Rehab

“…and I need you like a heart needs a beat..”
That was the song that was coming out of her iPod. Her eyes were closed and she was lying on a deckchair at the pool.
It was nice from the outside, but it wasn’t neither at her house nor at an hotel. It was the rehab in Florida. She was 16 and she had spent her last five months in rehab. No problems seen from the outside of course, but if you took a closer look, you’ll see a girl, whose mother got divorced with her second husband, after her first died and non caring for her children. Shenyll was the oldest and then there was Ty, he was just 8.
Shenyll tried to do her best to help, but her mother wouldn’t understand. She wanted to be rich. She loved to be rich and it seemed that she also liked to mess up her daughters life. Her marriages were only for interest, better said, her marriages were investments. Ty didn’t understand much; he was just happy to have a big house, a big room and all the toys he wanted. Shenyll, on the contrary, wasn’t so material. She liked to shop at the mall and call her best friend, but that was it. She didn’t need all this pomp, this exaggerate big house, all the exaggerate partied they had to go every weekend.
Shenylls’ dad was a good man. When she was a little kid, they lived in Pasadena. It was nice there, even if they had their little home and they were happy. Then he died.  One night, he was coming out of the 7-Eleven. He saw some guys nearby listening to some music provided from a stereo, smoking some cigarettes. And then a car passed by, doing a drive-by. Two of the guys were killed, and her father too. Her mother didn’t work, so she had to find a job. She had a friend who worked for an attorney downtown in Los Angeles. Kyla, Shenyll’s mother, began to work for him as secretary. Six months later they were on a yacht to celebrate the wedding.
Finally their zip code was 90210. A dream for many girls, insignificant for Shenyll. A year later Ty was born. He knew this life and this life only and he couldn’t understand her sister.
Last year, after summer, around Halloween, all happened.

Shenyll was home for just a month and she couldn’t stand her mother. She just parties and fitness and back again. She didn’t care about anything else. Kyla even forgot sometimes to have a daughter or a son. Ty was 24/7 with a babysitter, completely left to himself. Shenyll sometimes took him out to the playground, and the ones in Beverly Hills, with all this posh mother and all their exclusive pieces of clothes and nail applications. It was absurd even how taking the children to the playground was more a competition, every time and everywhere.
Her stepfather, Benjamin, he was ok for the first 6 years. Then something happened. He likes to drink after dinner, while he works in front of the TV to keep her Kyla company. Sometimes he drank to much or he was nervous for a bad day and there was just one thing he liked to do: hit her mother.
Kyla thought no one knew, but Shenyll did. She’d seen him a lot of times lately and she wouldn’t know about the summer, because she has been away, to her grandparents in San Francisco. Instead of having an other row with her mother, she’s been drinking  for the last month and a half. She became nightmares from Ben hitting her mom, and her screams pierced Shenylls ears. That was the perfect way to feel nothing. She always bottles of water filled with the other transparent liquid, vodka. That’s what she did. What hurt her most, was her best friend, who had a new boyfriend and had practically forgot about her. She was angry with her too. She drank all this anger in vodka. And it was ok for her. That dizzy feeling, she loved it!


