The Lighthouse on the Wall

Part One

Chapter One

February 21, 2014. 7:46 PM.

It started with Norway.

I’m telling you, Harmony was saying, it’s perfect: Norway. For one month, right after you graduate college. Just you, me, and beautiful, glorious freedom. And mountains. She grabbed an electronic hookah that was lying idly on an end table nearby and sucked in, breathing the Sweet Tart-scented smoke out through her mouth in petite rings. My sister, Juliet, was trying to quit smoking, resulting in a seemingly endless supply of electronic cigarettes and hookahs that turned up at random places throughout the house.

I stopped absently-mindedly staring at the words in my College Psychology textbook long enough to look up at Harmony, my eyebrows raised and my mouth twisted to the side.

Look. Norway sounds great. You know how much I would give anything to go there someday. But seven months from now, I’m gonna be a broke college student. By the time I graduate, do you have any idea how many loans I’ll have to pay off? Recognizing the anxious, prickly feeling of stress that came with thoughts of college and student loans, I grabbed the hookah from Harmony and sucked in forcefully.

Harmony groaned. "Come on Alex, she objected, think about how worth it it’ll be! Do you really want to be on your deathbed thinking, ‘Man, if only I had gone to Norway with Harmony’?"

I rolled my eyes and looked back down at my textbook. I could feel Harmony staring at me, waiting. I slowly looked back up, raising my eyebrows as Harmony’s face contorted into that of a puppy begging for table scraps. I shook my head, but a smile tugged at the crevices of my lips as she batted her dark eyelashes and protruded her bottom lip dramatically.

Okay. I’ll think about it. And I’ll try to set some cash aside. But if I need the money for shampoo or Ramen noodles in the middle of the week, I’m using it.

Harmony rolled her eyes, but she was grinning now. Good. She stood up, smirking knowingly, and swiped the ajar textbook from my lap as I was in mid-highlight. The neon yellow ink ran sloppily across the whole of the page.

Harmony! I protested, frowning at the mess, my OCD kicking into overdrive.

Yeah, whatever. Come on, it’s Saturday night. You still have a whole crappy Sunday to procrastinate on your homework. So. Life talk. Go.

This is what Harmony and I did. We sat in my basement or drove aimlessly in Harmony’s rusty, navy blue Pontiac, and just talked. I used to joke that we were born middle-aged women, because our idea of a good time was sitting around drinking wine while discussing relationships and stress.

But the last couple times we’d had these talks, the back of my neck prickled, my heart jolted ever so noticeably, and a heaviness filled my stomach like wet cement. Usually when Harmony and I discussed our future dreams, like raising our kids in adjacent houses and having Pancake Saturdays with our families, it made me happy and contentedly anticipating the future. But lately, the future didn’t seem as promising as I’d previously thought. And here’s why: Harmony had joined the Navy. And while I was happy for her, I couldn’t help being selfish about the situation at hand.

Harmony was one of my closest friends. She was the person I could talk to about anything with an imperishable guarantee she would never judge my decisions or opinions. She smiled and nodded through the happy talks. Wrinkled her eyebrows with genuine concern and put a reassuring hand on my arm through the sad talks. And offered nothing but support through everything in between.

I tried to stay positive about the future, I really did. The future was still promising. And I was happy about it.

I was fine.

Chapter Two

September 25, 2014. 10:03 AM.

Tell me what brought you here, Alex.

I huddled deeper into my sweatshirt, fighting a shiver as I took in the surroundings of the university’s counseling room. A large potted plant sat in the far corner next to a giant yellow notepad, the kind generally reserved for grade school spelling word activities, with a few stray markers scattered about the floor beneath it. A poster of Martin Luther King Junior’s I Have a Dream speech hung on the wall opposite me, and a small tea-light candle flickered on the coffee table in the center of the room next to an ajar MacBook.

I looked down at my hands, interlocked my fingers. Finally, I looked up.

June had medium-length auburn hair that was styled with a cute little flip at the ends, brown eyes, and a warm smile. She reminded me of my mother with her stylish-for-middle-aged -women khaki skirt and tall brown boots with thick zippers trailing up the sides; her consistently softened features and warm, conservative wardrobe choices made her entire demeanor ooze of maternal.

Well, I began hesitantly, I got here about a month ago, and ever since then I’ve been a little…not myself.

And what do you mean by ‘not yourself’?

I paused, looking back up at the wall at the Martin Luther King poster.

Well my roommate, Mia – she was my best friend in high school – she suggested I go to counseling. And my boyfriend, Brandon. They’re concerned about me. I guess I’ve just had a hard time adjusting to everything since I got to college. Then, the other night, I was under a lot of stress, and I didn’t really handle it well. And I did something that wasn’t like me to do.

