It Needs a Name

Chapter 14

"I want you all to close your eyes. Take deep, calming breaths. Listen to your heartbeat. Visualize every inch of your body, and force it to relax." 

Someone, somewhere had this bright idea to dedicate today's morning group to deep-breathing exercises. Meditation. How to release stress via breathing. Maybe that's part of my problem. I don't breathe anymore. All of the stress is stuck in my joints, letting in more air is supposed to help some of it escape. According to the cheerful man in a nurse's smock. I don't know how I feel about this...

I close my eyes anyway, listening to the music that sounds like a warped mix of Zelda and Mario game tunes. Not very relaxing. This music is making me think that I have to ride away on some weird dinosaur..creature..thing, to do whatever the fuck Zelda does. I wouldn't know. I never played Zelda as a kid.

How can I relax when I keep picturing myself in a rodeo with Yoshi? That's not a calming thought. That does not make me feel at peace. It does not help me visualize my limbs. 

How the fuck do you do that anyway? I already know what my arms and legs look like. Skinny, scarecrow arms with matching scars running from my wrist to the middle of my arm. Hundreds of criss crossing gashes and scabbing cuts from my elbows to my shoulders. My body hair is so pale you can't see it. I look like a hairless cat.

My legs aren't much better. Scars all over my thighs, random bruises on my lower legs from god only knows where. Maybe I beat myself up when I sleep. It would make sense, considering how violent all of my dreams are becoming. 

I take in a deep breath, trying to picture the air going in and out of my lungs. Down to my toes, the tips of my fingers. All the way up to my brain. I don't get how this is supposed to help me. But I keep breathing. I have nothing better to do, and I don't feel like faking through this group. It takes way too much energy to bullshit these people, and I really, really am not up to it. 

 "Good, good job everyone. Just listen to the sound of my voice, forget all of your troubles and let everything that's worrying you go. Let it drift away." Okay, this guy is really starting to creep me the fuck out. I feel like he's trying to hypnotize me, get control of my mind, or something. 

Telling me what to forget, what to remember. Who matters, who doesn't. I thought that was for me to decide. I thought I got to choose my memroies and people who I kept close? I feel like this guy is trying to write out my life. Control my thoughts and actions. 

It's not fair. I want to control myself, not someone else. I was bending over backwards at this place trying to get a grip on myself, and now he was trying to take it away from me.

A bell goes off in my head, some, small rational part of me recognizes that these are paranoid thoughts. That I have nothing to fear, I'm simplying exciting myself. Creating danger that does not exist.

 I clench my jaw, picture the bad thoughts buzzing in my head like hornets. I gather them up in a net made of reationality, logic, and saftey, and cast them out. I slam the door to my head nice and tight. The hornets fly in a confused, angry cloud. Buzzbuzzbuzz. They can't get through the door, I'm safe. 

 The static of anxiety, the stress and constant fear, for once, without the aide of pills has faded away. I have so much empty space in my head, that I have no idea what to do with it. I'm not worrying, or afraid. I'm not sure what to do with the extra energy I have. The extra headspace. 

I need a new hobby. 

Painting. Linchon Logs. Legos. Cooking. I could build a pyramid out of Twinkies, Ho Hos. I can do anything. At least it feels that way.

As scary as this new feeling is, I love it. I feel strong, powerful. In control. I think I'm fnally starting to make progress, slowly, but surely.

The music stops suddenly, the group leasder congratulates us on a job well done,he'll see us tomorrow. He skips down the hall to his next appointment. Probably off to teach the real crazies how to find the wind. Maybe they might understand him. 

 I don't move from my chair, I just sit and listen to the voices, the sounds around me. I've been here so long it feels like I don't remember what the real world sounds like. What normal, sane people sound like. I don't remember the sound of a school bell, a teacher's droning voice. The white noise of the crowded halls. The coughhack of the buses. The smell fof pencil shaving, perfume, and floor cleaner. 

I miss all of this now. I don't know why. I've always hated school and everything about it. But, now, in this moment, I'd give anything to be sitting in my Spanish class, taking notes. Or taking a maths exam. I want some semblence of childhood. Normalcy. Some part of my old life back. I miss my friends, luch period antics. I miss...all of it. I miss people I didn't even know. People who would never know my name.

Well...they probably did now.

I wanted to lug a backpack from class to class. I wanted my locker, filled with old textbooks and that questionable smell from nowhere. I wanted the smile I always wore, the choking, awkward laugh I had then.

I wanted my father to be waiting in the back of the school lot, waiting to pick me up. Sipping his tea, listening to some politics talk show. I wanted him to look at me through his old, scratched glasses and ask how my day was.

I wanted his rough, scarred hands to ruffle my hair like I was two year old. His warm, strong hands that looked so much like my own. His scratchy voice, his crinkly-eyed smile and graying hair. The scuff of his shoes in the hall late at night, coming to make sure I was in bed. Making sure I was safe.

His whisper of 'I love you' when he thought I was asleep.

I just wanted him to come home. To tell me it was all alright. That he still loved me, that he made a mistake. I wanted him to tell me I was still his boy, his Jamie.