Angst

by Victoria Sawyer

  “Haha…fuckin weird.”

  “Yeah by the end of the semester I didn’t even try with her anymore. We were done…freaky bitch. And I put in a request for a new roommate next year.”

  I slowly turn my cart around and walk it very quickly down the aisle. Time to be sick again, like some kind of demented fucked up loser.

  Finally, after emptying my stomach again of what must have been yesterday’s lunch and maybe last week’s food, I complain again and they let me leave. I walk out to my car, hands gripping my poor aching stomach and before I get in to drive away, I throw up all over the ground. Again. And it’s even more disgusting and embarrassing. Thank God no one saw. As I drive home in the car, I start sobbing. I’ve got my Pink Floyd CD playing The Thin Ice. The words feel poignant to me, real, with such terrible suffering.

  I really feel like this. I feel like my life is the thin ice. I feel that I might slip out of my mind. I’m honestly scared. I’m sobbing listening to this, tears blurring my vision and I don’t care. I keep thinking, what if I just drive my car into a tree on the side of this road? What then? But my next thought is, no, I might not die, I might only be injured and that would be far worse than I am now. Really, I’m pathetic. I know other people probably have much bigger things to worry about, bigger problems, real problems, and here I am blubbering about my “issues.” I hate myself, I really, really do. I’m a huge baby. Most people would think that what I deal with is not a big deal at all.

  God, how bad do I want a normal life. Is that too much to ask? To be a normal dumb fuck, who never worries about anything. I would kill for that life.

  Finally I’m home and thankfully my parents and brother are shut in their rooms so I don’t have to face them. I go upstairs, close the door to my bedroom and sit on the bed facing the mirror across the room. My face is a mess, tears, redness and suddenly I hate myself with such a passion that I want to break something. I watch my face react, sad, sorry, stupid bitch. Fuck, I even feel like breaking me. I start by punching my pillow, harder and harder and harder. I want to scream, but I know I can’t without someone hearing.

  I start punching myself in the leg, just to feel the pain. Thwack, knuckles jabbing into my thigh with every smack, harder and harder. I want to throw something in my room, break something I care about. But I’m a huge wimp. I’m even a failure at this. Eventually I stop punching myself, my leg seriously sore.

  I lie back on the bed, full of self-hatred, nails digging into my palms, impotent to do anything about my panic, knowing that I can’t kill myself, but wanting to. Oh how I would love to kill myself. I don’t think I can even get close to an attempt. That’s how much of a wimp I am. Pathetic! Pitiful! And, then I get out my journal and start writing about how stupid I am. I am depressed out of my mind.

  June 18, 2002 15 Years old

  Because my worst fear is me

  I can’t seem to catch my breath and my stomach keeps clenching like a thick rope knot, pulled tight under pressure. I curl over in the seat and try to drag a deep breathe into my lungs. Tears prick my eyes. I don’t want to walk to the bathroom. I don’t want to feel this way.

  The June sun is beating down on the hood and windshield of the car and I feel smothered, trapped, out of my mind crazy. The fucking air is so hot, stifling, because the window is only cracked a sliver and all I can think is I’m in my own personal fiery hell.

  I’m on vacation with the family at the lake like we do every year. At the moment, I’ve locked myself in the car, curled up on the seat, nursing my agonizing stomach. It rumbles, tightens, and I almost pull open the door, again, to walk the 50 feet to the no-electricity, very dark bathroom. But I don’t want to. I try to breathe, head against the glass, tears about to seep over.

  My parents are sailing right now, racing their catamaran which means they are completely out of reach. Incommunicado. My brother is at the beach with a friend and he can’t help me anyway. Instead of enjoying myself on vacation, I’m in the car on a hot summer day. I choose this spot instead of the tent or camping area because it’s closest to the bathroom and therefore the safest place, but it’s still not close enough. My problem is that I need to stay seated to stop the piercing pain that rips through me every few minutes. Walking hurts too much and being too far away from the bathroom is not an option.

  I’ve been sitting here for three hours and have walked to the bathroom in agony seven times. As laughable as it sounds, I wish I could set up a camp chair right outside and just sit there. But I could never do that because it’s too obvious and extremely embarrassing.

  I think about the bathroom again, the dark, old, spidery, log cabin-esque bathroom. I hate that bathroom because I can’t relax. I can’t relax because someone might come in and hear me being sick, or because a spider might crawl onto my head, or because I am panicked out of my mind and also it’s pretty gross and dirty in there. It’s not like I can just camp out in there. It’s not comfortable, it’s not convenient, it’s horrible for someone who feels like shit.

  Oh God it’s so hot! I’m alternately sweating and shivering. I’m freaking dying here. I’ve got the doors locked too because my overactive imagination is pumping out stories of how someone will show up and try to hurt me or kidnap me since I’m all alone. It’s totally ridiculous. But I feel like I must protect myself against every strange person that walks by. But obviously I can’t really be safe. I never am.

  I wish I was swimming, I wish I wasn’t stuck here in my own mind, stifling, sick, terrified of everything, unable to get up without disrupting the delicate balance of my sick stomach.

  My mid-section rumbles again and I lean over and feel as though I might throw up too. Please no. Not in the car. I panic. I cannot be sick here. Please. Please. I start to sob, hot air, in and out, in and out of my lungs, I feel suffocated. I’ve been sitting here for what feels like forever and time is creeping. I turn the key in the ignition to see the exact time. 2:16 pm. My parents won’t come in off the water for another hour at least. I want to go home. I don’t want to be here.

