Monday, October 26, 2009

Chapter 7

Full novel for sale at Lulu.


We are not conscious of daylight as that which replaces the darkness.


“So how are you?” You might have been in one of my dreams last night. I don’t recall it, but we were laughing.

“I cut myself.” I cut myself more than once, but I doubt we will have time to discuss it all.

“Why did you do that?”

“It was too bright, the lamp. It made the room too bright. I didn’t recognize my house. Or. I did. But. I don’t know. It was different somehow, like I didn’t fit in it anymore.” I was scared. The light sharpened the corners of the room and altered the colour of the paint on the walls. It looked like my house. I remembered unlocking the front door and coming into my house, and it was my house then. The lamp had somehow taken my house, my real house, and replaced it with a substitute. I didn’t know where I was, but I knew I wasn’t in my house so, like a child seeking comfort from monsters beneath the covers, I threw the lamp across room in order to produce an anodynic darkness. The lamp hit the wall with enough force to cause the bulb to shatter. It was darker now, but I could still feel the house changing, moving. The broken glass caught my attention and I went to it. It said it had a secret it wanted to tell me. My body wasn’t mine any more, it was owned by whatever force also possessed the house. My body sat on the floor in front of the broken lamp. I thought I saw Kayla standing in the darkness, but I couldn’t be sure. My right hand reached into the glass and retrieved a large piece. My left hand turned itself over offering the soft skin of its underside. My right hand used the piece of frosted glass that had once contained light, to release blood from my left forearm. There was no fear, no crying, no confusion. It was seductive and enticing. Only, when the bleeding stopped, so too did the possession. The involuntary exorcism was shocking. Like recovering from anaesthetic, my body needed to be purged. Crouched over the toilet, I slid my two longest fingers down my throat. It was tighter than I expected and I could feel the ridges along the back of my throat as my fingers moved past them. After vomiting, my body settled itself, exhausted by the ordeal, and, with some concentrated effort, I was able to clean myself of the blood and vomit before retiring to bed, still in my clothes.

“When I was young, there was a building on the corner of our block. It was a four story brick building, which to me at that time was gigantic. Everyday I would walk by it on the way to school and no matter how many times I saw it and no matter how much I expected to see it, it always appeared unfamiliar to me.” You’re not looking at me as you speak, as if you are shy and trying to hide, so I figure you are telling the truth. I watch you though, so that when you do look towards me, you will know I have been listening. I try to get inside your memory with you, to see you as a boy contemplating the novelty in the familiar, viewing your world as paradisiacally absurd.

“Did this building make you cut yourself?”

“No, but that’s the point. You can exist in a strange, sometimes awkward environment without having to injure yourself.”

“I’m not sure I want to. I like bleeding.”

“In ancient times blood-letting was a common practice for curing many different kinds of ailments. Maybe you’re re-living your mythological, medical ancestry and your cutting is an attempt to purge yourself of some illness.”

“Are you supposed to be encouraging me?” You’re laughing. You understood my joke, laughed, and didn’t take offence. Maybe I was mistaken in categorising you as the stereotypical psychiatrist. You simply want someone to play with.

“In order to eliminate undesirable and physically harmful behaviours, it often helps if one doesn’t view the behaviour in question as associated with the self negatively. It’s not uncommon for one struggling with such behaviours to view the act as a part of their identity and inseparable from the self. I think it is more helpful to consider, in your case, cutting as an addiction. Much like a heroin addict will continually use in order to achieve a heightened sense of elation and comfort, so do you use your cutting, and it’s easy to believe that such a habit, especially if it is a first exposure, is the only way to achieve this nirvanic state. But this is a misconception.” When you talk like this, invested and confident in your opinion, you project an attractive quality which is, curiously, not at all lessened by your nervous habits of playing with your fingers and avoiding eye contact.

“But I liked it. I want the urge.”

“Then you would be in what is called the pre-contemplative stage of your recovery. Are you having any other symptoms this week?” Emotional instability. Crying. Laughing. Dancing. Thinking. Reading. Writing. Inspiration. Beauty. Loss. Movies. Poorly perceived realities.

“Nothing new.”

“Is there anything causing you concern?”

“I’m tired. A lot.”

“How have you been sleeping?”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t ever sleep?”

“Maybe a few hours each night, but even that is broken up.”

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” I don’t like blue-pill-sleep, sleep without rest. Sometimes it’s just easier to be awake.

“There’s too much going on inside my head. Sometimes, it’s ok. I have a lot of energy and I can get things done during the night. Other times, it feels like my thoughts have paralysed me and even though I might spend days in bed, my thoughts won’t let me sleep.”

“There is a way to encourage circadian rhythm stability by taking a walk each morning at sunrise.”

“Are you aware of what time the sun gets up?”

“Even if you go back to bed afterwards, a short walk exposing yourself to sunlight first thing in the morning is helpful.”

“There is no way I will ever get out of bed that early, not for anything.”

“It’s an option.”

“I did go for a walk the other day.”

“Good.”

“It wasn’t at sunrise though.”

“At least you were out getting some exercise. How was the walk for you?”

“It was ok.” I thought if I left my house and went out into the world where normal people were doing normal things, I could make the shadows in my head disappear and be more normal myself. It didn’t quite happen, though.

“Where did you walk to?” Once I was out onto the street, I saw a man about half a block away wearing a yellow jacket. The yellow fascinated me, so I started following the man. He walked quickly, however, and my short legs couldn’t move fast enough to keep up with his long strides, but by this time we had neared a busy street and a woman with a yellow purse walked by me, so I followed her. Then there was a woman with yellow flowers on her shirt. And then an old man with a yellow cap. This colour jumping went on until I reached a corner near the industrial part of town where there were fewer people and I ran out of yellow.

“I was just walking. It was the afternoon and I thought I should leave the house, but I couldn’t think of anywhere to go, so I just stopped thinking, put on my shoes and left. I saw a chicken.”

“You saw a chicken in the city?” I actually did see a chicken. After I ran out of yellow, I started walking back home, taking the back roads. One of the buildings I passed was a chicken slaughterhouse. They transported live chickens from rural farms to the city to be processed there. One of the chickens had escaped.

“Yes. It crossed the road. I thought that was amusing. I didn’t smile, but I was interested.”

“What interested you about it?”

“A chicken crossed the road.”

“So?”

“So all of a sudden, after a lifetime of hearing the joke, which was never even funny, I actually wanted to know why.”

“Did you ask the chicken why he crossed the road?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He was walking away from me. Besides, even if he knew he wouldn’t have been able to answer.”

“Why not?”

“Because chickens can’t talk. Are we really having this conversation? I don’t want to talk about chickens anymore.”

“So what would you like to talk about then?”

“It’s time for me to go.”

“So it is. I hope you have a good week with your walks.”

“Yeah. Right. Thanks.”

……….

My alarm was set to rouse me at the same time the sun rose. Since I had no intention of parting with my mattress, I figured it couldn’t hurt to set the alarm. At least that way, I could say I made an honest effort.

