Entropy

Glitching Out

I tell my parents that I'm sick. I just can't imagine sitting through dinner, pretending that I'm normal. Can't stomach a single bite of the dry meatloaf my mother prepared.

My mother. If she even is my mother.

And if she is...I can't give her yet another reason to wish that she wasn't.

I hold it together okay until I get into bed. And then I just curl up under my covers and lose it. I cry until I can't cry anymore. And then I lie there, willing the blessed numbness of sleep to find me, but it doesn't. My brain will. Not. Shut. Off.

My thoughts are truncated, fractured, random bits of code that don't line up.

Nothing in my head makes sense to me.

Nothing. Makes. Sense.

I'm. Not. Okay.

Not. Okay.

Okay. Not.

Not.....

And then, so suddenly it's like a switch flipped. My brain just goes blank. Completely blank. I'm staring up at the ceiling, vaguely aware that I am conscious. That I have eyes and they are working. I can see the little glow-in-the-dark sticker of Saturn that is faded and peeling. But at the same time, I'm not there at all. I don't feel anything. Can't think anything. Don't. Care. About. Anything.

I'm. Not. Here.

***

Don't know how long I've been lying here. Don't know what day it is. What time it is.

My parents' voices. Shapes moving in my bedroom, silhouettes. They lean over me, blocking out the light. I stay staring glassily at the ceiling.

"I told you it would happen again." My mother's voice, tense and trembling, like a wire stretched too thin. About to snap. "I told you."

Heavy breathing. My dad always breathes heavily through his nose when he's thinking, while he simultaneously scratches the stubble on his jaw with one hand. I can hear that too, his fingernails scraping against stubble, chafing against skin. Scritch, scritch.

I feel hyper-aware of every sound, every change in the current of air around my bed, but at the same time I feel completely detached. Still unable to move if I wanted to. I feel suspended. Like time is moving around me and I'm outside of it somehow, removed from it all. Unchanged. Untouched by the laws of thermodynamics, for once.

"Well, can you fix him again?" my mother pleads. "Please?"

A long, deep sigh. My dad's hand hovers above my forehead, as though checking it for a temperature. He begins to smooth my hair back gently. Affectionately. Maybe the most paternal thing I can ever remember him doing. In this moment when he thinks I cannot see or hear him, he is actually showing some sign that he cares about me at all.

"I'm not sure it's advisable to...go the same route as last time," he says finally. He sounds calm but slightly defeated. "We could bring Dr. Stevens in again, but...I think the charade might be over, Colleen."

Quiet sniffles. My mom is crying. She puts a hand on my leg, squeezes gently. "Can't we just...try? I'm not ready to let go...just yet."

My father gently tilts my head up, peering into my eyes, his hand cupping the base of my neck. "We can try," he murmurs, his eyes searching mine. Looking for some sign of life. Some clue that I'm still here, inside my head.

I'm still your son, I think. I'm still here. But I'm not here. I don't know where I am. I'm scared. Please help me.

As though he can read my thoughts, my father's voice breaks through the buzzing sound that has begun to build inside my eardrums. "I'm going to try to help you, Tanner," he promises. "You just have to hold on a little longer."