“ Shenyll, you drive me completely insane! What is it supposed to mean ‘I don’t care what you tell me, I won’t listen to you anyway because you never listen to me?’ I care about you and your brother.”, Kyla was saying, her voice raising a bit.
“That means, that you are blind! You don’t know what’s going on with me, or my life, or my friends. You’re a fool. You think I don’t know, but I know all of what he’s doing to you. I know he hits you every other day. I just don’t understand why you don’t say anything! Look at you, dammit! You’re all fitness and healthy food and you don’t care about us. You’ve wanted this your whole life, now you have your dream. But it’s not mine. I know it’s not your fault that dad died, but I still have a mother and I do want her! I want to go shop with her or just tan. Maybe organize Ty’s birthday party with her. You know what? You’re not a mother, not even close..”, Shenyll kept her voice steady, her thoughts were perfectly clear even though the great amount of alcohol in her. But this just gave her the strength and the courage to tell these things in her mothers’ face. Kyla just watched her, her eyes wide, like in surprise, anger and even some comprehension. “You’ve known this all along and never said a thing?” It was funny to see, that this was the only thing her mother had to comment. “Yes. I always watch him, while he does it, to be sure that you’re in one piece. That’s funny, that this is the only thing you want to talk about, after all of what I’ve said!” Shenyll laughed sarcastically, while inside she was screaming. In that precise moment she understood that to her mother, the only important thing was her mother, and nothing else. She didn’t  even love her father for real and Kyla certainly never wanted her nor Ty. But Ty was an error, she always told her daughter that.
Shenyll went to the chair where her big, black bag was lying, took out the “bottle of water” and took a long sip. She drank till the bottle was empty.
When she turned around, her mother was still standing there, watching her, not really understanding. “That water smells weird” “That’s because it’s not water. I wanted to open your eyes and notice that a lot of alcohol, vodka, had vanished form the liqueur cabinet. But you didn’t because you so concentrated on yourself. You know, I haven’t seen my former best friend, ‘cause she has a boyfriend, she spend all her time with. An other reason to drink away my sorrow. The guy who she goes out with, was MY boyfriend two weeks ago, until they slept together one night, at your freaking costume party, in MY bed. So we broke up. I found them in my bed asleep naked and began then to drink alcohol. Now, I just have to drink the whole time, or all those horrible images come in my mind again. So I got this problem now. Yeah, I admit it is a problem. And my mother don’t even notice. I alone n the world, so I love to feel the nothingness and emptiness that vodka leaves behind when it gets trough my body. Now, you could live!” Shenyll was now really angry, but she didn’t want to show, that she was freaking out. She sat yourself down, the alcohol was difficult to keep in the stomach, because it was already too much for that day, and it was only 10 a.m.. “Fine, I’ll leave”, Kyla simply answered.
As soon as the door was closed, hot tears began to run down Shenyll’s face. Man, if she was angry. On the shelf on near her right arm a flowerpot was standing empty. She took it without thinking and throw it against the door. There was another bottle in the nightstand. She took a long sip. Then she went into the bathroom and behind some hand-creams, there was a small orange container. On it the sticker said: ‘O’Connor Kyle Prescription: one every week’.  Cool. Antidepressants pills, that’s what she needed! Shenyll popped the cap off and took a handful of them. Furiously she put them into her mouth and quickly she showed them down with some more vodka.

Two days later she woke up here, in Rehab, in Florida. Her mom had sent her here, to be far away from her. She was stranded. She didn’t know where she was or why she was there. Some nurses told her that she’d been put in here, because she collapsed. Her melt down had been caused by an antidepressants overdoses, completed by the alcoholic percentage found in her blood. Yeah, right, she had tried to suicide, why did they save her?

Now it was five month later, early spring, but the sun was already hot. She was now satisfied with herself. She’ll be 18 in a couple of days and then she could go away from home. She had a last week to spend in rehab an she wanted to spend it like this. Her life was now organised. The first thing she wanted to do when getting back to LaLa – Land, was to go to the police station and tell everything about abusing and hitting her mother. The three of them will eventually get the house and Shenyll wanted to buy again the house they shared  with her father. Then go live there, away from her psycho, me-myself-and-I mom and I-have-everything-the-other-want kid. He only knew this world, she couldn’t blame him, but she could blame her mother for nor teaching him the real valuable things in life and not the material ones. She hated the-rich-and-the-famous-world, so fake and money everywhere.
“oh u ohhohoh…” The song was over. Shenyll removed her sunglasses by pushing them between her hair. She took her earphones out of her ears and put her iPod beside. Then she spotted her boyfriend CJ. He was a patient too and they’ve become really close, because they had the same problem. They help each other a lot, and that made Shenyll trust the other sex and friendship again. In a couple of weeks, these liking became attraction and now it’s a happy relationship that has helped both.