When the alarm started beeping incessantly, I rose out of bed, dressed myself, pulled my hair back, put on my shoes and opened my front door. I stood there, on the doorstep. The cold morning air didn’t chill me, it was invigorating.

I saw a light in the kitchen window of the house behind mine and the silhouette of a woman. For a moment, I wondered if she could see me. But the living don’t see the dead.

I looked down. In the two inches from the doorstep to the ground, I could see clouds and through them to the streets below. I felt like a god, but a god condemned for some past sin, left here to live an eternity of pain.

I closed my eyes. I listened to the cars. I believed I could fly. Or at least fall with serenity. So I fell. I jumped from the ledge of my doorstep which had become the ledge of some tall, imaginary building, but the deadly pavement never came. The floor of the porch did though. Followed shortly by an irritating pain in the arch of my right foot from falling too heavily. I was still in my body.

So I walked around the block. Then I walked around another. Then I walked around the hospital. I thought if I kept moving eventually the crying, which had started shortly into the walk, would stop. It wasn’t that I was unhappy. It was just everything looked so different, softer, and I never would have seen it if it weren’t for you.

Not everything I saw was so grounded in reality. Along the streets, angry leprechauns disguised as fire hydrants stalked me. ‘We’re coming for you,’ they would say, plainly, because their threat didn’t need angry undertones, it had truth. There were also yawning tigers lounging in the giant arms of chestnut trees and giggling nymphs who followed me, laughing and playing. The nymphs were friendly so I played along, letting them chase me a small distance while I giggled back over my shoulders.

The area around the hospital had small green spaces around it. Nothing that could be called a park, but areas with grass and some with trees and bushes. In one of these patches, I came across a bird lying on the grass beneath one of the cherry trees. It was a Starling, a noisy and invasive species that Eugene Schieffelin would have done better to have left in Europe. But lying on its side, its whole body moving with laboured breaths, it wasn’t so offensive as it was fragile. I held its soft body in my right palm while covering its head with my left, hoping to decrease its level of stress by covering its eyes.

Two minutes later, the starling expired. I moved my left hand so that I could witness this passing, because nothing should die alone. There was something in the way the small bird was lying in my palm, something in the way the softness and warmth of its feathers played against my skin, something in the way the shine still lingered in its eyes. Alive. Dead. Alive. Dead. Alive. Dead. These two words circled through my head as if through repetition I could reconcile the difference between them.

It wasn’t a dead bird. It was a bird that a few minutes previous had had life. If it had had a life and now it didn’t, where did that life go? Dissipated into the ether increasing the entropy of the universe? What strange shift occurred in the fabric of space-time in the instant of its death, that fraction of time, when the smallest of tremours coursed through its body as its heart seized and a life ended?

……….

It happened again. It feels tight, sort of stretched where the skin broke, where I broke the skin. The skin pulls as little cells frantically work to produce scar tissue as though they believed I was worth saving. But it has nothing to do with me. They are only trying to save themselves.

The cutting gets deeper and easier every time. I thought my unstable mood was the result of a caffeine withdrawal. An optimistic and evasive guess at what I knew was happening. Surely enough, the depression crawled, seeped into me, more and more until it filled my body. There was no defence. There never is. But I tried. I tried all the things I was told to do when I felt I was losing control - took a bath, drank fragrant tea, distracted myself by washing dishes, but I couldn’t stop the crying.

Too exhausted to distract myself with further futile activities, I lied on the couch. The tv was on. The sounds of people engaged in some drama, or comedy, moved past my ears, but I couldn’t hear them, or I wasn’t listening. My body was paralysed, unable to respond to the simplest of stimuli.

Eventually, I rose from my stagnant position, where I was curled on black fabric staring into the back of the couch trying to fade into the darkness of the colour. There didn’t seem to be a reason for my movement. It wasn’t through any will of mine, but more like sleep-walking. My body moved and I followed it because I could not escape it.

I watched my feet, first on dark wood floors and then on beige coloured linoleum, enter the room I knew was the bathroom. The goal had been to retrieve a hairbrush. An innocent, healthy objective.

My razor was in the bathroom as well, sitting next to the hairbrush. I wanted it. My hair didn’t need to be groomed, but my veins needed to be bled. I could hear Laura, and even Kayla, distant, trying to dissuade me from wrapping my hands around the yellow plastic casing of the razor.

I didn’t really want to do this. I wanted to be good. I wanted to be normal so people would like me and I wouldn’t have to feel so lonely all the time. But I did want to. The razor offered me immediate relief from my alienation, relief a hairbrush could never guarantee. I held the brush in my right hand and the razor in my left. Choices, and as simple as a blue hairbrush or a yellow razor.

I brushed my hair. No relief. Then I cut myself, a strategic cut that, as always, could be covered with a bracelet or long sleeves the next day to prevent interfering eyes from witnessing my self destruction.

It was dark in the small bathroom, there were no windows and the light in the adjacent kitchen hadn’t been turned on, but I could see little bits of blood slowly pooling on my wrist. The gratification was instantaneous, but the assuaged darkness was momentary.

I returned to the living room where the window framed the sky outside. Since it was so dark inside my apartment, I had assumed it was early evening. I hadn’t done anything during the day, but it wasn’t unusual for me to forget hours. I was surprised to find the sky a pretty, yet unreal, light blue. I walked, hypnotised, to the window and put my palms against the cool, thin glass trying to touch the sky. I wanted to go to where it was, or have it come to me, to be a part of its lightness, but a single paned barrier prevented any such crossing or amalgamation. So, I went to bed and slept.

The day before had been one of my good days, with good being defined as not having made a noticeable public display of my anxieties. I left the house, eventually, and made my way to a coffee shop. When the cashier said hello to me, I repeated the greeting back to her. When she asked me how I was, I replied ‘Fine, thank you.’ Luckily I was in a place where greetings are expected to be insincere, so the girl behind the counter with her black tattoos and orange-streaked hair didn’t notice the strain in my voice when I lied to her.

She stood at the register, trying to maintain an appearance of patience even though I could see her body tensing and knew she wanted to process me as quickly as possible so that she could deliver more perfidiousness to the people lined up behind me.

It required more mental and physical effort than I would like to admit to count out the change I poured onto the counter. My hands couldn’t find the coins I needed and the extra pressure of being watched and waited for caused my hands to tremble so that all I could do was hope my finger landed on a coin when I plunged it into the pile spread over the counter. Eventually, I was able to gather together the two-sixteen for my double espresso. By the time I received my drink, my anxiety had decreased to a nervous tremble which was further eased by the caffeine entering my bloodstream. I didn’t leave a tip.

It wasn’t until I returned home that the shadows came. At first, it wasn’t all that terrible. Having grown accustomed to the shifts in my moods, I knew what to expect and, judging by the flaccid appearance of the shadows, I figured this declivity in emotional state wouldn’t be overly dramatic. There were little fits of episodes, brief bouts of crying. These minor distresses exhausted me quickly though, probably because of the effort of my outing earlier.

