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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781491863930 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 02/21/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 213 KB |
Read an Excerpt
Awakening Within
By Lori Bradford
AuthorHouse LLC
Copyright © 2014 Lori BradfordAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4918-6392-3
CHAPTER 1
Julia Thompson was twenty-two-years-old. She was a stunning young woman with dark, auburn hair and deep blue eyes that were strikingly beautiful, yet somehow mysterious. Her eyes held many secrets that alone could drive a man crazy wondering what was behind them. Those features, as well as her slender, shapely body, had attracted many men. They soon learned, however, that even trying to talk to her was an impossible undertaking. Julia wanted nothing to do with them. Her aloofness caused some to give up easily, and some to be more determined than ever. Eventually, though, they had all given up.
Julia wasn't distant on purpose; she simply wasn't interested in men at this point in her life. She wanted to continue the career she had just begun and did not want to be distracted. So she merely brushed them off when they approached her. She was always too busy to talk or go out. She left them with damaged egos and earned the reputation of being unapproachable and cold. Some wondered if she had another man in her life. Others wondered what was wrong with her. One thing was clear; she didn't want to be bothered with them. And after a while, they left her alone. Julia hardly noticed that they had stopped approaching her. She was too concerned about her work to have the distraction of men in her life.
As she scrolled through the local newspaper on her computer, a habit she had developed while drinking her morning coffee, she soon reached the obituaries section. She found that the deaths of young people—teenagers—were the ones that captivated her. They were what she subconsciously searched for. Each time she found that a teenager had died, she carefully read the entire obituary. She dwelled on how their families and friends must have felt. She wondered at the cause of death, which wasn't always listed. This ritual generally produced feelings of melancholy as she started out her day.
At times Julia felt as if she were much older than her biological age. It might almost be comical that a twenty-two-year-old was obsessed with obituaries, but because of the events of her life, reading them was just one more thing she could not let go of that reminded her of her past. Although it had been seven years since the accident, sometimes it felt as if it had happened yesterday. And sometimes it felt as if it had been a part of her life forever.
CHAPTER 2After the accident, Julia had suffered emotionally more than anyone knew. It took several years to get to the point in her life at which she felt that she actually wanted to go on living. She was finally on a path where she was moving steadily forward, for the most part anyway.
Julia had recently graduated from college with a master's degree in counseling. Not too many people had earned a master's degree so young. In fact, not too many people had done it at all. She had gone through college so rapidly, taking more than full-time credits every semester. She knew she was putting too much effort into getting her degree quickly, but her motive really wasn't about the degree. Her motive was relief. Relief from remembering her past and from her dreams. All the studying exhausted her so much that she didn't have the dreams nearly as often. And that alone was worth the lack of sleep.
Sleep deprivation, she learned, caused a lot of problems. Studying late into the night had caused her to be zombie-like during the day, and her abilities to concentrate and remember suffered. She put all of her efforts into her studies and had little energy for anything else. Everything in her life had taken a back seat to her studies, and secretly, she was grateful for that. It gave her the ready excuse she needed should anyone ask her to do anything socially.
Julia finished her morning coffee and headed out the door, knowing she would be late for work again. More often than not, she rushed into work a few minutes past 8 a.m. After finishing graduate school, and having no legitimate reason for staying up late at night to study anymore, she had no significant distraction to keep her awake in order to avoid the dreams. When the dreams returned, at best her nights were restless. Sometimes, however, the dreams would wake her in a sheer panic, and any hope of sleeping the rest of the night was gone.
CHAPTER 3Julia began having the dreams shortly after the accident. When she was fifteen-years-old, Julia was in a horrific car crash with her best friend, Lauren. Lauren had died instantly in the crash, and it was said by Julia's doctors that it was miraculous she had survived. Julia would not have called it a miracle, however, because she truly wished she had died with Lauren. She couldn't remember much about the crash itself, but the papers called it the worst crash in the last ten years in Taney County. Julia had seen a picture of Lauren's mangled car just once, and that was enough to embed a lifetime of sickening thoughts in her mind.
Much of what Julia remembered had come back to her while she was sleeping. The dreams were terrifying. She relived them countless times, and it never got easier. In fact, the dreams became more vivid and detailed the more she had them. Sometimes she would wake up screaming, and sometimes she would wake up in a cold sweat. The dreams robbed her of her sleep and she dreaded the night as soon as the sun started dropping down behind the western hills each evening. It was endless torture, and she feared if she talked about her dreams with anyone, they would somehow get worse. So she kept them to herself.
