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.
“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
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.
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