Laura was there to help me relax and sleep. I was still in my clothes, curled in the foetal position at the foot of the bed, lying on top of the red quilt with my head in her lap. She stroked my hair and whispered to me to sleep. For over an hour, I was calmed by her company. “Sarah,” she said gently, not wanting to disturb me now that I was finally resting, “I need to move you so you can get changed and properly into bed.” That was when my composure disintegrated. Terrified any movement would cause Laura to disappear, I began crying vicious tears and writhing.

“It will only be for a moment,” she said. “Once you’re into your nightclothes I will give you something to help you sleep. I’ll be with you the entire time, even after you fall asleep. I promise.” It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her. She was gentle and protective, and I knew she would not have left me alone with the shadows of her own will.

But, the shadows. They worked, as relentlessly as always, to cloud my mind and as such drive Laura away. Not that they were overly concerned with Laura. She was a minor obstruction to them, a weak defence. Laura was no more than an annoyance to the shadows. It was me they wanted.

Each time I was near to falling asleep, I would wake up screaming, afraid Laura wouldn’t be there. Twice she wasn’t. But Kayla was there in her place. The shadows tolerated Kayla better than they did Laura since they believed her behaviours were more likely to help them reach me than to protect me from them.

This night though, there was no bleeding. Kayla sat with me as Laura usually did, rocking me back to sleep before kissing me on the forehead. She was like a lullaby, a lullaby without words or music. She was the essence of calm and she gave pieces of herself, her calm, to pacify me. I loved her. I loved them both.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Chapter 6

Full novel for sale at Lulu.

…-he took her seriously and talked to her as he would to a grown-up person. To ask his advice about a damaged rabbit and to discuss it with him would be very grown-up.


“So how are you?” Laura. Kayla. You wouldn’t believe me.

“I’ve lied to you.”

“Why?”

“Because there are things I can’t tell you.” There are things I can’t tell you, that I don’t have time to tell you, but I’ve never lied to you. Except for right now. Sometimes, my thoughts come out twisted in speech and lose their context, but that’s not lying. Other times, the truth is spoken when it should have been left hidden in silence. So I tell you I lie to protect myself from the things I could say that might lower your opinion of me.

“I hope you don’t feel you have to censor yourself here.”

“I do.”

“You do what?”

“I do have to censor myself here.”

“You certainly don’t have to on my account.” That’s exactly why I have to. Because you don’t care what I say. Nothing I will ever say will have an impact on you and I can’t stand to see my thoughts, my feelings, dissolved by your indifference. “So what would you like to talk about?”

“I can’t remember if I’ve been eating enough. I know I ate, but I don’t know how much everyday. Time goes so quick. I can’t catch up. It’s too fast. And I forget.”

“What do you eat in a typical day?”

“Coffee. Peanut butter.”

“That’s all?” There is kindness in your voice.

“Sometimes potatoes.”

“Why such a limited diet?”

“Limited culinary skills. And limited funds.” And limited appetite.

“Even a person who can’t cook a meal can prepare a bowl of cereal for breakfast.” I can’t. Besides, I usually sleep past breakfast.

“That’s a good idea. But I told you, I forget.”

“You forget to eat?”

“Yes. And I forget what food is. I walk around the grocery store and I don’t comprehend that all the products laid out before me are edible, so I leave.”

“You must get hungry.”

“No. That’s why I forget to eat. There’s nothing to remind me.”

“Then maybe you need to set some reminders for yourself, like an alarm that goes off three times a day as an indicator that it is time for a meal.” Like Pavlov’s dogs. “It would be a sort of Pavlov experiment on the human digestive system. Eventually, you won’t even need the alarm, your body will respond naturally. In order for it to work effectively though, you need to have the alarm set at the same time for each meal and you have to eat something each time the alarm goes off.” I close my eyes and let the sound of your voice roll over me, not hearing the words, only the gentle rhythm as your vocal cords contract and release. Your voice is pale yellow, with specks and lines of dark green interwoven. Your voice reminds me of unwatered grass, drying in the blazing heat of the sun.

“I don’t have an alarm clock.” I open my eyes again because you have stopped speaking.

“You don’t have a clock?”

“No.” The fact that I don’t have a timepiece in my house can’t be that unusual.

“How do you get up in the morning?”

“When I had to get up in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“I used my cell phone.”

“So use that.”

“Except I hardly ever use my phone. It’s not like anyone is calling me. Sometimes I forget to turn it on for days.”

“What about a little clock like this one?” You reach into one of your desk drawers and retrieve a small, grey travel clock. You move your chair closer to mine to properly exhibit all the functions of the timepiece. I’m wondering how many clocks you could need in one office; there are already two on display, one facing me and the other facing you. “This one is probably fancier than you need. It’s linked by satellite to an atomic clock so that it always displays the correct time, even if you change time zones.” You are so close. Both of our hands our on the little clock, our fingers separated by mere centimetres. I could sit like this all day, listening, watching you proudly showing off the different functions of the buttons. Your simple enthusiasm is a light reprieve from my own confusion. “It even has a light. Though I don’t think you should be waking yourself in the middle of the night to eat. But it would be useful for winter mornings.” Now that you’ve surfaced from your prideful display of your toy, you are retreating from me, re-establishing the three foot barrier of air between us.

“Lights startle me.”

“You don’t have to use the light.” If I buy a clock, will you like me? Will you like me because I remind you of yourself? If I become you, what will happen when I falter and you see the real ugliness that I am? It might be safer to not eat. You’re waiting for me to talk. There isn’t enough time.

“It’s too late.”

“Too late?”

“It’s too late to start another conversation.” You will only ask me to leave in the middle of it, happy to be rid of me and the obligation of listening.

“We still have eight minutes.”

“I know.” I know exactly how many minutes are left during every minute of these sessions.

“How are you finding your medications?”

“Why? Is something wrong?”

“No. I just like to check in every once and a while.”

“I guess they’re ok. I thought they were helping, but I don’t seem to be getting any better.”

“What do you think about increasing the dosage?” I don’t think anything about it. You’re the doctor.

“Sure. But I don’t think it will help.”

“I could also prescribe lithium which is used as a mood stabiliser and as an augmentation to anti-depressant therapy.”

“Fine.” I’m not depressed.

“Here you go then,” you hand me the prescription, a tiny piece of white paper that will deliver me from my insanity. You still handwrite your prescriptions. I like that. It’s classic. Though, your penmanship looks forced, like you were concentrating very hard on making the letters. Maybe you had a learning disability when you were younger. “It looks like we need to stop for now.”

“The rabbit is gone.”

“Excuse me.”

“There used to be a rabbit in here. A white rabbit, with long floppy ears. I found it amusing that a psychiatrist would have a white rabbit in his office.” You laugh a trivial laugh at my observation probably wondering how you missed something so obvious yourself. Are you paying attention at all?