Lauren Nelson had been Julia's best friend. The strangest thing of all to Julia was that it was Lauren who she needed the most to console her about Lauren's own death. Without Lauren, there was no one. Her family had tried to get her to talk to them, but she knew only Lauren would understand how painful it was to lose her best friend. Julia missed Lauren so much that at times every cell in her body hurt. Often, when she was alone in her bedroom, the waves of pain would hit her so strongly that there was nothing she could do besides lay on her bed and sob. The tears would fall until there were no more left. Her eyes would get so swollen that it was difficult to see. Her nose would become engorged and no air could move through it. She would end up taking short gasps of air frequently through her mouth in order to catch her breath. When she settled down enough after the exhaustion set in, she would fall into a restless sleep.
Julia knew it was not possible to replace Lauren. And she didn't want to replace her. The best she could hope for was to find a good friend. Currently she had no desire to find anyone like that. All she was interested in was her work and trying to get on with her life as independently as possible; and somehow being able to stop the dreams.
After the crash and for the last two years of high school, after all of the physical therapy and treatments, Julia had withdrawn into herself so much that she had no friends at all. She simply wished she could disappear. She didn't notice her classmates staring at her or talking about her. She didn't care about anything. She began to drown the pain of losing Lauren with prescription pain pills. She took more and more of them to kill the pain, and was slowly killing any semblance of her former self. She was more absent than present most of the time, and went through the motions of going to school just to try to get her family off her back. What she really wanted back then, was to fall back into the coma she once was in and never come out of it.
Her parents confronted her a few times about taking so much pain medication. Julia had fooled herself into thinking she was acting normally for what she had been through, and got extremely defensive and angry when her parents asked her about the pain pills. She figured she was handling things just fine, and acted so insulted with their asking that they dared not ask again. They were frightened for her, but also wanted to believe her so much that they deceived themselves into thinking they must be wrong.
Interactions between Julia and her parents were almost non-existent after the last time they confronted her. She would say a quick "goodbye" as she left for school each day, and when she returned from school, Julia headed straight to her bedroom where she would spend the rest of the night. Her mother would bring her a tray with her dinner each evening, of which Julia would eat only a few bites and then flush what she could down the toilet.
Julia's dad was secretly grateful that Julia stayed close to home. Being a police officer, he was much more worried about Julia's safety than anyone knew. He had reviewed the case of Lauren's death extensively, and though he could not discuss specifics with many people, there was more involved with Lauren's death than just a car accident.
CHAPTER 4Jake was Julia's little brother. He was less than a year younger than Julia, and as they had grown, he was more like a big brother to her than a little brother. He had bright red hair and was outgoing and fun-loving. Before the accident, they had been very close. It broke his heart to see her so changed after the accident. Even though he was younger than she was, he still felt like her protector. And because he was her protector and she had gotten hurt, he felt that he had somehow let her down. He was overcome with grief when she had the accident. And he was her biggest cheerleader as she made small steps toward healing.
He had become so protective of her; sometimes it felt as if he was smothering her. At school, he was continually watching where she was during breaks and lunch. No one but Jake and his father knew he had been asked to watch her so closely.
Julia knew that Jake was concerned about her, as were her parents, and Jake was really the only one in the family who had ever been able to get very close to Julia. She had always felt somewhat disconnected from her parents. She had felt that way from the time she was very young. She was certain it was because she had been adopted. Her parents had never kept that a secret, and even though they told her often how much they loved her, she still felt different and many times, alone.
Julia realized how much Jake's personality had changed after the accident—nearly as much as hers. He was devastated at nearly losing her, and then had watched her nearly kill herself after the accident. He tried so hard to bring her back, but just the same as everyone else, with the exception of Dr. Harrison, he was unable to reach her.
At times, the old, playful Jake would surface, but Julia was so out-of touch most of the time, Jake stopped trying to tease her or make her laugh. He was, however, always there for her if she needed him and Julia was grateful for that. She knew she could talk to him if she needed to, but basically she didn't feel like talking to anyone. She blamed herself and felt guilty about how their relationship had changed because of her.
It was Dr. Harrison who rescued Julia from her path of slow, painful self-destruction. He was a friend of her parents and was also a psychiatrist. It was he who noticed how seriously depressed she had become. It was he who insisted she be admitted to an inpatient center for troubled teens. And it was he who saved her life and helped her to find a reason to live again. She could never repay him for what he had done for her.
