(hi, tysm for readin', vote if u do so wish, and a good many thanks to you ya kind soul. forgive the fact that most of this was written while i was half-awake and running on caffeine and 5 hours of sleep)
The first time I lost my mind was when I was sixteen.
It was fall, the months closing in on September, and my mother's birthday was coming up. Dead mother, but even the dead got their celebrations.
I'd been antsy for the entire two weeks leading up to it. For every other birthday of my mother's, my uncle never stayed and I was left to sit in my bedroom alone with a sad, single cupcake and her ghost across from me.
Every birthday from before without her had gone that way. That year shouldn't have been any different.
Per usual, I didn't get what I expected.
A nightmare woke me, right into terror, right into fever. Right into art, but not the right kind.
I'd never known such little exhaustion. I scoured the house, corner to corner, grabbing every last piece of paper that existed like a mad man; assignments, printer paper, scratch paper, old mail, new mail, bills, calendars, business transactions, receipts, essays, note cards. Three AM, dashing in the dark with an entire forest's worth of paper waiting in my arms.
And I drew, but not how I used to, not how I wanted. I drew like I was ravenous, like I was breaking the paper's fibers, like if I stopped I'd drop dead right then and there. I drew like I couldn't fucking stop because I couldn't.
I couldn't. And I was as terrified as I was desperate, and I just kept drawing.
I'd fallen asleep for another hour by the window after, only to wake up to my uncle kicking down my door with a bull's force. He had looked around at a thousand papers covered in pen and pencil plastered themselves over every square inch of my bedroom. Several of which were papers meant for his meeting that day.
"What the hell?" he snapped. "What the actual fuck were you doing?"
I laughed. I bowed my head without an apology and laughed. The sound ripped at my throat, clawed up my chest, acidic and corrosive.
Laughing, I'd thought. I haven't laughed in a fucking long time.
"Sorry," I said, gasping. "Hey, wanna see one?"
"Are you out of your goddamn mind? These are my papers. What were you doing?"
"Drawing. I don't know. Hey." I snatched a bank statement up, numbers or warnings blotted out with black and blue ink. "This one's you."
He'd ripped it in two. I laughed, grabbing another one for him. It felt buzzed. It felt alive, in the sick way something felt when it was wrong but still real. It felt like living and dying all at once. Feverish. Sick.
"You're out of your fucking mind," he had snarled. "You're dead for this. Are you a psycho? Stop fucking laughing, now I have to go early and print these all out, for God's sake." He grabbed my collar, shoving me into a wall to choke the laugh out of me. "You think it's funny?"
I didn't, but I did. Or maybe not. I couldn't think enough about it to give a real answer. My hands just itched for a pen. Or a knife. Or an anything.
I smiled. "I drew you here, too." I grabbed a nearby pamphlet. "Wanna see?"
I barely escaped with my life. Eventually, my uncle grew tired of me and left me to patch up the cut on my cheek and the bruises in my ribs alone. Lucky for me, I was far gone enough the pain didn't really cut through. Just the colors. Black and purple and shades of red over skin. Good palette, nice correspondence.
YOU ARE READING
Suicide Buddies
Teen Fiction"My mother once told me there are three, and only three, truly defining moments in your life. One: When you don't know. Two: When you realize you don't know. Three: When you know. This is about the third one." --- Angel Young is going to die. Or at...