“Maybe I should bring it back.” You missed the point. The rabbit will never return. Your whole sentence is dispassionate, in both words and delivery. If that weren’t convincing enough on its own, there are the worn shoes and unpainted wall to exemplify the noncommittal quality of your character. But I want to be wrong. I want to walk through the door next week and see the rabbit sitting contentedly on top of the filing cabinet, a guardian to the souls buried there. I want to know that this exception of a person sitting across from me is capable of enacting the potential I see in him. I need you to.

“Maybe.” You open the door to show me out. It feels less chivalrous on the way out than on the way in, as if you want me to leave.

“Have a good week.”

“Thanks.”

……….

I haven’t been at the top of my game lately. I drove drunk. Last night, at a school acquaintance’s (not a friend’s) end of semester party, I began to feel lonesome and decided his house was not where I wanted to be. This occurred sometime around four in the morning when almost everybody else had left and the host had gone to bed. Frank came out of his bedroom to make sure I was ok to drive. I wasn’t, but I convinced him I had only had three beers when it was probably closer to six. I can handle my liquor, but that many are going to make a dent, even in me.

He gave me a hug goodbye and I fought back the tears that threatened to pour out at such a kindness. I hardly knew him. Mostly, I ignored my colleagues, working on a speak-only-when-spoken-to agenda.

As soon as I walked out the door, though, the crying started. It was fierce, as if I had found out that someone I loved had been brutally mauled to death by a grizzly bear and they were still trying to locate all the pieces of his dismembered body. I cried all the way to my car and while driving. However, I forced myself stop crying when I passed a police car on the side of the road as I didn’t think I was sober enough to drive and cry at the same time.

When I arrived home, I didn’t go straight to bed like I was expecting. Instead I went to the bathroom to relieve myself of the large number of beer filling my bladder. I washed my hands, avoiding my reflection in the mirror above me. I dried my hands. Then my hand reached out, without consulting me, and found the razor sitting above the sink.

I didn’t try to cry. I didn’t try to stop it. I was exhausted and already familiar with the new routine. I wouldn’t win even if I did try to stop it. It was easier to submit. There was no pain, no sensation at all, when the razor broke through my skin.

I was lying on my side on the bathmat, crying now that the cutting was over and I had been returned to my damaged body. I saw the white piles of cotton of the bathmat as though they were bleached blades of grass. I saw the light in the other room, shimmering mythically, through my tears. I saw my body, pieces of my body – fingers, a wrist, part of a knee – not moving and this calmed me.

I stopped crying and relished the peace I had been delivered into. If this was to be my death, I could not have imagined it more halcyonic. My breath slowed, my eyes closed and I let myself slip away into what I hoped would be oblivion.

It was naïve to think the wound was lethal. I didn’t die, I wasn’t anywhere near death. But it did relax me enough to put me to sleep.

Laura didn’t want to wake me, now that I was finally asleep. She sat on the bathmat next to me and held my head in her lap, her attention completely fixed on me. But it was time to take my meds, one of the red pills to help drive the sadness from my brain and one of the blue pills to induce unconsciousness. I didn’t understand why blue-pill-sleep was better than beer-sleep or razor-sleep, but it was Laura and I wasn’t going to question her.

Only, when I woke to take the pills, I began crying again, more intensely than previously. I still had the razor in my hand. “Give me the razor,” Laura gently demanded. I wanted to hold something real, to touch something, to feel my body and know that I existed. The razor promised me these things and I was reluctant to relinquish that gratification, even to Laura. “I can’t take it from you,” she said, “You have to give it to me.” So I did. Because I was too tired and confused to decipher what was best for me, I let her decide. There was no reason to believe she didn’t have my best interests in her pretty, red heart pumping life and beauty through the rest of her body.

“I’m going to put you to bed now, but I need your help,” Laura said as she pulled off my socks, my own body immobilised by the invasion of shadows in my mind. “I’m going to take care of you. I’m right here.” I used her voice as an anchor to keep me from being pulled into that unrelenting darkness. Then I cried at the relief of knowing I wouldn’t be left alone, even if she couldn’t make the shadows go away.

Laura removed my jeans, tank top, bra, and underwear. She pulled a clean pair of underwear from the dresser and pulled them up my legs and then dressed me in a pair of cotton pants and t-shirt to sleep in. She pulled the blanket up to my chin and carefully lifted my head so she could move the pillow underneath it. When she had finished making me comfortable, she crawled in underneath the covers with me her head resting on top of my shoulder and her arm lying across my stomach. I could feel the weight of her extremity pressing against my breath. Tangible.

I was dizzy when I woke in the morning. My left side was weak and numb giving me a slight limp, a side effect of blue-pill-sleep. After eating my breakfast of toast and peanut butter and coffee, proud of myself for remembering to eat, I looked at the clock on my phone and realised it was already one in the afternoon. I hadn’t even done anything and the day was practically over. The laundry pile in the corner of the bathroom over-filled the black plastic basket, but I knew it wouldn’t get washed that day. There were still at least three pairs of clean underwear left in the dresser, plus my emergency underwear, which is what I called the pink thong I detested wearing but meant I could extend not going to the laundromat for another day.

I hate the laundromat. Among the numerous ways I waste my days, my life, laundry day always is by far the most tormenting. If I could afford to, I would have someone pick up my dirty laundry each week and bring it back clean and folded without me ever having to endure fighting the welfare moms with their six kids and thirty loads of laundry for a washing machine.

It was for that reason, the laundromat being crowded, that I began washing my laundry on weekdays when most regular people were at work. Still, the florescent lights gave the room a surreal feeling, like I’m sleeping but not resting, and it wearies me quickly. I’ve tried to fight the weariness with caffeine, but all that does is accentuate my awareness of the waving air and increase my nausea from watching the machines turn circles of fabric and colours and soap over and over and over.

I also tried going at different times of the day, thinking if I left the house before my daily confusion and hazed reality set in, I would not only succeed in washing my laundry without ill effects, but I might also make it through the rest of the day without encountering any trouble. It didn’t work. The confusion and haziness only began earlier and I had a longer day of it to endure.

I tried going in the afternoon, when I was emotionally numb, usually after a nap. That didn’t work either. Instead, it roused me from my comfortable lethargy into a world of bright lights, loud noises, and malodorous people.

As there was no conceivable solution to make being at the laundromat a tolerable experience, I went shopping and bought myself enough underwear so that I wouldn’t have to go to that retched place more than twice a month.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Chapter 5

Full novel for sale at Lulu.

Together they went closer. The figure did not move as they came up. In the faint starlight they both saw a rabbit as real as themselves; a rabbit in the last stages of exhaustion, its back legs trailing behind its flattened rump as though paralysed: a rabbit that stared, white-eyed, from one side to the other, seeing nothing, yet finding not respite from its fear, and then fell to licking wretchedly at one ripped and bloody ear that drooped across its face: a rabbit that suddenly cried and wailed as though entreating the Thousand to come from every quarter to rid it of a misery too terrible to be borne.


“So how are you?” This could work, being here. It’s a long shot, but, it could work.