After the terrible withdrawal from pain pills, and the outbursts of rage as well as the times when she became so withdrawn that no one could reach her, she slowly, with the help of Dr. Harrison and the treatment team at the Center, began to find the will to live again. After months of intensive treatment, she gradually started focusing on what she wanted to do with her life. She found that she had a passion for helping others, and became determined to help troubled teenagers, just as she had been helped. She knew if nothing else, she understood depression, guilt and pain, and she felt that because of what she had gone through, she could help others who were dealing with similar problems.
Dr. Harrison was certain of it, too. He encouraged her to pursue her studies in counseling. After she graduated from high school, he helped her enroll in an accelerated counseling program in a nearby university, and assisted her with her studies. Later, he helped her get her first job as a counselor in a very similar facility for troubled teens that she had been a patient in herself. She owed him so much, and yet he would accept nothing for all he had done for her.
CHAPTER 5Julia had begun her career only six months ago. She knew without Dr. Harrison's assistance, she likely wouldn't have had a chance at the job she was offered so soon after she graduated from the university. Julia didn't know exactly how difficult it had been for Dr. Harrison to convince his peers that she should be hired. They were concerned about her youth, her past, and her inexperience. Dr. Harrison had assured the hiring committee that he would mentor her and help her in her role as a counselor for these vulnerable, troubled teens. After all, he had worked in that facility for years, and was well respected by his colleagues, so they decided they would hire her with his promise to mentor her.
Julia wasn't sure why Dr. Harrison was so willing to help her, but she was thankful to have him in her life, and she loved him like a father. He had been a part of hers and her family's lives for as long as she could remember. She knew she would not have survived without him.
After graduating from college, she had intended to work somewhere far away from home. She wanted to get away from the small town in which she lived that held so many bad memories for her. However, she felt that she owed it to Dr. Harrison to stay. Exactly one month after she got the job at the treatment center, she moved out of her house and into a small apartment complex by herself. She needed some distance from her family as well as some personal space and alone time. Ever since the accident she felt that she was under the constant scrutiny of her parents as well as Jake, and she didn't feel she could handle it anymore. As much as she loved her family, they were a constant reminder of the painful years she had suffered so much, and she needed to get away from that part of her life.
At work, as well as when she was his patient, Dr. Harrison was different than others who were trying to help her. Rather than reminding her of her pain, he made her feel safe. He was older than she was, and had much more experience than she did. She knew he would be an invaluable resource in learning her new role as a counselor, as well as somewhat of a security blanket for her. She had depended on him for the last several years of her life in so many ways.
She wasn't sure exactly how old he was, and she had never asked. Not as old as her parents—probably somewhere in between their ages and hers. After all, he babysat her and her little brother when they were very small, back when he was a teenager. She remembered many things from that period of her life, and he was definitely a part of her childhood. Wil. How different he was now than what she remembered about him then.
He didn't look that old now. His full head of dark brown hair was still dark brown, and she thought he was probably a handsome man. It was hard to tell exactly what his face looked like, due to his neatly trimmed full beard, but she could see enough of his facial features to believe he was handsome underneath it all. He was tall and lean, and his nature was quiet and serious nearly all of the time. He was always professional, and she was thankful for that.
In fact, at times she thought he overdid it with the professional boundaries. He had known her from the time she was very young. He didn't seem to remember the days before everything changed. She remembered. She remembered when he was fun and easy going, and took her and her little brother, Jake, to the park to play. She wasn't sure what had happened to change him—and she didn't really think it was appropriate for her to ask. Maybe he had just grown up after all these years.
After Wil went off to medical school, he would return home to visit his parents sometimes when he had breaks. He often stopped by to visit Julia's family, too. He enjoyed the relationship he had built with the Thompsons; they were his second family. And after his parents moved away, he continued to visit them after he moved back to town and established his psychiatric practice.
As Julia was growing up, she saw Wil occasionally when he visited. She was busy hanging out with Lauren much of the time as she got older, so she wasn't always home when he came. She was usually glad to see him, but the older she got, she started feeling a little strange when he was around. It was as if he could see right through her—and he seemed just as bothered by it as she did.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Awakening Within by Lori Bradford. Copyright © 2014 Lori Bradford. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse LLC.
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