One Summer (trigger)

[Lauren]

Sitting there my heart and mind were still racing as I exhaled the smoke into the invisible darkness of the room and quietly prayed “dear God, make it stop, make it all go away.†The sound of television and the only light other than my cigarette creep in under the doorway. The cold porcelain of the toilet cools the burn of the self-induced razor cuts on my thigh. There is something magical about this cocoon-palace I have constructed. Yes, it may have seemed like a simple bathroom to you, but this place became my sanctuary that summer because it was the only place that I could stop the morbid thoughts that fought my will to live. No I didn’t really want to die, but I never wanted to go on so empty and so alone. Not true loneliness this emotion was to loneliness what a tapeworm was to hunger, the more it is fed…the stronger it grew. So on that night, like many nights I sat there in my storm shelter waiting for the madness to blow by. My cheeks so damp they stung, my lips dry and cracked I traced every bit of that room with my index finger, counted every crack in the walls all in an effort to occupy my mind to peace.

Some nights, I’d bring bourbon with me and I’d have a private party with the demons that haunted my mind. I’d do incantations inviting and welcoming the spirits of dead loved ones to come and replay their voices in my head reminding me how stupid I was and how ashamed they were of me. Sitting there with the patients of fishing, my line would dangle and I would shiver at the sound of police sirens “are they coming to get me again?†Sometimes, I’d drift under the crack of the door and fly far away to secret places of my construction. Safe “homes†for this wasn’t my home…it could never be. That summer I decided that if things weren’t better by thirty, I’d end it all and sleep. I’d wonder if suicides can go to heaven and if God understood and if he did why the hell was he turning his back to me…just as he was. That summer I was so soul sick and lost in a hormonal rage I would have fucked, fallen in love and sacrificed my life to anything or anyone that told me “yes.â€Â

Then before leaving the room, I’d turn on the light and look in the mirror to see if I recognized my face. For those of you who have never had an incidence of not recognizing yourself, it ranges in intensity from that “whoa, there I am†that you sometimes get when seeing your reflection while driving in your car to the extreme “who the fuck is this person†feeling like a stranger within your own skin. I’d open the door and as the light crashed my eyes to stinging sucked sockets…I’d go numb. My jaw would grind to the point I felt as if my teeth would shatter and my skull would crack. “Nothing is real, nothing left to feel, no pain to conceal, when nothing left is real†my mantra. Walking but not quite feeling the earth below, vision distorted or double, sounds piercing my skull like an ice pick, touch doesn’t quite register solid from liquid to mere smoke in the ether. And I am the ether.