!” she yells. She jumps to her feet, her face turning red. “We fight so hard for a little equality just so we can support our husbands when they decide to be lazy bastards and not pay off their bills!”
I write “Get it, Girl,” on my notepad and hold it up. If she sees it she doesn’t acknowledge it. I keep holding it up anyway.
“Now I’m stuck paying him alimony every month while he dyes our daughter’s hair purple and pisses everything away on alcohol!” The face she makes when she realizes that she’s eating the orange peel is indescribable. She spits it into her hand and looks at it. “Ugh. I can’t even think straight. I’m going crazy.”
She sits down and stares at the chewed mess in her hand. I think she’s falling apart. That’s something I understand. I get up and hand her a box of tissues. She isn’t crying yet, but I need to do something and it’s only a matter of time. She uses one to clean the mess out of her hand.
“I think we’ve made a breakthrough,” she says, chuckling. “We’ve deduced that I’m absolutely nuts.”
I smile and she smiles back. Yeah, I’m having a moment with my therapist.
“Isn’t this a nice picture?” she continues, throwing the soggy tissue in the trash. “Two crazy ladies hanging out every Wednesday.”
My smile fades. She thinks I’m crazy. Am I crazy? I suppose I must be. Normal people talk and socialize. Normal people don’t run every afternoon until they almost pass out. Normal people would be able to cope with the deaths of their mothers. I look down at my notepad. My therapist is still laughing at the irony of her life. She’s hopelessly unobservant.
“Maybe she’ll be better off with my ex,” she says, a giggle or two bubbling out. “At least he doesn’t become completely unhinged in front of a patient.”
She’s crying now, but in that weird transitional way people go from laughing to crying when they’ve lost it. I don’t want to be one of these people
* * *
It’s after school and I’m running again. It’s the one place I can find some peace. My last session with my therapist ended on a crazy note and I’ve been messed up ever since. I’ve tried and tried to read past the seventeenth chapter in Wuthering Heights, but I can’t. I hold on to that book in the same obsessive way Heathcliff held on to Catherine. But I can’t reread it while I’m running, so I’m out here running. Again.
But I can’t escape like I usually do. Sure, I know that I fall into my highly controlled breathing pattern, and I know that if something starts to cramp, I’ll feel it and naturally stretch it out as I go, but those things are on the back burner now my mind is reeling.
Without even realizing it, I’ve left the track. In fact, I’ve left school grounds altogether. I’m standing outside the building where my therapist holds her office. I take my earbuds out and curse myself. It’s too much. I do need help. Matt was right.
My therapist isn’t in with a patient and when she sees me standing in her waiting room, she has the decency to look like she’s happy to see me and ushers me inside. Actually, I think she’s genuinely happy to see me. I’m never spontaneous or display erratic behavior, so she knows something is up.
“Hello, Hannah,” she says, sitting across from me. Without skipping a beat, she falls in on her own dialogue. “My daughter has decided that staying with me really is the best option. I think the fact that her dad showed up drunk last night really helped. She’s still not talking to me but at least she’ll not be talking to me in my house and not on some oil rig-”
“Stop,” I croak.
She does. And stares at me, her eyes widened in shock. Then a smile forms on her face. She has me this time, and she knows it. Too bad I decided I was going to talk before I even got here.
“It’s my fault she’s dead,” I say. My voice is scratchy, kind of like how it would sound the morning after you’ve been sick. It hurts a little, and I feel like I’m straining, but I force myself to say what’s been eating away at me. “My dad was driving us home after my concert. I used to sing, you know.”
She nods her head, then motions for me to continue. At least she knows not to say anything while I’m on a roll.
“I was mad because my mom was tired and didn’t want to read a chapter out of a book with me.” I swallow. This speech might have to be brief. It hurts like a bitch. “It was our thing, you know. We’d read a chapter of a book to each other every night. But she was tired, and I wanted to read it.
“It was pouring rain, and my dad was having a hard time seeing in front of us. But I didn’t care. I kept turning the light on and whining. My mom and I got into a fight, and I was screaming really mean and bratty things at her when we were t-boned and flipped.” I feel tears well up in my eyes. Damn tears. My therapist hands me a tissue. “I woke up in the hospital a few days later. They told me my mom had died on impact, since it was on her side of the car, and that my dad was blinded by glass shards from the windshield. I had a tube in my throat to help me breath, so I couldn’t talk, which I thought was fitting.” My throat is raw, but I’ve said the most important thing: I killed my mom. I was responsible for her death.
“And you haven’t said a word since,” she said quietly. I shake my head. “Because you’re punishing yourself, or so you wouldn’t have to own up to anything?”
“Both,” I whisper.
* * *
I get home around the same time I usually do in the evenings. Matt is already home from work and is sitting in the living room with Dad telling him the events of a baseball game. My therapist was decent enough not to call them after I left and let them know I was there. My throat hurts. I am by no means cured or ready to move on, but my therapist told me that it was okay. I was making progress and that was the first step to becoming healthy and stable.
Matt looks up when I come in. “Hey Hannah.”
“Hannah’s home?” Dad asks. I walk over and kiss him on the forehead. They immediately return their attention to the game. I go and turn the television off, meeting an irritated glare from Matt and a confused Dad. I smile.
I open my mouth to speak.