Light in the Shadows

get past it.  Or whether I wanted to.  Maggie continued to come to therapy every other week.  And I was trying the whole healthy communication thing, but I could admit that I was starting to feel like it was all a freaking waste of time.
                     Why would I continue to ask her to devote energy into something that hadn’t a hope of going anywhere?  She would go to university and I would what?  Work at Bubbles for seven dollars an hour until I felt like ending it all just to escape the mind numbing misery my life would become?
                    Why couldn’t I just indulge Maggie?  Who knows, maybe I could see myself in one of these colleges and the road would be laid out for me?  But my self-defeating thoughts were too loud in my head.  It wasn’t the highs and lows of mania anymore, just the constant drone of pessimism and paranoia that were making it hard to focus on anything else.
                    Shaemus had again brought up the fact that I could return to Grayson’s.  That an extended stay in the facility could be extremely beneficial for me.  I rebelled against the thought; feeling like returning at this point would be a huge failure.  Not that I was doing a bang up job anywhere else in my life.
                    Plus, financially I couldn’t afford it.  Grayson’s was a secluded and very expensive facility.  My parents had completely cut me off.  I hadn’t received any money from them from the moment I discharged myself from the center.  I wasn’t sure whether my mother had been in contact with Ruby and if she had, I didn’t know about it.  It was like I no longer existed for them.  Their emotional negligence was both freeing and crushing. 
                    “Come on, Clay.  It won’t kill you to go on the tour.  Who knows, you may actually like it,” Maggie said lightly, leaning back on her elbows in the middle of her yard.  I looked up from my sketch book.  I had been drawing the birdbath in the corner of the garden.  Not the most amazing subject to draw but it kept my hands busy.  And I needed them to be occupied with the direction my thoughts were going lately.
                    The sun was hot and I could see sweat pebble along Maggie’s collar bone.  She really was perfect in every way.  I was such a fucking fool for not seizing the future she was handing me.  Isn’t this what I had wanted?  The possibility of a life with her?  Why did the thought scare me to death? 
                    I had been doing everything right.  Taking my meds, going to therapy, playing the responsible guy and getting a job to contribute financially at home.  I had ticked every god damned box and yet here I was, still stuck in the same bullshit mind fuck that had always sucked me in.
                  “I don’t know, Maggie.  I just don’t want to think about it right now,” I said tersely, sick of talking about it.  Maggie was like a dog with a bone though and she wasn’t going to give up that easily. 
                    “Clay, you have to start thinking about it.  Graduation is less than a month.  The deadline for applications to Piedmont are next week for the fall semester,” she said and I shot her a look.  She shrugged her shoulders.  “I’ve been doing my research, okay?  But seriously, why can’t we ever talk about it?  I feel like you’re not even trying to figure stuff out,” she said in frustration which in turn triggered my own.
      I closed my notebook and got to my feet, wiping the grass from my shorts.  “I told you I don’t want to talk about it, Maggie.  I know you want me to jump on the college bandwagon, get my sweatshirt and all that shit, but I just can’t.  I don’t know what’s going to happen with Ruby.  Hell, I don’t know what’s going to happen with me.  Just please, back off.” I was practically yelling by the time I finished and Maggie just stared at me.
                    Damn it, I was being a dick again.  Maggie stared down at her hands.  “You’re doing it again.  You’re shutting me out.  Even when you promised you wouldn’t,” she said quietly and it just made me feel even guiltier.  I sat back down beside her and took her hand.
                    “I’m sorry.  Really.  It just freaks me out talking about all these plans for my future.  Because I can