I remembered one time, in eighth grade, a police officer came into our school and talked to us about D.A.R.E. The acronym stood for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, and was supposed to make us resist drugs and alcohol by telling us how bad they were and how they'd kill us. Apparently, I didn't ever get the memo, because less than five years later, I was lying in the street, homeless, desperate for money so I could get high again.
I always wished I could say that my life fell apart because my parents were drug addicts, or I was in a bad neighborhood, or I was prescribed the wrong thing by my doctor, or I was pressured into it. In reality, though, I was just an idiot. I started using because I thought I was immune to addiction and just didn't care. Sure, other people could get addicted, but I couldn't. I was just having a little fun every once in a while. I wasn't going to turn into one of those homeless junkies I saw every day. There was no way I would. I had a mental resistance to that sort of thing. Or so I thought. The joke was on me because drugs didn't care what I thought or believed. In the blink of an eye, my life had fallen to pieces.
I first started using when I was a freshman in high school. A little while after that, I dropped out, and another year later my parents kicked me out. Shortly after that, I was kicked out of the homeless center because of my drug use. I went to the street, living with people who had no problem entertaining me and my drug use. Within five years, I’d gone from a straight A’s student with a bright future to indistinguishable from the rest of the junkies I’d lived on the street beside.
My warped mind went from convincing itself that it didn't have a problem, to admitting it had a problem and just not caring about it. To the old me, life couldn’t get any better. I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have to pay rent, I even got free drug money from my new career in begging. I was actually proud to be homeless. I knew I had a problem, but I didn’t want help. I just didn’t care. I wasn’t going to change, and nothing was going to make me. I wanted to be this way. Even if I was going to die early, it would be worth it cause at least I’d get to be high while I died. I was ruining my life, and I knew it, and I just didn’t care.
“I’m not going to ruin my life again,” I thought as my pony body woke up. I was still tired from the previous day, and my hunger was starting to become painful after almost two days without food. My bites looked a touch worse than they did yesterday, and the hoof I’d twisted felt much worse. It felt swollen and stiff, and putting pressure on it made tears start to form.
I hated these tears, and hated how much they came the previous day. Even if I was in a child’s body, a colt's body, and even if I was in pain, it cried entirely too much. It was making me upset. No child I knew cried this much.
“We’re going to have to push through it,” I told my pony body. “I know it hurts, but we’re close to finding help. We don’t have that much farther to go.”
My pony body didn’t put up a fight. It was too weary and hungry to attempt to. I limped along the rest of the way through the forest, and by the time I made it to the clearing, I was weeping silently from the pain in my hoof, not to mention my stomach.
“Stop that!” my human mind demanded of me. “Stop crying! If we’d gone through this forest yesterday, you wouldn’t be so hungry, and you might not have injured your hoof.”
“I’m sorry! I was just-”
“Just what? Were scared? There wasn't even anything to be scared of in that forest. We could’ve been here ages ago, but your uselessness held us back!”
I stopped for a moment, looking ahead at the town in front of me, still silently crying. "I'm sorry I'm so useless," I whispered to myself, then started to limp ahead again.
It was still night, but slowly the moon went down and dawn started to break in as I limped across the clearing and into the town. I couldn’t tell where exactly I was, but I could tell that it wasn’t Ponyville or Canterlot or anywhere familiar. It was just some random town somewhere in Equestria. Which was okay, certainly better than nothing. All I needed right now was to find someone to help me.
I limped to what I judged to be the center of the small town and lay down to wait, too tired to continue. Eventually, someone would stumble upon me and help me I figured. And I was correct. No sooner than when I closed my eyes to go back to sleep did a green mare with a pink mane shake me to wake me up.
“Are you okay?” she asked me softly, getting down to eye level.
“Do I look okay to you?” my human mind thought
“No…,” I whispered, tears starting to form again.
“What’s wrong?”
“Can’t you see my swollen hoof and dirty coat?”
I shakily lifted my front leg to show her where I bit myself.
I saw her go wide-eyed at the sight of it. “Oh my,” she said quietly, then quickly turned her head and called out, “I need some help!” She looked back at me and stroked my mane, seeming like she wanted to cry. “You’re going to be okay,” she said while I continued to sniffle out tears.
I was definitely a child, a colt. Either that, or this mare was impossibly large. Not to mention, I didn’t imagine her stroking a stallion’s mane to comfort them. Although, being in a colt’s body did make me feel better about my lack of control over my emotions of late. It wasn’t me that was crying, it was this colt’s body that was crying. At least, that’s what I told myself.
Still, being a colt would definitely be a problem. I no longer could just make up a story and have everyone accept it as true. They would want a reasonable explanation from me, an explanation that I wouldn’t be able to provide. They’d want to know where I lived, who my parents were, how I’d gotten hurt, why I was alone. I doubt they’d be satisfied with “I don’t know”, or the vague answers I’d originally planned on giving them. This was going to get complicated.
But I would work on that later. For now, I allowed this green mare to stroke my mane in an attempt to comfort my pony body. Before I knew it, I was being picked up and placed on the back of someone else, somepony else, and being galloped off to what I assumed to be a hospital. I listened to their conversation as they galloped.
“You just found him lying there?” the one who’s back I was riding on, a stallion, asked.