“I feel better.” My eyes wander about the room, as they tend to when I am bored, which is often, searching for something interesting to look at. Something has changed here, though I’m not sure what. Everything seems to be in place.

“That’s good to hear. What do you think it is the cause for this positive change?”

“I don’t feel like I have to go through this alone. It’s comforting, to not be left alone.” It was comforting. The little blue chair is gone. And the rabbit. And the child with them, I suppose. I’m somewhat unsettled by this sudden absence. I look at you, expecting to see you change too, as if my observation of the missing objects would cause a disturbance in the psychosocial space-time continuum and suddenly you would realise the significance of such a loss.

“And what is the source of your succour?” What does succour mean? I can’t ask you. You’ll think I’m an idiot. I know what a succubus is, but that doesn’t seem to fit with what we’re talking about. You usually just repeat what I’ve already said, so it must mean…Company? Comfort? Or is it the opposite? Does it mean loneliness?

“My moods are the same. I can’t change them, I know that, but that doesn’t mean I can’t focus on something beautiful while enduring something ugly and destructive.” Enduring myself. I always imagined that child as your favourite patient. It was a beautiful image in my mind. A man made beautiful by taking joy in the presence of a child. The ending of that relationship feels premature. I don’t feel better anymore.

“But you don’t have to endure it, you can overcome it.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“Don’t you remember what I said last week?” I wouldn’t have thought you would remember, but yes, I believe you said I was a power-tripping whore who lived without worry of the consequences my behaviour might affect in other people.

“I forget sometimes. I listen to the sounds and I forget to listen to the words. But then words aren’t always the most important thing being said, are they?” When I am finally able to speak, the words come out muddled and wrong and completely indescriptive of what I was thinking. I need you to listen. I need you to decipher what I’ve encoded. I need you to pay attention.

“What do you mean?”

“There are spaces between words, spaces between letters. Silences. People never say what they mean. You have to listen to the in between.”

“What you are saying is beginning to sound poetic and I have to admit my shortcomings when it comes to poetic comprehension.”

“Do you listen to music?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s like listening to great classical music. You can’t just listen to the notes. You have to listen to the notes that come before and the silences in between in order to fully capture the image of the piece.”

“Usually when I listen to music, I am listening to the different notes. But I believe I am still capable of appreciating the quality of the song being played.” You can appreciate. But you will only ever experience half.

“Then you’re missing out.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” Which is exactly why you don’t understand, will never understand.

“I’m still depressed.”

“You said earlier you were feeling better.” Earlier I was.

“I was mistaken.”

“Do you want to feel better?”

“No, I guess not. I don’t even believe there is a better to feel so there’s no point in trying to feel it.”

“This is an aspect of depression that reminds me of a movie where a man is making an escape from prison and he has to crawl through a pipe full of sewage in order to reach his freedom.” I’ve seen that movie. It’s something we have in common, you and I, us and three billion other people. “What can happen with people suffering from depression is that when they are in the tunnel, covered in muck and surrounded by darkness, instead of continuing to move forward and out of the tunnel, they return to the prison. They perceive the end of the tunnel to be unreachable, when in fact they are just as near to freedom as they are to their old prison cell, and so they end up climbing through the same amount of contaminate as they would have had to in order to reach the outside anyway.”

“The outside is just a more brightly lit prison.”

“Even if that were true, and I’m not saying it is because it isn’t, wouldn’t it still better than a dark prison.”

“I suppose.” You make it sound so easy, crawl through the tunnel towards the light. Only I don’t even know which way is out. The tunnel is black and there is no light visible, even faintly, at either end. I’ve been walking through the wet muck for so long, turning around and around again, that now I’m completely disoriented and have no idea which way is out. Tired of searching for an exit, I just want to sit down and drown in the fermented shit. I’m afraid, confused, and alone. Nobody knows where I am, except you, maybe, but you won’t come looking for me. You don’t care about me enough to get your hands dirty. “No, it wouldn’t, because at least in a dark prison you can forget where you are, you don’t have to look at your punishment.” You don’t have to look at yourself and you don’t have to see others seeing you for the delinquent you are.

“Do you think you are being punished?”

“No. It’s more like I’ve been wrongly accused.” Like the movie. “Suffering a punishment, but not for anything I’ve done.” That’s why I can’t escape. I have no defence against a prosecutor who has permanently deemed me guilty. The castigation is endless because there is nothing to correct.

“Who sentenced you to this ordeal?” I think the correct answer to that is myself, but why would I, why would anybody, inflict suffering upon themselves? No, the answer is not as simple as the question. The answer has to include every person I’ve come into contact with who did hurt me, on purpose. But that sounds so cliché. Not any less cliché than blaming myself, but it’s an answer that would take too long to explain and the little black clock says I don’t have time.

“I don’t know.” Knowing who put me in prison isn’t going to get me out.

“Well, it’s time to stop for now, but that’s a question you can think about and answer for next time. Have a good week.”

“Thanks.”

……….

It was early afternoon when I arrived home and I was feeling oddly jubilant, if not exhausted as I had skipped my morning coffee. I put a pot on to brew and then I walked into the bathroom where there was a very large man waiting for me.

He does this from time to time, surprise attacks me. He first came to me a little under a year ago. He wasn’t a frequent visitor, but he was a violent presence. Today though, his angry face, bald head, and shiny skin pulled tight over his biceps begging my participation in his barbaric game of dominance were too much of a drain on my imagination. Of course, he doesn’t require my active participation in conjuring the image of his fist, but when I told him I was too tired to play, he became noticeably confused, his fist is poised above his head, ready to strike but frozen with disbelief. I thought it was strange, how easy it was to stop him. Nothing had ever stopped him before, not my screaming, crying, or pleading, so I didn’t actually think my words this time would have any different effect.

He was no less present for this small victory, he didn’t disappear, but he also didn’t throw my head against the wall, an activity he took great pleasure in at the expense of both my head and my wall. For an imaginary aggressor, he possessed substantial strength made evident by the few dents in the plastered bathroom walls. He did, of course, attack in other rooms, but those walls were too heavy for my skull to leave evidence of the force of my invisible assailant.

For a moment, still having me pressed against the bathroom door and unable to escape, he regained his purpose and moved to lower his giant hand into my face, when I called out, ‘I said not now,’ at which he instantly disappeared, taking with him the small bit of energy left in me.

The encounter with the Bald Man left me too tired to pick up the coffee pot and pour the brew into a mug. So, the coffee sat in its pot, dark and still. When it grew tired of waiting to be poured, the machine turned itself off and let the coffee die. I could hear the click of the coffee machine turning itself off from my bedroom where I was lying, eyes closed, but unsleeping.

The thought occurred to me to force myself out of bed, to fight fatigue by ignoring it. When I tried to move my legs, though, my body became suddenly heavy with weight. The simple effort of trying to sit up exhausted me and I fell asleep.

It wasn’t a restful sleep, but a half sleep where I was conscious and dreaming at the same time. I could hear the traffic going by on the road outside and voices in the backyard from two houses down.

