Healed

2:00 AM (+64 Hours)

As always, rather than watching one movie, Audrey got bored with three of them halfway through and decided to start on another one. We watched forty minutes of Frozen, thirty of Toy Story 2, a full hour of A Bugs Life, and finally settled on watching the entirety of Beauty and the Beast.

We ate dinner then decided to binge a whole season of X-Files, Audrie pretended to understand what was going on until finally she fell asleep. Grace and I carried her to her bedroom and tucked her in. Shortly after, Grace fell asleep as well.

I have to believe that I do good for this family. After all I am a father, I'm a husband, and our family is functioning in a very healthy manner. Grace is happy, I thank the heavens every day that she dodged the bullet of having a mental illness. Audrie is healthy as a six-year-old can be, energetic and scatterbrained just like her mother.

We are happy, we really are, and that's not something many families can say in our world today. But it all feels so fragile, like I'm the crux on which the stability relies, and if I fail, then it all falls apart. I think the hardest part is that I don't know why this is happening to me, I was fine just a few days ago, and last week marked almost a month of no self-harm urges.

These nightmares and obsessions and dark thoughts seemed to crawl from the floorboards with no warning whatsoever. Three years' experience fighting this doesn't seem to even matter, trying to reason with myself is futile, like having a shouting contest with a car alarm.

That alarm is blaring right now, like it has been for three days. I haven't slept more than a few hours, none of which has been restful. I decide not to fight it, if I'm going to be awake, I might as well do something. I carefully climb out of bed and silently open the dresser to retrieve some sweatpants and a long sleeve t-shirt. After I change, I take my keys, lock the door and set the alarm, then get in my car and sit in silence.

A drive would do me some good, just to the gas station and back. I start the car and put on the radio, some pop song comes on, I immediately turn it back off. I back out of the driveway and cruise down the road, I crack the windows open fir fresh air and some white noise. The cool night breeze flows through the cabin, I can smell the autumn leaves, a faint scent of decay.

I map out the local gas stations in my head, deciding on the one farthest out of my way. My face stiffens in the cold, numbing it somewhat, o focus on the sensation, allowing it to soak up my attention span. Cars driving past mystify me, how their headlights light the road ahead, facilitating its driver as they navigate, completely oblivious to the thoughts of the people passing by. How many people, I wonder, have they driven by who are so very close to collapse. How many have I passed who are just like me?

Taking a turn down another road, I see a young woman jogging, her headphones isolating her from the world around her. It sounds so nice right now, maybe I should have gone for a run instead. I turn again, following my mental map, this road will take me about fifteen miles down a long straight stretch to a small isolated gas station.

The place always comforts me somehow, its inexplicable aloneness and distance from everything else makes me feel at home. I've thought often that this would be an ideal place to survive the apocalypse, if the main population center was hit with a nuke or something, this would likely be the only place with adequate supplies remaining. Sometimes I forget my life is far too boring for such things to happen.

I arrive after about twenty minutes of slow mindless driving, pulling into the small square of pavement and parking at one of the two pumps, sitting in my car for a few more minutes before turning it off and stepping out. The air is still and silent, odd because it was rather windy when I left the house, nevertheless I walk through the single advertisement-plastered glass door.