“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. And I am. More than words can express. Especially knowing his past and everything he’s been through when he lost his brother. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I want you to get help, Teagan. I don’t want you to feel like you have to keep taking on the weight of the world. And I know it’s not going to be easy, but I will love you even when you can’t love yourself, okay?” He gives me back my own words.
Lying here, in this hospital bed because my body and brain told me what I’ve been refusing to see all this time—that I’m pushing myself to my breaking point—I can finally see that it’s not everyone else I’m letting down; it’s myself. And in doing that, I’m causing the people I love pain. I can see it on Aaron’s face, and it breaks my heart.
Over the next forty-eight hours I undergo a slew of tests, including an MRI and a CT scan. I’m terrified that there’s more going on in my brain and my body that I don’t know about. But it turns out the seizure is a result of exhaustion, dehydration, and a general chemical imbalance in my brain. My body literally shorted out on me. And it scares the hell out of me.
Enough that I agree to a thirty-day treatment program where I can detox from the pharmacy of medication I’ve been swallowing on a regular basis to make it through my days. I almost back out, afraid of what people are going to say and think, worried about all the people I’m letting down and the projects that aren’t going to be taken care of while I’m gone. But my family rallies around me, and despite everything I’ve put him through, Aaron is there to offer his support. He even drives me to the treatment center.
We pull up to the estate house. It’s a beautiful sprawling home on twenty acres of property. It even has its own man-made lake. It’s expensive, and going here will eat pretty much all my savings. We did the research, though, and this place has a high success rate. And it’s only about an hour away from Pearl Lake. Van offered to pay for it, but there was no way I would allow him to foot the bill for this. I needed to own this, and I needed to take control of my own life, starting with putting myself through treatment.
Aaron parks the car but doesn’t make a move to get out.
“Tell me that I need to do this.”
He reaches over and squeezes my hand before slipping his fingers under my hair, his palm curving around the back of my neck. “You need to take care of yourself, and this is one huge step in the right direction.”
“You’re right. I know that. I’m just scared.”
“Scared of what, exactly?”
I give voice to my fears. “What if it’s too hard? What if I can’t do it? What if it doesn’t work?”
His thumb sweeps along the column of my throat. “You have to want it to work, Teagan. And you can’t go back to the way things were.”
“Maybe you should give me an ultimatum.” I drag my attention away from the white house. “Tell me that you can’t be with me if I go back to the way I was before.”
His smile is sad as he brushes his thumb across my cheek. I realize he’s wiping away a tear. I’ve shed a lot of those over the past few days. That Aaron hasn’t run screaming for the hills tells me I’m pretty damn lucky to have him in my life.
“You know I can’t do that,” he says softly.
“You can’t stick around if this doesn’t work.” I motion to the house.
“I’m not sending you in there with that hanging over your head, Teagan. That’s like tossing someone into the ocean without a life jacket and expecting them to tread water for the next thirty days without support. This is one day at a time. I’m not expecting you to be perfect, and neither should you. Give yourself the grace you give everyone else.” He cups my cheek and presses his lips to mine.
I sink into the kiss, dragging it out as long as I can. There won’t be more kisses like this for a while. We’ve decided that we’re going to take a step back while I’m in treatment. It means we’re on pause while I get the help I need. And I hope like hell that when I come out on the other side, I’ll be able to stand on my own, and we can find a new us.
CHAPTER 28
A NEW DOOR TO OPEN
Teagan
The thing about addiction is that you don’t know how big of a problem it is until the things you’re addicted to are taken away. One of the first things the doctors at the treatment center do is reassess my medication. It means lots of questions, some questionnaires, and a slew of assessment tests.
I was six when my mother passed away. Six years old when she went in for outpatient surgery and never came home. And the month after she passed, I started first grade. I was overwhelmed, scared, confused. And motherless.
I don’t have a ton of memories from that time. But I know school was hard, and different. I had to sit in a desk all day for the first time. There were new rules. Lots of kids. People to talk to. My teacher was older. She reminded me of a grandma, and she had more rules than Grammy Bee did.
I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and put on medication. My dad was overwhelmed with the loss of my mother. Van was only eight and Bradley was four. There was a lot going on in the house. I remember the first time I took the medication. How I could sit for hours and color or complete pages upon pages in my spelling workbook. And I loved the praise I would get from my dad when I finished something and got most of the answers right.
Food tasted different, though. Not quite right. As if someone had put something metallic in it. My appetite at school didn’t exist, and by the time I was nine, I’d learned to share my snacks with my friends so I wouldn’t come home with a full lunch bag. But at night it was like a black hole opened in my stomach and food suddenly tasted right again. And I would eat and eat and eat.
Bedtime was always hard. It took me forever to fall asleep. And even when I did, sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep. My dad would give me melatonin, and most of the time that worked. Except it gave me vivid dreams. Sometimes bad ones.
By the time I was a teenager, my grades were stable and I was managing okay. But when I went to college, things started to shift. We had to up my dose because I was struggling to focus in my classes. I started having panic attacks, and I wasn’t sleeping. So we added a sedative, which helped with the sleep. And when the stress got to be too much and the panic threatened to take over, I had an antianxiety medication that I could take.
I was handling what life threw at me. At least I thought I was. Until I wasn’t anymore.
And the sleeping pills stopped cutting it. I added melatonin to the mix, because it was natural and could tip me over the edge. But those stopped working, too, and then the energy drinks came, and the excessive coffee, and when I was having an exceptionally challenging day, I started on the caffeine pills.
Until my body literally couldn’t handle it anymore.
A few days into my treatment, I meet with the psychologist and the doctor to discuss the results of all the tests. The therapist is a woman in her forties named Edith. She and Dr. Storey sit in comfy chairs across from me.
We’ve talked about the medication and when and how it started and when it got out of control. Since I’ve been here, there have been adjustments to my medication, doses lowered, and the sleeping medication has been changed to one meant specifically for anxiety that’s also supposed to help me sleep. So far it’s been successful.