That week, Aria found herself contained within the astringent walls of a psychiatrist’s office. She flexed her feet. The leather couch squeaked under her weight. She filled out the patient intake form as the man sitting across from her studied her. When she handed him the completed form, he set it on his desk and proceeded to talk. “Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.
“Yes,” Aria said. “I’ve been hurting myself.”
“It says here that you’re in foster care, is that true?”
The psychiatrist shifted in his chair, adjusting the glasses on his nose as he awaited her answer. Aria nodded.
“Why are you hurting yourself?” he asked.
“It feels better. Everything just gets really quiet,” Aria said, pausing to put her elbows on her knees and resting her temples on her palms. “I don’t see why this is such a big deal to everyone.”
“It’s a big deal to everyone because we can’t have you being a danger to yourself, or to anyone else for that matter,” the man answered. He looked down at his hands in his lap and Aria could see that he was balding.
Sensing that this man was accustomed to extreme emotional displays, she seized the opportunity to release the pressure. “I fucking hate this place,” she said. “Who the fuck would want to live here?”
The psychiatrist received the words and stayed silent, welcoming more expression. Aria glanced around the room. “Life is like an air-filled syringe to the veins,” she said, playing with the end of her sleeve. “I wish that love could make this world good, instead of sugar-coat it.”
“Are you saying that you feel like love is fake?”
“Yes, love is fake!” Aria shouted.
The psychiatrist scribbled notes on the pad of paper in his hands. It made her feel like a lab rat there to be studied. As if to cut him off from his writing, Aria said, “You people don’t care about me, you don’t care about me at all. You just want me to die so you can be rid of me.”
“We don’t want you to die – that’s precisely why you’re here,” he said, not looking up from his paper.
A marked silence fell over the room. Eventually he looked up from his notes and steered the conversation in another direction. “You’ve experienced a pretty big loss; how do you feel about losing your mother?”
Aria looked at him in obstinate defiance. “I don’t think anything about it,” she answered.
He scribbled again in his notes. It went on like this for over an hour, the psychiatrist trying to extract information from her, Aria evading his questions. Inside she was dying. Inside, she heard the truthful answer to his questions arise within her chest; she knew that she was not OK. But she couldn’t let him know that.
When the appointment was over, the man stood up and put his hands in his pockets. “I’d be glad to keep seeing you if you want to come,” he said. Aria nodded and said OK. But she did not intend to return.
Aria made her way to a chair in the waiting room next to Mrs Johnson, who had been anxiously awaiting her return. The psychiatrist waved her mother into the room. The door closed behind them but they didn’t realize that Aria could still make out the conversation.
“I’m fairly certain that Aria has manic depression,” the psychiatrist explained. “The file I received from the agency said that she was treated for methamphetamine toxicity. I have to tell you that mood disorders are fairly common in children who have been exposed to meth.”
Aria could imagine Mrs Johnson looking at the floor rather than at the man telling her the news. “Yes, they said it was a possibility. But I just couldn’t imagine that with the right upbringing, she wouldn’t get better.” After a brief pause, she went on, “I have four other children at home. She can’t keep doing this. She’s a bad influence on them and I’m at the end of my rope.”
“I’ll write you a prescription for Lexapro,” Aria heard him say. “You can try her on 10mg a day. It may take up to six weeks to notice an improvement.”
“Thank you,” Mrs Johnson said, before coming out and making another appointment with the secretary at the front of the office.
The atmosphere between Aria and Mrs Johnson was icy on the drive back home. Neither of them said a single word. The city seemed to move in slow motion compared to the speed of the car. The world outside the car was like a movie Aria was watching rather than a world that she was a part of.
That night, before she went to bed, Mrs Johnson entered the room with a glass of water and a tiny white pill. She held them out to Aria and smiled as if hopeful that the pill would take all of their worries away. Aria swallowed the pill and handed the empty glass back to her. “Did you finish your homework?” Mrs Johnson asked.
“Yeah,” Aria said.
“Good,” Mrs Johnson said and left the room in a state of satisfaction.
Aria pulled out her journal and made her sentiments known. This is hell, she wrote. I wish I knew what sins could be forgiven and that love could feed the world instead of sugar-coat it. I wish I wasn’t left wanting a time when I still believed an ocean existed inside every spiral shell, and the sound there was waves instead of a change in the goddamn air pressure. They gave me pills today. I’m six feet under and a thousand feet deep; they have forgotten the shadow I creep between. I’m alone. I always have been and I always will be. She ended her entry with a scribbled zigzag that took up the remainder of the page.
That night, Aria tossed and turned with stomach pain. She couldn’t sleep. She felt nauseous but couldn’t throw up. She stayed home from school the next day. After two days, Mrs Johnson suspected that it was a side effect of the new medication. She called the psychiatrist’s office and described the symptoms. The doctor told her: “Lexapro has been known to cause nausea and stomach pain but the benefits outweigh the risks so keep her on it for another week. The side effect should go away.”
Aria agreed to take the pill for two more days. She writhed in agony on the floor of her room until she couldn’t take it anymore. She resolved to stop taking the pills. From then on, when Mrs Johnson brought the pill in to her before bedtime, Aria only pretended to take it. As soon as she left the room, Aria would spit it in the wastebasket in the corner of her room. Mrs Johnson was satisfied in her ignorance. When her daughter started feeling better, she felt confident that the side effect had worn off and that Aria was getting better.
That is, until she found the stash of unswallowed pills, on the very same day that Aria’s school called to tell her that her daughter had been suspended for being caught with a packet of cigarettes in her locker.
Aria sat outside the door in the hallway, listening to Mr and Mrs Johnson’s voices float back and forth. They had one thing in common: an air of defeat. Mrs Johnson had not bothered to take the issue up with Aria that day. She was past that point.
“She can’t stay here, Robert,” she said. “We have other children to think of and it’s not getting better. God give me the strength for this.”
She paced the room as her husband sat on the bed. To Aria’s amazement, he said, “I agree. She’s better off where she can get placed with a family that’s equipped to handle a girl with these struggles.”