And what was that?

I could feel beads of sweat forming at the corners of my forehead. I pushed up my sleeves, fighting the instinctive flinch and head hanging that, lately, came with this action.

Alex? You can tell me. I promise that everything you say in this room remains confidential.

I glanced down at my left arm. Two raw, ugly pink marks glared back at me. I let out a breath, slowly at first, then loudly and all at once. Cutting.

I remember when this word meant nothing more to me than other people’s problems. It scared and disheartened me, of course, to hear about people feeling the need to scar up their own body, but it was something that was so distant; entirely inapplicable to my own life. In fact, it had only been a handful of months earlier that this had been the case.

I let my mind wander to that night, sitting in the basement of my friend Eva’s house along with Harmony and Maggie, my other closest companions since elementary school. And then Elise showed up, whom we had scarcely heard from since she ran away from home months earlier.

Elise…we didn’t think you’d come.

Elise nodded. She was sitting on a chair in the corner of Eva’s basement, her knees pulled firmly to her chest as she steadily rocked back and forth.

Sorry we took so long. We just lost track of time, and we thought you’d be busy so… Maggie trailed off, shifting her weight from foot to foot and twisting her hands behind her back. She walked over to where Elise was situated, taking a seat on a nearby futon. Gummy worm? she offered, holding out the ajar bag of candy she’d been clutching under her arm. In spite of the discernable awkwardness of the situation, I couldn’t help but grin subtly. It was just like Maggie to break the ice: she was a pro in these types of situations.

Elise shook her head. Her eyes were bloodshot and droopy: it looked as though she had spent the last year and a half holed up in a dark corner of her bedroom, crying.

Eva, Harmony, and I slowly made our way over to where Elise and Maggie were sitting, slumping on the nearby couch and crossing our legs in sync. We all looked at one another with shifting eyes and tightly pursed lips.

So…what’s wrong? Eva. Contrary to Maggie, she spoke in so blunt a manner it caused my hair to stand ever slightly on end, simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief that I didn’t have to be the one to address the elephant in the room.

The silence that followed stretched out for what seemed like months. The air around me was so heavy that I felt as if someone had tied a plastic bag around my head. I had to restrain myself from getting up and escaping from the bathroom window.

My friend.

We all looked at Elise in the sort of fashion that mirrored waking up from nodding off in an eight A.M. lecture.

What friend? I asked, my voice soft.

Another period of silence followed, but we all seemed to have our guard up this time: I could hear breaths sucking in and see spines straightening in anticipation.

When I moved in with Joel, I met this girl, Sarah, who was one of his customers. Elise was staring down at her arm, tracing the scars I knew she’d inflicted there in seventh grade. I wondered, briefly, if it ever bothered her to see them now, years later. We started talking all the time and hanging out almost every day. And then one day she just…disappeared.

I looked around the room in what I hoped was a subtle fashion. Maggie’s already large green eyes were growing wider, her breathing becoming shallow and somewhat rapid. Eva’s eyebrows were furrowed together. Harmony was biting her thumbnail and looking at her phone, her lips pursed and her eyes unreadable.

She had this boyfriend, Elise continued who was starting to get really abusive. Then, yesterday morning, the police came to Joel’s apartment and asked if we knew anything about Sarah. When I asked why, they said…they said…

Maggie was shifting uncomfortably in her seat now. Eva sat motionless, an expression on her face that was so blank it seemed to turn her already pale skin ashen. Harmony was still looking blankly at her phone. She almost looked mad now, her eyebrows hunched forward and her lips pursed in a tight, thin line, but I could tell she was trying to fight the expression of fear that was seeping through her features.

They found her in her boyfriend’s apartment. She bled out; she…she cut herself to death. Elise said the last part so quietly that I had to lean in to hear.

The heaviness in the room remained, now joined by a silence so dense it seemed to vibrate against the walls and ceiling.

Plump teardrops rolled down Elise’s face. Her eyes were glazed over, her breathing even, her features unmoving; surprising, given the austerity of the situation. I could tell she hadn’t stopped crying for days on end; she was probably too worn out to even let loose another heavy sob or wail of despair.

Inevitably, the mother hen in Maggie came into play, thankfully sparing the rest of us who were sitting on our hands, our spines stiff, our limbs tense; not a clue where to go from here. Elise…I’m so, so sorry. She stood up and made her way over to Elise, enveloping her in a hug and smoothing her hair gingerly as Elise’s soft sobs became muffled and more abundant.

Just as I was about to follow Maggie’s lead, I heard more sniffling, but when I looked up, it wasn’t Elise: it was Eva.

