That was far from the last time she had heard from me. I was put on medication and went through therapeutic methods to keep from cutting myself again. Eventually, though, the medication ran out and the therapy was over. I spent my first month in California returning to old methods of dealing with my problems. That was, until I met Ashley. She made the problems seem so small and simple. She helped me more than she ever even knew.

There was a knock on my door. “Go away” I shouted, but the door opened anyways. I only turned my head to see who it was. It was Clay of course. He was the only one who could possibly understand what I was going through.

“You want to talk about it?” He asked. Clay was much like my father. He knew that something was wrong before I even spoke. Sometimes, like now, before he even saw me he could tell, somehow that something was wrong, and nothing was okay.

“Do I look like I want to talk about it?” I spat out too soon to stop myself.

He shut the door behind him and walked into my room, and proceeded to sit on my bed. “Spence, I’m not letting you do this again.”

“Do what exactly?” I asked with bitterness.

“Shut me out!” He shouted at me. “Spencer, I am your brother. And I love you. I want you to be happy. I can’t make you happy if you continue shutting me out. It hurts me to know you’re hurting.” He explained it so well that I almost believed him…almost.

I knew I had to explain something though. I couldn’t just let him keep thinking I wasn’t opening up. It would mean he would tell my mother who would send me back to counseling. “It’s just…have you ever done something that you regret so much? Have you ever lost something that made your life seem pointless once you lost it? And then along with the thing you lost, you lose your mind as well?”

He looked at me for a few moments, both of us silent for quite a while, before he finally put a strong hand on my shoulder and spoke. “Spence, I don’t know what’s going on. You obviously don’t want to tell me, and that’s fine. At least you opened up a little bit.” He enveloped me into a tight, muscular hug; one that I did not want. I wanted to push him away and scream at him for sucking so bad at making people feel better. However, I knew better. I knew that if he had any common sense, he would sense something was wrong and tell my mother to stick me in therapy if I had gone off on him.