Was originally going to post this on the 28th, but since I'd already posted it on my writing Tumblr, I figured it'd be okay to share it now. My first piece in quite a long time.
Thoughts and comments are always welcome.
-Cali
Lost Inside This Broken Mind: My life after December 28th, 2009
She’s sitting on the floor, phone in hand. She doesn’t know when she hung up or who hung up first. All she knows is the pain, the anger, the hurt flooding through her.
He’s really gone. He’s dead. It’s not a lie, he’s dead and you’ll never get the chance to see him again.
Her mind babbles incessantly, carrying on without another thought to interrupt it. The haze drifts in like an unclearable fog. The numbness takes over her body, leaves it tingling without a single nerve left to feel the nails she’s digging into her palms.
The tears are hot and endless. She doesn’t know how they got there. Doesn’t know how to make them stop.
He’s fucking dead. Dead.Dead.Dead.Dead.Dead.DEAD.DEAD.DEAD.
She throws the phone across the room, flings it into a picture and smashes the glass. She grabs both sides of her head, crouching on the floor and screaming in pure fucking agony like she’s being burned alive.
OH GOD NO! PLEASE GOD, PLEASE! NOT JIMMY! PLEASE NOT FUCKING JIMMY! GIVE HIM BACK! YOU MOTHERFUCKER, GIVE HIM BACK!
She’s hardly aware of her surroundings. She’s too lost in the void of disbelief and anger. Her throat burns and cracks and threatens to fade out with every hard, heart wrenching scream.
The tears are like acid now, falling down her face and leaving little marks in their paths. The eyeliner burns like hell, but she can’t bring herself to reach up and rub her eyes. She can hardly move from her spot on the floor where she lies broken and bleeding from the inside.
JIMMY! JIMMY! JIMMY! JIMMY! GIVE HIM BACK! JUST TAKE ME AND GIVE HIM BACK! PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE I’M BEGGING YOU!!!!!!! I NEED HIM! WE FUCKING NEED HIM!
She knows God isn’t listening. Even if he was, would he be able to grant her wish? Would he take her life and spare the one he’s already claimed? Even if it’s impossible, she can’t stop screaming and begging and pleading, bartering her own life for his.
Her fists ache and she wonders when she started punching the floor. Her knuckles are swollen and red and there’s a faint hint of blood bubbling to the surface. She stares at it, amazed she can’t even feel it.
Numb.
Numb from head to toe without a hint of sensation anywhere, save this horrible pain in her heart.
Numb.
Her rapidly unraveling mind brings back just enough of her sanity to remind her of what it is she does when she can’t feel. It tempts her. The loss, the pain, the dreaded fucking ache tempts her into doing it.
She pushes up from the floor. Her feet carry her into the kitchen for the knife she never intended to use in this manner. She takes it from the drawer and pads back to her spot, lying back down and staring at the blade.
Shiny. Silver. Sharp. Salvation.
She dwells on the thought of how it will feel to do this. She tries to ignore the voice in her head that tells her how wrong this is and that he wouldn’t want her to do this to herself. Not for him. Not for anyone.
She ignores it.
It takes a long time before she can summon the strength to press the blade to her wrist and when she starts to drag it over the skin, the numbness fades into a dull pain that zips through her.
She doesn’t acknowledge it. Instead, she sits there, marking her arms until a puddle forms beneath the wounded arm.
Her breathing is ragged, but she’s calm. She’s quiet. Her body shakes as the endorphins rush through her and fill her with that sweet euphoria she’s become addicted to over the years.
She closes her eyes.
He’s standing there. Those blue eyes of his are soft and sad. He silently questions how she can do this to herself, how she can want to destroy herself like this when there are so many reasons for her to live and carry on.
He steps close enough for her to touch him, but she’s too frightened to try. It’s an illusion. A simple hallucination. A product of her grief and pain.
But he looks so fucking real.
His eyes stray to the marks and she wants to cover them in shame. She can hear herself apologizing under her breath, babbling on like one who has lost her mind.
She thinks she feels his touch on her hand, but refuses to open her eyes and see. There’s a warmth in her palm spreading through her body and she can hear him whisper so faintly…
It’s going to be all right. You’re going to be all right.
She wants to argue, but the rational part of her reminds her how pointless it is to argue with a hallucination.
She just nods.
She isn’t sure when he fades out, but she can still feel him there. A presence that will never truly leave. One that will stay by her side until the end.
She wakes in a cold sweat to find the blood is dried and her tears are gone, but that ache is still there. She reckons it will always be there. She gets up and cleans herself off, looking in the mirror.
She hardly recognizes herself. She seems to have withered into nothing in a matter of a few hours.
She drifts along like she’s lost in a dream, her mind hazed by the slight insanity the loss has brought about. She stays in this state for weeks, forgetting everything she knows except the pain.
It takes a tattoo needle to snap her out of it and make her realize what she’s done to herself. She studies the new scars on her arm as the tattooist fills in the letters with ink as blue as Jimmy’s eyes.
The moment the gun is switched off, she makes a silent promise to him that she won’t do this again. She won’t harm herself ever again.
She keeps that promise for three months.
Until something shatters her world again.
++++++++
Note: This is a recollection of what I went through after Jimmy’s death. I’ll be completely honest in saying that I don’t remember much more than this. I walked around like a zombie and sometimes didn’t leave the bed at all. I closed myself off from so many people, including myself. I didn’t want to believe it and I still don’t, but I somehow knew that I had to wake up and face it at some point.
The day I got my memorial tattoo is the day I opened my eyes and realized how much I have to live for. I want to make Jimmy proud, not sadden him with my unholy actions against myself.
I’m still fighting this battle between what has become instinct when I get depressed, but I’m slowly working my way out of it.
This is my story, the way I remember it. This is completely Non-Fiction. This is the story about how I lost my mind.
I’m still waiting for it to come back.