When I woke, there was still daylight pressing against the glass of the bedroom window. The light outside was hurtfully bright in contrast to the dark of my room. There was too much colour, too much shape, every line was hard and distinct, and there was too much noise. Weariness from attempting to separate each stimulus into manageable packets grew unencumbered with the futile, but compulsory, effort. The more I challenged my mind to remain cohesive, the more exhausted I became, only there could be no rest as my brain would continue to fight this invasive disorientation long after my will and my body had surrendered to sleep.

So I didn’t bother trying to sleep, but I couldn’t get up either. I lied, immobile, and watched as the sky darkened from light blue to dark blue to light grey. My head filled with the pressure of shadows, darkness that funnelled in like bees through a tinfoil tunnel into a jar, and being unable to escape became erratic and desperate. These were not tenebrous shadows, but effulgent shadows such as the shade trees make on a summer afternoon, possessing a queer luminosity that can only be sensed indirectly.

They dominated me, the dark and brilliant shadows. In the beginning, when they first appeared, I was able to make a stand against them. It was a battle I could never win, but I was at least able to hold ground, for days sometimes, until they broke through my defences. I had no weapons. I had no reinforcements. I had no allies. They would always win. Lately, they have broken through the outer walls of my head more quickly and they pour in to engage me in head-to-shadow combat, but they are tireless and, sooner or later, I submit, pusillanimously. Each battle I try to resist them for longer, with the hope that I will at least drive them back, but every time I am left weaker while they have not been affected in the least.

I was sitting in the middle of my bed, crying after another lost battle, holding in my hand a razor, the kind people use to open boxes. I had lost time again. I must have gotten out of bed, otherwise how would I have found a razor? Confused and afraid, I was shaking with violent sobs. I knew what the razor meant, it wasn’t the first time I had held one. And I was terrified of what could have happened during that lost time. I was terrified it could still happen, because, as scared as I was of the razor, I wasn’t letting it go.

And then there were two. Two of me. One inside my body and the other sitting outside of me. One crying and afraid and the other tenderly stroking my head as a mother does to soothe a frightened child. “Sssshhhhhh.....I’m here now. Everything is going to be ok.”

She didn’t come, didn’t approach, she was just there. The two of us sat on the bed, legs wrapped around each others waists, the side of her head resting lightly against the side of mine. Her skin smelled sweet and light, like a tropical fruit. Papaya. Her hand stroked the back of my neck at the hairline, the knuckle of her index finger brushing the back of my ear while she rocked me gently. She needed this, I could tell, to be the consoler, as much as I needed consolation.

“You have to make it hurt less,” I told her. So she sang me a lullaby, one I had heard as a very young child, but had forgotten. Her voice was soft. Maybe because I was imagining it. I gave myself over completely to her, too incapacitated to care for myself anymore. Her name was Laura.

“If you were my bunny
and I were your mama,
I'd pick you out from all the other bunnies
and nestle you beside me.
Then you'd close your little pink eyes
and I'd sing you a bunny song.”

While she sang, she moved her left hand on top of my right. She wanted me to give her the razor. I couldn’t give it to her, that would have required more strength of will and character than I possessed, but I didn’t resist her when she gently pulled it from out of my fist, somewhat relaxed now at the touch of her fingers. Then she laid me back on the bed so my head was resting against the pillow, before climbing in beside me and pulling the comforter all the way up to my chin, the only way I can sleep.

When I woke the next morning, there were three of us. Me and Laura and Kayla. Kayla rested on the side of the bed closest to the door, Laura was in the middle, and I, with those two layers of protection on the outside of the bed was protected by the wall on the other side. I thought I should have been confused by this, or afraid, but as far as I could tell, there was nothing odd about having two people suddenly appear in my life, in my bed, as if they hadn’t been there the entire time.

Kayla was intense. Her features were soft, as they were in all of us, but she emanated the character of one who has fought battles in a war and now carries the weight of death, of killing and watching others die, in her strong arms. Her hair was simple, short, dark and straight, but not at all the less impressive and, even though it was the colour of strong espresso, it still shimmered. Her eyes were similarly dark, the shade of dark chocolate without the tiniest imperfection of colour. Looking upon her gave me a feeling of endlessness, like looking upon the eternity of death.

Laura looked more like me, only more exemplified, my imperfections perfected in the image of her with her long curly hair, slightly darker than mine, almost the same deep shade as Kayla’s. Her eyes were green, but they were a vibrant, brilliant forest green, not like my dull, speckled hazel eyes. Her legs were longer by a couple of inches and she possessed a softer face with long, high cheekbones. Laura. She existed in purity and excellence, untainted.

The three of us shared the same body, breathed with the same lungs, were simultaneously connected and separated entities. There could be no greater intimacy and I saw no cause for concern as to what was happening.

Throughout the week, we each adapted to our different roles as protectors. Laura was maternal and comforting, Kayla was disciplinary, and I was the vinculum. Between the three of us, we were well prepared for any emotional or physical irruption, the first of which occurred only two days after our transpiration as a triploid entity.

I woke up crying. I didn’t want to get out of bed, fearing it would only exasperate the powerlessness I was feeling, but all the self-help books say getting out of bed will make you feel better, so I did get up. Only the books were wrong. Every object, every colour, every shape, every memory came together in a chaotic mix inducing nausea. Tearfully, I maundered to the bathroom to relieve myself. Laura reminded me to flush and wash my hands. She even turned on the tap for me so that it ran water at a non-confrontational temperature. When I looked up from the sink to the little shelf below the medicine cabinet above the sink, I saw the razor, a plastic, yellow case enclosing stinging, metallic relief.

I retreated, with my sharpened treasure to a corner of the living room where I sat supported by two white walls. From the first instant I caught glance of the blade, my crying ceased. There was purpose now. I cut myself. One cut, no hesitation. I was rewarded with blood on the first incision, more blood than I expected, but not a lot. It hurt less than expected as well. I was preparing myself to open the wound deeper. The blade, now warmed by my skin, rested inside the first wound.

“You should go now,” Kayla said softly. So I left. In an instant I was on the other side of the room sitting with my back against the opposite wall. But I was near enough to watch her, to watch her cut into my body. I cried again, knowing even if I went to her, I wouldn’t be able to stop her.

At the same time I watched her from across the room, I watched her from inside the body we shared. I felt and saw everything she was feeling and seeing. I felt the sting of the blade as it cut through our skin. I felt the warmth of red blood pooling in the newly created crevice. I felt the tendons being dragged along by the force of the blade as Kayla pulled it across the thin skin of our wrist. Each cut drew more blood and caused new pains beyond the first familiar sting, until a small pool of blood had gathered on the floor and I, now in repossession of my body, was awarded with relief.

And there the dichotomy began. It hurt to have my skin torn, it hurt to watch Kayla need to relieve herself this way, but there was relief from the released endorphins, and there was relief in the knowledge that the blade could, accidentally, release her, release me, from everything.

