Free On Thin Ice 1 by Victoria Villeneuve

On
Thin Ice 1
    On Thin Ice 1
    Victoria Villeneuve
    Copyright 2013 by
Victoria Villeneuve
    Smashwords Edition
     
    I stared at the clock
on the other side of the wall. Its monotonous ticking let me know
time after time that another second of my life had slipped away,
another second was gone that I could never get back. It didn’t
matter though. As far as I was concerned, the closer I was to
death, the better. After all, what was the point of being on this
earth for however many more seconds? In the end everyone dies, most
of us having done absolutely nothing noteworthy to either help or
harm mankind.
    These sombre thoughts
were normal for me these days. I’m sure it’s the sort of thing my
therapist would love to hear, the sort of thing she would
encourage. I smiled to myself as I thought about her encouraging me
to speak, encouraging me to speak my mind. I knew my complete lack
of interest in telling her about my thoughts, in telling her about
what goes on in my head, frustrated her.
    “Kylie, you need to
allow yourself to heal. You can’t continue to punish yourself, or
you’ll never move on with your life.”
    What Doctor Emma, as
everyone called her, didn’t realize, was that I didn’t want to
heal. I wasn’t going to heal. I wanted to wallow in my depression,
I wanted to punish myself. I deserved every terrible thought that
crossed my mind, no matter what anyone said.
    Finally, enough ticks
of my life had slipped past that the minute hand was veering closer
and closer to the top of the clock. I was going to be late if I
didn’t get going soon. I got up off the couch I was lying on and
made my way through the hallway.
    Sometimes I wondered
why they painted the hallways in this place beige. It was so
sterile, so boring. It was like they did the absolute bare minimum
they had to in order to make this place seem like not a doctor’s
office, and justify the prices they charged to attend this place. I
always thought to myself that maybe the people in here would be
happier if the walls were purple, and blue, and red, and yellow. Of
course, there was always a chance some of the people who were
addicted to substances far more mind altering than I would think
they were high, and perhaps it wasn’t the best idea. Still, I
didn’t think it would kill them to add a bit of color to the
place.
    I guess rehab centers
in general aren’t supposed to be homely. They’re supposed to be a
place where you go in, get off whatever you were addicted to, and
get out, hopefully with a better mindset to tackle the problems of
real life without a relapse. In my case, it was alcohol. For me, as
with so many other people, the addiction to alcohol was a reaction
to something in my life. I had never had a problem with alcohol
before, until I did. The real problem was getting over what had
happened, and I knew that wasn’t something I was going to do. I
didn’t want to do it. If I let myself get over it, that was letting
me off easy. I didn’t deserve to be free from those memories.
    When I was maybe thirty
yards down the hall I reached the door I wanted, turned the knob
and let myself in.
    As always, the room had
a bit more than a dozen chairs spread in a circle, half of them
already filled. I sat about as far as I could from Doctor Emma, who
took the chair facing the door. I vaguely looked around, all of the
faces in the chairs the same familiar ones as were there every
Tuesday and Thursday afternoon.
    Sitting next to Doctor
Emma, as always, was Sam. He had been in a car accident about a
year ago and gotten addicted to painkillers. When his wife left, he
finally realized he had a problem, and checked himself into the
clinic. He had a beard now, and his black hair was getting pretty
scraggly, but I could still tell there was a handsome man lurking
under there somewhere. When he went back to the real world, I
always thought Sam would be fine. He had run a successful business,
which I think his son was now in charge of while he was