Fall for Me by Claudia Burgoa
Willow’s Prologue
“What brings you here?”
I stare at the flowery, yellow wallpaper, concentrating on one of the white flowers. The answer shouldn’t be hard. It’s his tone. To my ears, it’s condescending. I bet he’s thinking another one with a broken life.
Well, yes hello, that’s me. Willow Beesley. The woman with a fractured mind and a tortured soul.
He doesn’t know how screwed up I am, not yet anyway. On the outside I look like an average New Yorker visiting a middle-aged man with rimmed glasses and a crooked nose holding a notebook. Everyone sees a therapist these days. It’s a trend. If you don’t spend two hundred and fifty dollars a week to visit one, you’re nothing.
It’s like the Paleo diet or the gluten-free infatuation. As I feel ready for the scene, I turn my gaze toward him, flashing him one of my sweet smiles. He doesn’t know who I am, and I’m not ready to show myself. Not yet. I made sure to pull my hair up this morning; keeping my cheeks clear from any strands so he can notice my flawless face. The makeup I wear is subtle, natural. Like the girl next door, I wear a pair of jeans and a green sweater that brings out the color in my eyes. This is the part where I should answer with a sophisticated tone that I’m here because I need help with a character.
All my life I’ve gotten into the right character to get noticed, be loved, or simply disappear because I don’t want anyone to know who I am. I fear they would hate the person I am.
“There are too many reasons that brought me to you. The most important of them, I want to live.”
He nods as if saying, “go on.”
Since I can remember, I’ve been on the verge of drowning. Staying afloat is a full-time job—my brain is always set on survival mode. There’s this gut-wrenching pain deep inside my body and my soul. There’s no source and I can’t soothe it. Some days, I feel like it’ll be easier to disappear. To die. I might finally be in peace—forever.
My mission is to stay alive because someone else depends on me. That would be my little sister. She’s been my anchor to this world for as long as I can remember. I love her as much as I resent her. What an ambiguous thought. It’s because of her that I can’t just say: “Fuck it all.” It’s because of her that I still cling to this life.
The first time it happened I was around ten. My head hurt, my skin felt foreign, and I wanted to disappear. Our parents had left for a couple of months on a mission trip. They dropped us with the neighbors. I felt uncomfortable being around so many people. There was so much noise I walked out of the house. Hazel, my little sister, followed behind, watching me as I continued walking toward the water, hoping it’d remove the ants crawling over my limbs.
“Where are you going, Willow?” her little voice inquired. “You need your swimming suit if you’re going into the water.”
“I want the ocean to take me away,” I responded, watching the waves crashing against my feet. “Far from here.”
“You’ll drown,” she stated the obvious. “What will I do without you?”
Those six words stopped me from acting that day. The words still resonate inside my head when I feel lost. They have ceased throughout the years. Seeking help and all the therapy isn’t about stopping, but finding my motivation to live. Finding something different than those six words. I want to keep going. I just don’t know how.
Handling emotions, relationships, and even jobs are hard. I go from zero to one hundred in nothing flat and lose my fuel almost immediately. What I would give to be loved—to be understood and get better. All the same, I wish to die; to stop existing as the useless piece of shit I am.
Is this the byproduct of my parents neglecting me?
Or is it the constant need I have for attention?
Do they correlate?
“I’m here because this might be my last chance.” I wait for his comeback. A retort about how over dramatized my words sound. This is why I try to keep my thoughts inside my head. No one cares about a nobody like me.
He scribbles in his notebook, then looks up at me and says, “Then, I hope you’re ready for the next step.”
What’s next? The rehash of my life from the beginning until I walked out of the subway station and into this building? I’ve done that for the past several months with different therapists. None of it has helped.
“Can you place yourself in a time when you felt an emotion you couldn’t handle?”
The room goes still and my lungs collapse every time I see him. Nothing makes me happier, sadder, angrier, or more joyous than Hunter. He’s the biggest emotion I’ve ever felt. I can’t handle it. He isn’t just love; he’s everything I love and hate to feel.