“Thank you,” I said to Kayla, who was now the one crying on the other side of the room.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Chapter 4

Full novel for sale at Lulu.

There was silence and then, quite clearly, he heard Fiver speaking in the long grass. ‘You are closer to death than I. You are closer to death than I.’



“So how are you?” I’m afraid the more I talk about my problems the more real they will become. Maybe it would have been better to not come here, to let the forgotten remain forgotten.

“I’m ok.” The rabbit has moved again. It’s sitting back on the filing cabinet, looking towards me. I can do this. I can be here.

“I guess exams are over. How did that go?”

“The one class I didn’t drop out of?”

“Yes. The class that you worked to finish despite your difficulties.”

“I didn’t work and I hardly finished. It’s strange.”

“What’s strange?”

“That everything I had been working towards, everything that defined me is gone and there’s nothing I can do to get it back. I should feel something shouldn’t I?”

“You don’t feel anything?”

“Forcibly resigned. Is that a contradiction?”

“You said that everything had been taken from you, taken by whom?”

“Whatever forces are in my brain that makes it not work anymore.”

“Where do these forces get their powers from?” You want me to say it’s not real.

“It’s only my imagination. I know that. But knowing it isn’t real doesn’t make it any easier. Just like knowing the monster under your bed isn’t real doesn’t make you any less scared.”

“Every monster has to have a source of energy, whether it be from solar flares or electricity or some food that’s ingested. So what is the source for your monsters?”

“Electrical activity in the brain. They reside in the energy spaces between firings of neurons. They shouldn’t have enough energy to be able to overcome the energy barriers of my mind, but statistical probability says it is possible to cross higher energy barriers. So I take pills to raise the energy level of my mind, to make it more difficult for the monsters to cross the barrier, but there is always that probability, however small, that they will get through. And in is in. They are no less destructive because they had a decreased chance of being there at all.”

“Are you familiar with obsessive compulsive disorders?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“Are you familiar with the treatment?”

“Not specifically.” Not at all.

“Well, basically it is comprised of facing your monsters. Many people afflicted with OCD will, say, avoid knives because they have the thought of stabbing another person when they see a knife. They think this thought characterises them as insane and they don’t trust themselves to be around dangerous objects lest they act out on their thoughts. However, these kinds of thoughts occur in all people. But by believing they are going crazy, they are enabling avoidance behaviour. If they were to hold a knife in their hands, though, they would quickly realise that they are not going to stab anybody.” Sometimes when I’m stopped at a traffic light, I want to run over the pedestrians crossing the intersection. When I start feeling this, I put all my concentration into keeping my foot pressed firmly against the brake pedal, afraid that if I relax for even a moment, I will plow right over them.

“What if you do?”

“Do what?”

“What if you pick up the knife because you think it’s all in your head and you do stab somebody?”

“Then you have a different type of problem, but with the same overtones of recognising what your behaviours are, what drives them, and challenging them.”

“I can make real people disappear, but not the imaginary ones.”

“Then you already have an arsenal with which to mount your attack.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“They’re two completely separate battles. The weapons I use in reality are ineffective against my imaginings. I shouldn’t say ‘weapons’. I don’t want people, real people, to leave, but they do.”

“Why is it you think they leave?”

“There’s an inherent quality of me that people find repelling. At first, my apathy and detachment is interpreted as being open-minded and easy-going, but after a while, they start to see I lack substance.”

“What substance do you lack?”

“That’s what I can’t figure out. I can comprehend, emulate, and manipulate people, but just like when someone eats their favourite dish and a subtle but significant ingredient is missing, they know something is off, even if they can’t exactly decipher the omission.”

“But you’re not lacking any substance. You’re full of it. Only, you haven’t yet learned to recognise it. So, like a lump of clay, you can’t conceive of the idea of the final product of a statue. All you need to do is use the material already available to you, and form it into the desired artefact.” I’m mud?

“I’m disgusting is what I am.”

“Why do you think you’re disgusting?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because maybe you don’t see it and if I point it out than it will be easier for you to recognise.” And that will make it easier for you to not like me.

“I think you are very intelligent and are aware of your beauty and the influence it has on other people and that you use that awareness as an advantage over people.” True, I have a way of getting what I want from people, but I know what I’ve seen in the mirror and there is no way I would ever consider myself beautiful. The first thought that runs through my mind when I see my reflection is one of disgust. My bumpy skin, the furrows in my forehead, the length of my forehead, the red blotches on my cheeks, all remind me of how unattractive I am. On a good day, my physical appearance is more likely to raise concern than illicit attraction. Certainly being asked if you’re sick or if you’ve been punched in the face doesn’t do much to convince me my opinion of myself is inaccurate. Even with my hair done and make-up applied and in low light, I could hardly be considered anything but average. The smallest glimpse of myself can unsettle me, which is why I often cover the mirrors in my house, or avoid looking in them. Yet, men still pursue me. Maybe you have me confused with another patient of yours. Unless. Did you just say I was beautiful?

“If I had any power over anybody, I wouldn’t be alone.”

“But you’re not alone.”

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not. But we will have to continue this discussion another time.” No, we won’t, because you will forget me, and this discussion, as soon as I leave. “Have a good week.”

“Thanks.”



……….



The day before our session, I was on the bus heading to school, tired without my morning coffee and anxious because of the crowd of people pressing in around me, their elbows and bags knocking me in the head.

A girl was sitting next to me. She wasn’t anything special, but she was pretty. Her mousy brown hair hung loose and slightly dishevelled on her shoulders. She was wearing jeans, not too tight like most young girls on campus, but not so baggy as to appear unkempt. I wanted to hit her. Hard. I imagined what it would be like to feel my hands pressing around her throat, to watch her struggle for air, to see her eyes roll back into her head, lifeless.

There was no real precipitation for my resentment. I didn’t like her jacket, even though I never saw it directly, only as a reflection in the window. She was wearing a puffy blue jacket and I could feel the fabric of her jacket touching the fabric of my own black cotton coat. I didn’t want her touching me, she had never been invited. It was fabric rape. If she died in some horrible accident involving a drunk driver, it was because she deserved it. No. She didn’t. She was just a girl on a bus wearing a jacket.

When the bus, finally, arrived at the university and the girl next to me and I stood to exit, I noticed she actually was beautiful. I wanted to follow her. She was taller than me by about five inches and I had to walk quickly to keep up with her. I don’t know what would have happened if I had caught up to her. Probably nothing. She would have disappeared into one classroom or another and I would have gone somewhere else. But I will never know because a group of people cut between me and her and when I repositioned myself to watch her, she was gone.

There were three hours left until I failed my exam. This was a momentous occasion, a day to be celebrated. This was to be my first academic failure. I would like to say I gave up, laziness being more admirable than incapacity, but the truth was I no longer possessed intelligent capabilities. So instead of using the time to engage in some last minute studying, which would have been fruitless anyway, I made my way to a bench nestled between a few extremely large fir trees where I could sit and stare at nothing for the next few hours.