“Yes!” the mare told him. “He was just lying there sleeping on the ground! The poor thing was probably lost in that forest for days.”
“I am not a poor thing,” my human mind thought.
“I wonder where his parents are…”
“Probably at home thinking about how much fun they had kicking me to the street.”
“How did he get those bite marks?”
I don’t know why, but them wondering about my bite marks made me realize my situation. I was a child! I wanted a second chance at life, but not as a child. I knew me, and I knew I would screw it up. I knew my human mind would just fall into the same traps as before, thinking, “Well, I’ve got time to fix myself.” I didn’t want to have any excuse to go back to the way I lived. This was going to be a mess.
My teeth began to chatter. I was starting to hate the guy who granted my wish. He could have given me what I was sure he knew I meant, but instead opted to put me in the worst possible position. Why stick me in Ponyville when he could stick me in the middle of nowhere? Why not also put me in this dumb anxious body so I could be an emotional wreck and hurt myself? And while he was at it, why not make me a colt so I could have all the time in the world to convince myself to make the same stupid decisions I did before? I hated the position he put me in.
“It’s going to be alright,” the green mare told me, hearing my chattering teeth. “We’re almost there.”
The next thing I knew, we were entering a bright building. "The hospital," my human mind thought. I’d been in the hospital several times before, always with bad intentions. Being here now made me reflexively scratch my face with my hoof.
Despite my injuries not being life-threatening, I was seen immediately, mostly due to a lack of other patients. The pony seeing me, a unicorn, introduced himself as Doctor Night, and the mare told him how she and her stallion friend, who I learned were named Herbal Essence and Thundertail, found me injured and sleeping on the ground in the middle of the town. She said how they didn’t know my name or how old I was, but thought it looked like I’d been sleeping outside for several days. Although in reality, unbeknowst to them, it was more like months.
Doctor Night took my height and weight, commenting that he thought I might be malnourished. He took my blood pressure and temperature, and said I might be getting sick from sleeping outside. He checked my eyes, ears, mouth, everything besides my actual injuries, before he started asking me questions.
“Do you have a name, lad?” he asked.
I debated for a second whether or not to give them my real name or make up a pony sounding name, before deciding to go with the former. I figured my real name sounded pony enough.
“Leo,” I whispered.
“What a nice name,” Doctor Night said politely. “Do you know how old you are, Leo?”
I shook my head no at that. I was tempted to say my real age, but figured I might hold off on being thought of as crazy.
“That’s fine,” he told me. “Do you know where your parents are?”
“No,” I said quietly, looking down at the floor.
“Do you know how you got here?”
“Not really,” I said, teary-eyed. “I remember walking, and then they found me,” I told him, gesturing to the pair.
“You know good and well how you got here,” my human mind thought. “Your poor decision making and drug-filled lifestyle got you here.”
“Okay…” he trailed off.
I watched as he wrote on his clipboard, and suddenly got the feeling I was being interrogated. “There was a meadow with yellow flowers, and then a forest,” I added, scratching my face.
“And you walked through it?” he asked. “Did you hurt yourself there, Leo?”
I nodded, holding up the leg I’d bitten.
“That must have hurt,” he said, trying to sound sympathetic as he examined it briefly. “Did you bite yourself, Leo?”
Of course, he knew I bit myself. He was a doctor. Besides, I was a colt. If something else bit me, chances were I wouldn’t have gotten away. Still, I shook my head in denial.
“Do you know what did bite you?” he asked. I shook my head no again, and he continued, “Well, in that case, we might need to give you a rabies shot just in case.”
I scratched at my face again.
"Did you get hurt anywhere else?"
“My hoof,” I told him, lifting my injured hoof.
He examined it, moving it around slightly to examine it, and noted my reaction as I winced. “Your fetlock isn't broken,” he said, “but I can’t say for certain it’s not fractured. We’ll have to get you some x-rays to be sure. In the meantime, I think we’re going to have you admitted.”
“Seems like there’s very low criteria for admittance here,” I thought. “Maybe it’s because there’s no other patients.”
“Did you want us to stay with him?” the mare, Herbal Essence, asked him.
“Do you want them here with you, Leo?” Doctor Night asked me.
“Not particularly,” my human mind suddenly thought.
“What?” I asked it, surprised. “Why not?”
“Because I’m not a child, and I’m not in the mood to be treated like a child.”
“Yes, please,” I told the doctor quietly.
“Of course you said yes,” my human mind said, annoyed.
“Okay,” he said, turning around and opening a cabinet with his magic. “Now, before we get you a room, let’s get that rabies shot out of the way.”
I scratched at my face once again at the sight of his syringe. He took notice of this and put the syringe down. “Is your face itching?” he asked, as he made his way back to me.
“No,” I lied unconvincingly while continuing to scratch.
He used his magic to hold my hoof in place, stopping me from scratching as he examined both sides of my face. “I don’t see anything, but you might have gotten an irritant in your coat. Are you itching anywhere else?”
I shook my head at him. I knew why I was scratching. It was the syringe. It made my face itchy. Or rather, not having it made my face itchy. Just being in this hospital was making me itchy. Even in this drug-free pony body, my human mind was still an addict. This was going to be unbearable.
“I’ll get you something for that itch after we get you to your room. Until then, just try not to scratch.”
It took all of my will power not to scratch when he picked up the syringe again.