Without a pick, my nails get thin and crack. A little jagged and then I have to clip them, and I can't play again until they grow back, or else they wear down to the skin and sting. I couldn't bring myself to write anything these past couple weeks, it was too late or too early or I couldn't imagine what I would write. But in the hundreds of minutes I spend trying to fall asleep my thoughts tumble, gaining momentum and going faster, harder. I try to connect ever fragment of the day, every mini-moment from childhood. The sand of my thoughts heaps up and up but spreads wider and wider before I'm buried in a cool tomb. It's nasty, but it's the only time I get ideas.
There are two weeks left of school. I'm... not going to be okay.
But enough already...
Today I woke around 9, and lay in bed listening to my mum and dad talk. Something about broken light bulbs, not broken. I've had eerie dreams lately, and listening to my mum and dad reminded me of them. They ended up leaving for the botanical gardens, and after a while they called me and told me to come. I smoked a lung-full of charcoal, and followed them. We went inside and they loved it, but I had been there at least a dozen times before. We saw the chameleon, he had been carted out and put inside a cage. I overheard the reason for this, but all I could gather were two words, "teenagers," and "plastic bag." That couldn't have ended well... for the chameleon.
Afterward we went to the art museum and my dad got some soup. The place was really packed, everyone was eating. It made me all jittery, being around so many people. I lost my mind after a couple minutes and had to go outside. There was an obese woman wiping sweat from her face with paper napkins. She'd wipe, and then she'd wipe again. I could see her butt fat rolled with thigh fat, rolls spilling over into two great lumps on either side. That's me. Shrink me down from 6.0 ft to 5.0 ft and that's me. The sweating and the spilling, the panting, the exhaustion. My anxiety builds up beneath my skin until it spills out. The sand in my veins swells up my legs, my thighs, my belly and it coarsely courses through. I can't stand being around anybody. When my mum touches me I jump back. I can't lay next to anyone without going mad. It's just unbearable to feel anyone or be close to anyone any more. Or maybe I'm just telling myself that. It feels real though. I can feel the build up, dozens of weeks, days spent all alone. To feel another body would make me melt from comfort, but I won't let it. Just, no.
We walked home and my mum and dad tried to talk to me about something. What my school offers to the mentally unhealthy. Surveys and numbers, clinics and counselors. None of it makes any sense though, and I just told them to stop. Just, stop. They never do though...
We ended up driving to the headlands on the lake, east of here. We walked along the marshes, golden in the gleaming sunlight, seventeen foot tall rushes feathery and blissfully bound by golden threads to the ground. It was muddy and one of the first times I remember in half a dozen years that I walked in a flat forest, nothing but trees tied to the realist's perspective plane. Everything seems to belong to someone, something. Nothing in this world is of itself.
Eventually we reached a crossroad, and I walked down to the lake shore alone. The sunlight was red-yellow, perfect for evaporating feelings. Perfect for putting myself into the possession of the reeds and the beach trees, the sand the shells the steaming deer's breath. I could be touched by the deer, they weren't frightened by me. Their breath steamed in the cold lake air, and I didn't even see them for a while as the low sunlight filled my eyes. The reed tufts glowed against the sand, like a hundred little licks of flame littering the shoreline, spreading out for half a mile. I walked along the shore by myself and it was perfect. There was nobody else, and I was very much alone save for the deer and the sun, the waves the driftwood the sand.
Finally I turned back, and walked back alone. As it got dark and I wandered through the shadowed woods I started to feel paranoid. Without the steady beat of the waves I lose any sense of peace, any feeling of tranquility. Each crackling leaf cracks my skin and the sand weeps out. I salted the forest with my anxiety.We went to the Korean restaurant next. I couldn't decide what to order. My mum ordered bi bim bop and I shared it. I wish I hadn't eaten anything. They tried talking to me again after dinner, but what could I say. Just, stop.