A spider joined me on the bench, half hidden between the wood planks and not more than a foot away from where I was sitting. I was terrified to look away, assuming if I did it would know I was vulnerable and come for me. I could have brushed it off the bench. It would have only taken a moment and it wasn’t a large spider, but there was the possibility it would jump on me and run up my arm to my head and be lost in my hair and bite through my skull.

It was following me. I moved down to the far end of the bench and it came up from beneath the cracks in the planks and ran half way across the wood towards me. It moved directly and purposefully, as if it were on a mission. In a defensive instinctual manoeuvre, my body understanding better than my mind that I was much larger than a spider, I brushed him to the ground reclaiming my bench in the name of naked apes and mammals with opposable thumbs and all creatures with less than eight appendages. The spider ran along the ground towards a small group of plants and disappeared. I lied down on the bench celebrating my victory and hoped the spider wasn’t off recruiting reinforcements for a retaliation as I lounged unguarded.

I closed my eyes and tried to isolate myself from the outside world. But the outside world wasn’t a quiet place. People were constantly walking by, talking to their friends or yelling into their cell phones. I put on my headphones and turned up the volume of the music so that I wouldn’t be violated by an unpalatable mix of noises.

The air was warm on my face, the sky had broken from its morning grey into a cerulean blue decorated with the occasional wisp of a white cloud, the thought of a cloud. I wondered how long I could lie there before someone tried to move me. Probably a good couple of days. When they found me, I would be so still they would have to check my pulse to be sure I wasn’t dead. They would ask my name, if I’m ok, and I would just keep staring up, witness to the stars or clouds or birds or whatever was in the sky that needed witnessing at the time. Eventually, an ambulance would be called and the paramedics would carry me away on a stretcher and admit me to one hospital or another. But when no one was watching, I would escape to find a soft piece of grass to lie on, beneath the sky and the sun. A living death, because there is more beauty in insignificance and humility and stillness then there is in purpose and meaning and laboured motion.

The bench was exactly where I wanted to be. A place where I was free to speak my mind to myself, explore my thoughts without guilt or repercussion. Skip the bad parts, replay the favourites, love whomever I wanted regardless of reciprocation or reality or tangibility. Everything was experienced in a state of intoxication without the distasteful side effect of nausea. I stared at a large stone, about which flies were dancing, and thought to myself, you could get blood from a stone, so long as you don’t mind if it’s your own. I wanted to find a way to stay there.

Then everything changed. I hadn’t done anything. One moment I was content and observant and with the next breath the world collapsed into a chaotic overload of the senses. There was no blood on the stone. The flies were eating garbage not dancing.

The sun descended behind the trees and the air chilled me uncomfortably. Was this a withdrawal? Withdrawal from what? A drug? A dream? Sorrow mixed with the air and every breath I drew filled me with more sadness. Would I never be able to feel anything positive without fear of what its absence would feel like? Before the sadness could develop into tears, I made my way to the classroom to write my exam.

Sitting still for any period of time is extremely difficult when I am bored, which is often these days. This disquietude regularly occurred during class. It wasn’t always like this, with me doodling in my notebook and blindly copying whatever the professor wrote on the board. School used to be exciting and enjoyable. I engrossed myself in every subject, I gave my brain free reign and it reliably sorted through every problem. And when my brain ran out of problems to solve, it created new ones and solved those too. Lately though, words and numbers have become incomprehensible to me. Even when I can understand, noises fill my head such that there was no space left for any information to be preserved in my memory.

Today it started with an inane whispered conversation between two girls sitting in front of me, the topic revolving around which toppings they preferred on their Subway sandwiches. Then there was the irritating scratching of paper moving across paper while sixty students furiously wrote their names on their test books in preparation for the announcement to begin. People breathing. Chalk scratching. Begin.

I was sitting at the back of the class, at the end of the last row as close to the door as I could position myself, so that I could leave as soon as I had answered as many questions as I could in my current condition; I gave myself fifteen minutes.

I had tried to prepare myself for this. I reviewed the homework, wrote out the formulas. It seemed simple enough. But I found myself staring at the first line of my answer to the first question trying to recall the next step. I knew what the answer was supposed to be, but there was a mathematical function I couldn’t remember how to perform. It was a simple integral I had done a thousand times before, but all I could do was sit and stare at the symbols on the page while my brain tried to organise the pieces into a comprehensible language. Each time the solution was about to make itself known to me, I would forget what the question was and have to start all over again. I doodled on my paper, wrote down some formulas (which I would later discover were correct) and crossed them out. The strain of this simple task was becoming unbearable. It was too embarrassing to leave in the middle of the test, everybody knows the first person to leave isn’t the brightest, so I tried to distract myself from humiliation with more doodles.

There was a poster at the front of the room that instructed in big, black letters, ‘Don’t Pipette By Mouth’. The clock at the front of the room ticked away the seconds, heavily and slowly. The noise of pencils scratching paper combined with the knowledge that I would not finish this exam with merit instilled in me the desire to do something physical.

Maybe I could run back and forth at the front of the classroom ramming myself into the walls. It probably wouldn’t have even fazed anybody, as involved with their test writing as they were. Like those cats who can’t see horizontal lines because they were raised in an environment where they were only exposed to vertical lines so they just walk into bars set up horizontally across their path, a crazy girl running into walls is so outside the scope of these student’s vision that they would fail to see me. Though they might wonder about the persistent, repeating thump, alternately resounding from the walls on either side of the room.

Tick, tick, tick. My enduring presence at the exam was a masochistic reminder of what I used to be, what I should have been able to become, and what I am now - invisible and useless. But I still couldn’t leave.

When it was over, I was expecting a feeling of devastation, but there was nothing. No anger, no self-hatred, no guilt, no depression. For a time, I was an emotional wasteland. Failure begets serenity. With me dropping out of two classes, failing another, and barely passing the fourth, it will be a mediocre finish to what should have been a blemish free academic career. I wanted to finish well, graduate with pride. I tried. But there just wasn’t any room left inside my brain with all the shadows that have taken up residence there.

On the way home, again during rush hour, there was a kid on the bus. He couldn’t sit still. He was crawling on the ground between people’s legs and spinning around in circles. ‘Isn’t this amazing’ he said to his slurpee drinking, young mother. I thought so, even if everyone else on the bus thought the kid was a deviant.

His mother was constantly reprimanding him for not acting ‘normal’. I felt sad for him. He was too young to be feeling like that, without control or restraint, and too young to comprehend what was happening. For a while, I thought he was some part of me, a voice in my head, or an imagining of my psychosis. He might have been.

The guy in the seat next to me was writing in a journal. I was curious what he was writing, so as I looked out the window, I snuck a quick glance down at his notebook. He had written a woman’s name over and over again. Laura. One sketch in particular was very detailed and pretty, the L curling under itself and underlining the rest of the letters. I wondered who this woman was he was obsessing over and if she was thinking about him too. The guy looked out the window and he had dreams and sadness in him. She probably didn’t love him.