Excerpt from my one day book about crazy people

It’s swollen inside. And black. It feels very dark. And maybe bottomless. It’s tender, but not like chicken. That’s too pleasant. Chicken is warm and pink sometimes and happy.
Don’t they look happy? All tan and brown and warm?
The chickens, I mean. When you’re shopping in the market and you see them in that cart under the heat lamps (not with heads or anything, not like, freshly dead. Just the bagged ones. The ones in those plastic containers). They look like they’re relaxing, on a vacation. That’s nice. They’re tender because they’re relaxed.
This is not that kind of feeling. It’s the tenderness of anxiety. Like acid fingers pressing all over, all at once. Like having to swallow warm octopuses, at least 15, swallowing down down down, still alive. Like concentrated microwave rays directed at your abdomen. That’s where it hurts the most. And it travels up, licks around in your chest and in your throat and this heat refuses to escape.
It feels like a bad secret. A heavy one. Like a fetid foetus.
That’s a morbid thought.
I try to wrinkle my face with disgust at myself but I find it’s already doing just that.
It’s the swollenness, the blackness, the thing festering in the very pit of me that’s pulling everything down.
I am a young person, a fairly intellectual person. I am happy. I am supported. I am so happy.
And yet, I’ve never felt so lost inside myself.
That’s a big revelation. I don’t know if I should have said that just yet.
Maybe… should have given that a little more time… A few more paragraphs. More pages.
We need to build trust.
Because, I don’t know you. And,
you’re already starting to form your opinion of me. I need to think about what I say before I say it.


And the threat of crying starts …now… For something completely stupid. I won’t even tell you what.
I never cry. I don’t do it. I do not cry.
This is a lie. I cry a lot now.
Now
I don’t even know when now began. A while ago, I guess.
It gets warmer inside when the crying starts.

I just talked to him. I thought that would make it better. And we just hung up and now I want to cry. My face thinks it’s about to cry. It’s pulled in toward my nose, warmed up, ready for tears.
I don’t feel better, like I thought I would, after hearing him. I feel even more vulnerable.
You don’t know the whole story.

That’s…
That’s what makes all this so awkward. I’m here verbally vomiting words that don’t even begin to describe these feelings I’ve been physically trying to expel for years.
That’s too dramatic. I don’t mean to be dramatic. Just candid. And,
It’s hard.
I don’t know how to help him. I don’t know what to say to him to reassure him that I care. I do care.
Pain is a funny thing, you see.
Or don’t see. You can’t see it most of the time.
Some people are really good at hiding it away. Swallowing it and choking it down.
This isn’t like chicken at all. But like, an open sore. Puffy and red and angry and irritated.
That kind of tender. So tender that you’re conscious of it at all times.
He cut it so short. Our conversation. Like he was done trying to pretend to have something to say.
He was done. And I needed him.
It’s like a wave, the heat, rising up in my chest, teasing to race out my mouth in the form of a sound, out, finally out. That sound that is so primal we all know what it means. But it stays. And swells and makes my eyes water up. It teases me.
So many times, I’m teased by my own nervous system.
I hate crying.
But I’m a girl. It’s what we do.
But I hate girls.
I mean, I had already felt like crying before I talked to him. And then, when we hung up, God…
He didn’t comfort me. And I know I didn’t comfort him.
This is too big.
I can’t carry it around.
It feels like perpetual food poisoning. It feels constant.
I don’t know how to make it stop.
I feel bad for him. He has no idea that I’m practically insane. That’s not why I feel bad.
Maybe I should.
Maybe a little bit, maybe he’s caught on that I’m different. He tells me I am, but it’s playful.
His words are light and dance.
I never feel like dancing.
But he has bigger things to worry about.
Far more important things.
Issues, and resolutions, and revelations, and renunciations to deal with. To live with.
Cramps!
Hahahahahahahaha. Ha ah…. ha ha.

This feels like cramps.

Not that I’ve ever had any, but I think this is what they would feel like
I’m bloated with hot, rancid, suffocating suppression. PMS.
Pregnated with Malicious Suppressions.
I hate girls.
I would tell him… Explain to him, vomit all over him with this stuff.
But. But, but…
He’s there now. Actually living his own anxieties.
I wouldn’t dare degrade his rightful tragedy with my verbal diarrhoea.
I know better than that.
He can tell when I’m straining to think of another subject. And he won’t waste time.
“It’s late over here” he says, “I’m going to bed”.
7 minutes and 17 seconds.
7 minutes in heaven, 17 seconds in hell.
If you believe in that stuff. He doesn’t. He says he doesn’t have a soul.
My soul’s made out of sponge.
And it’s soaking! It’s heavy! That’s what it feels like.
My sponge- soul is more absorbent than it’s good for.
I ate too much.
I miss him.
I won’t always be able to think of the right things to say, the right questions to ask, or anticipate how receptive he’ll be to my humour.
It won’t always work.
I feel like a hot air balloon elephant.
I feel like a snake that’s just eaten.
I feel like a clogged drain, a shaken soda litre, an obese ghost.
I am nervous for him. Doubly nervous. Shifty to the max.
He is strong. And I am persistent.
He’s rational and I am practical.
He’s emotional and I, poised, at least.
I need balance in my life. Or I shut down.
He makes up in talking what I hold in. it works.
For now.
Now
I don’t even know when that ends. I won’t have to worry about that just yet, I guess.