Seeing Eva, someone whom I’d only seen cry once in my life, with tears rolling down her cheeks and wiping her flushed face with her palms, Maggie and I started crying softly as well. Even Harmony, who’d seemed as though she were feigning boredom and irritation throughout the bulk of Elise’s arrival, couldn’t help but let a few stray teardrops loose, her expression remaining otherwise vacant. One by one, we got up to embrace Elise, comforting her to the best of our abilities as we simultaneously struggled to maintain our own choked sobs.

It was strange that Elise, who was once one of our closest friends, seemed so much like a stranger to us now. It was as if we almost didn’t know how to comfort her simply because we hadn’t had an adequate conversation with her since she left school and moved in with Joel.

I’d known since seventh grade that Elise had issues with clinical depression and self-harm. But I’d never worried about her as much as I did now. And as concerned and disheartened as I was over the situation, a part of me couldn’t help but feel grateful. As selfish as it was, I silently thanked God that my life was in order; that I’d never had to go through depression or self-inflicted cuts on my forearms and thighs to make things better somehow.

After all, I couldn’t imagine who would want to live that way.

Cutting, June repeated now, jolting me back to the present moment. She made a note on the notepad she was clutching.

Cutting. It was a word that, weeks ago in Eva’s basement, comforting Elise, I’d never imagined would soon pertain to me as well.

June continued jotting down notes while I sat with my knees pulled to my chest, biting my nails. I was still sweating a little, but the butterflies that I anticipated to be jostling about my stomach were perfectly still. Instead, the queasiness that I’d entered the room with seemed to be dissipating. There was some sort of relief, I realized, in admitting something out loud. I’d told Brandon and Mia about the cutting but, for whatever reason, telling June, this almost-stranger in front of me was what made me finally, really exhale.

How long have you known Elise? June wanted to know.

Since we were toddlers.

How old is Elise?

Nineteen.

Are you two close?

This was more of a loaded question than June probably thought. Were Elise and I really considered close anymore? Come to think of it, I hadn’t really talk talked to her in what felt like ages, unless you counted forced small talk before classes in the commons at school, which I didn’t.

I took a breath before answering. We used to be pretty close, I started, studying a world map poster in the corner of the room. But we’ve drifted over the years. She has a lot of other friends, and we just didn’t really see each other that much anymore. Plus, there was the depression… I trailed off, picking out Norway’s outline on the map and staring at it wistfully for a beat, wishing, more than anything, that I could run away there and hide in a mountain house, forgetting about the rest of the world altogether. I thought back to that night in my basement with Harmony, all those months ago, discussing the Norway Plan. It felt like everything had changed since then.

Was the depression a factor in you two drifting? June asked, gazing at me curiously.

I sighed. Maybe. I knew she’d had problems with it for some time…we were only in seventh grade when she told me for the first time that she was cutting herself. But I was so young then. I didn’t understand it in the least. And as the years passed, I thought maybe it was just a phase of hers that she’d gotten over with time. But I guess I was wrong.

I said this last part quietly, feeling guilty all of a sudden, as if Elise’s depression was entirely attributed to me. I knew this wasn’t true, but I hadn’t exactly made much of an effort to be there for her either. I think a part of me avoided it because I didn’t want that in my life; I didn’t want to end up like her. Which was horrible and selfish, but that’s what I’d thought at the time. And now here I was, sitting on a worn out blue chair talking about the cuts on my arm with some lady I’d just met.

Karma was an absolute bitch sometimes.

But she didn’t, June responded, more of a statement than a question.

I shook my head. I guess not.

June nodded, jotting down some notes. Your friends seem to be really important to you, Alex – Had Elise always been close with you and your other friends back home?

I began nodding, then stopped abruptly. Yes and no, I answered slowly, then, seeing June’s crinkled eyebrows, I attempted to clarify. "She was for a while. Then when she started hanging out with her new friends more, struggling with depression, and growing apart from us…we didn’t really do anything to stop it. We figured she didn’t really want much to do with us anymore, and we just kind of came to terms with that.

I tried to stay close with her for a while…but it was more out of obligation on both sides than anything else. We just sort of realized we didn’t really have anything in common anymore. Everything felt forced.

June thought this over for a minute before scribbling something on her notepad and looking back up at me, adjusting her cocoa colored reading glasses. Alex, I think that this stuff with Elise affects you more than you think.

What do you mean? I asked.

June ruminated on this for a moment, as if carefully choosing the best combination of words she could use to explain herself. What I mean is that when Elise started really having issues with her depression, it caused her to become…someone else, in a sense. It caused her to drift apart from you and your friends, because she wasn’t entirely the same person that she used to be. And now she’s not close with you and your friends anymore because of it.

I just looked at her, like, What’s your point?

My point is, June continued, evidently receiving the telepathy, …Alex. Are you afraid that the same thing will happen to you if your depression continues?

Was I? There was a definite possibility of this being the case. After all, it had been during the heart of her depression that Elise had started drifting, hanging out with a different crowd, and keeping secrets from my friends and me. I thought back to the night she had showed up at Eva’s, distraught over the choices she had made and the suicide of her friend. I clenched my fists just thinking about all the tension in the room that night, much of which had continued long after Elise had left.

I’m just saying, she shouldn’t be blaming us for drifting apart from the group, Harmony was saying, pulling her long legs into crisscross applesauce mode in front of her. "She’s the one who decided to get new friends and ignore us. She’s the one who decided to drop out of school and move in with her drug-dealing boyfriend. And now she’s accusing us of not bothering to call or text her every now and then? She and I tried making plans together like a month ago, and she didn’t even follow through. She texted me like two hours before we were gonna hang out and told me she was too busy."

Eva, Maggie, and I exchanged looks around the circle we were sitting in on Eva’s basement floor. After Elise had left not ten minutes earlier, we had taken to listening to Harmony vent and half-heartedly flipping through late night sitcoms on the nearby TV.

I guess you have a point, Maggie said softly. If she really wanted to hang out with us, she’d make the initiative.

I don’t even care who makes the initiative, Harmony replied. Just don’t bail on me last minute when I left my plans open for the night. That’s so disrespectful.

Maybe she really was busy, I offered over a half shrug.

Harmony just looked at me. Or maybe she was at her loser boyfriend’s house getting stoned. She grabbed a throw pillow next to her and hugged it to her chest before looking at me, her eyes squinted and brows furrowed. And what are you taking her side for, anyway?

I’m not taking anyone’s side, I answered, putting my hands up like a white flag in front of my chest. I’m just trying to get equal perspectives here.

Harmony was silent, as if considering this act of social Switzerland, before looking back down at her phone coolly.

I glanced over at Eva, who had been sitting mutely, staring at her hands for the past five minutes.

You okay? I asked. Eva glanced up at me, startled, as if she’d forgotten she was sitting in her own basement with her own friends for the past three hours.

Yeah, she answered quickly. I’m fine.

You sure? Maggie asked. You’ve been pretty quiet since Elise left.

Eva nodded slowly, looking as though she wanted to say something but was unsure of what that was. It’s just… she started, Elise has been our friend for years. And I know she brought a lot of this stuff on herself, and I know that she could’ve taken the time to hang out with us more if she really wanted to, but…I still care about her. And I don’t wanna blow her off if she tries to make plans with us in the future.

Same here, Maggie agreed, standing up and lifting her arms above her head, stretching. I feel bad.

"Why? Harmony piped up, throwing up a hand in exasperation. She’s milking it. I mean, yeah, of course I feel bad about her depression, and yes, she’s gone through some pretty tough shit in the past year. But my point is, a lot of said shit would never have happened if she’d made better choices."

But do you think maybe…being depressed made her make some of those choices? I asked quietly, then, feeling everyone’s crinkled eyes on mine, cleared my throat and tried explaining. What I mean is...sometimes, when people are depressed, they do things that aren’t necessarily smart or rational. Maybe that’s what happened with Elise.

Harmony processed this, biting thoughtfully on the edge of her pinky nail before responding. "I just…you can’t tell me that she had no control over her actions just because she was – is – depressed."

"Well, not no control…" I started.

Depressed people can still make decent decisions, Harmony added. They don’t get to use their mental illness label as an excuse to do irresponsible things.

When none of us responded, Harmony sighed, plunking her phone on the cushion next to her and looking at us directly for the first time since Elise had left. Look. I’m not trying to be heartless here. I still really do care about Elise. I just don’t think she has the right to blame us for some of the stuff going on her life right now, because most of it was stuff that she chose.

That’s true, I agreed, biting my lower lip in contemplation.

Yeah, no, I definitely see what you’re saying, Eva added. And I know we’re not exactly close with her anymore. But…I mean…she has been through a lot. And I think we should all still be there for her, even if she ends up bailing on us last minute for other plans. At least that way we know that we tried to do the right thing.

All of us looked around the room at one another, not saying anything, as if our silence was agreement enough.

Alex? Are you afraid of the strain depression may put on your relationships with your friends back home?

I blinked as June repeated the question, still processing how the end of that night had played out.

A little, I replied, my voice quiet. I’m afraid of worrying them and I’m afraid that they’ll treat me differently if they knew about the cutting. I swallowed hard, my limbs growing fuzzy at the thought of telling Maggie, Eva, and Harmony what had been going on with me over the past few weeks.

That makes perfect sense, June said, nodding vigorously. "But I think you’d be surprised at how freeing it can feel to talk to people about what you’re feeling. That is, after all, why you’re here