  This is my mental problem at its worst, trapped, frantic, making me physically sick with dread, sick because I am trapped. I cannot leave. I don’t have my driver’s license yet. I can’t go anywhere and even if I could, even if I had my license, guess what? I have no idea how to get home and we’re over 2 hours away. Never mind the fact that this is the one car we have here. I’m not going anywhere.

  Thinking about driving reminds me again of next week. Oh shit, I wish I could stop thinking about it because next week has something to do with why I’m freaking out so much today. I’m starting driver’s ed. I have to drive in the car with the instructor for however many hours they require. I’m not sure I can handle it. But I am desperate to get my license. The freedom driving represents is like a high of epic proportions. So I can’t freak out. I can’t get crazy or lose it in the car because then they might not give it to me and also, they might think I’m totally nuts. I’m not sure which is worse. Plus I think that other students in my class will be required to watch me drive from the backseat. I can’t. I can’t do it! I will freaking lose my mind! But I must. I have to gain this freedom for myself and this is the only way. I need my license ASAP. I put my head in my hands, tears seeping between my fingers.

  I glance up and see people approaching down the dirt road. Two guys. Older than me by a few years and they look attractive. Shit… Shit! I look atrocious, like a fuckin goblin. I pull down the visor and look at myself in the mirror. Any make up I tried to apply this morning is completely gone and my skin looks terrible. My nose is red and peeling, I have two huge red zits and three smaller ones, and my eyes have large dark bags under them. It’s official, I look like total hell on earth. Don’t let them see me.

  They are closer now, sauntering by with towels and board shorts. I turn my head as they pass, hair covering my face, slumping in the seat. What a pathetic loser! Wait…oh my God, they are between me and the bathroom. My stomach knots again, tighter than ever
and I think I might suffocate in here. I bend, pushing my crossed arms deeper into my gut. Damn it!!! Hurry up, hurry up, walk faster you assholes! I need them out of sight. I need to get up and go.

  They’re taking their sweet ass time, walking slow like they’ve got nowhere else to go. I feel like I’m going to die. I feel like screaming at them, move it you fucking jerks! God this is terrible…someone please shoot me now. Finally they are past and my stomach unclenches for a second. I feel woozy, like I’ve just experienced the high of panic and am now in the lull. But it will come back again, I know it will.

  I want to try lying down, but I know my head will start to spin like it did every other time and I don’t want to add throwing up in the car to my list of accomplishments today. I can’t seem to stop myself, I just keep going through the motions. A few minutes sick as a dog, a few minutes of relief. A few minutes of overactive imagination, a few minutes arguing with myself, a few minutes of calm and then start all over again. I flick the key in the ignition, 2:23 pm. It has been seven minutes. Seven minutes in my hell of stomach clenching, irrational thoughts, the rush of terrible fear and then the momentary release. I can’t escape the cycle. For more than three hours I have felt miserable. I have cried and dried my tears and then started all over again.

  I hate myself and my life.

  I can’t escape. Not ever. Because my worst fear is me.

  June 17, 2005

  The trigger feels resistant

  It’s 9:00 am. The basement floor is cold. Cold radiating through my body, searing into every part as I lay spread eagle, depression seeping inside, too, creeping into my eyes causing tears. I am miserable, unhappy, defeated, beat down, exhausted, stressed, fucked in the head, abnormal, all wrong. Tears begin to slide, flow hot against my cold cheeks, sobs breaking through, wracking my body, wrenching sobs, barely able to catch my breath. I lay here and I let the cold move in. It makes itself a home in my body, in my mind. I let it penetrate to my heart.

  I wish it would kill me. So I don’t have to do it myself.

  Strangle me, drown me, asphyxiation, cold fingers closing around my heart, squeezing to death. Despair. I can no longer live a normal life. I just lay here and think about everything bad, obsessing like I always do. My usual MO is pathetically obnoxious, predictable and fucked, but I can’t escape it. I cannot escape my own brain. I am stuck in here with myself. I want to climb out of my body, I want out of my brain. I want peace, quiet, death. Now I’m really cold. Shivering in my t-shirt and shorts, reveling in the feeling, enjoying it like a punishment. Fuck me, I think. Fuck everything about me. Fuck my brain, fuck my body, fuck my emotions, fuck the essence of me.

  I look over at the wall again and the glinting object nestled in my sweatshirt. My father’s hand gun. Ready and loaded with killer accuracy at point blank range. Obviously, dumb bitch. I stare so long that my eyes go blurry and tears gush over my eye lids again. My world has completely contracted until all that is left is this grey place. Cold and dusty. And even here I cannot feel safe, I cannot relax. It’s as if I’ve contracted so far into myself that soon I will disappear. And I want it, badly. I long for oblivion. I long to feel nothing, I long to be nothing.

  I think about the shiny gun. One pull of the trigger and my world would end. My suffering would be over. I reach over and finger the cold metal and think about death. No more me. No more racing mind, just blackness, a soft place, nothing. Silence, beautiful silence and peace. No body to get sick, no mind to churn out crazy thoughts. No more trembling, no more throwing up, no more thudding heart. Nothing. I want it. But I’m afraid to pull that trigger. I pull the gun closer, sliding my sweatshirt across the cement toward me, flinching at the idea of the gun blast. Just a tiny flick of my fingers and my brains would blast out all over the basement. My parents would find me, my friends would find out. It would be disgusting, but I’d have no idea. I’d be gone.

  Is that what I really want? I do want the peace it would bring, although no future sounds bleak. But a sick panic future is really no future at all. What kind of life is that? What kind of existence is it when you feel like you can’t share who you really are with people? When people will laugh and mock you and call you crazy if you reveal how you really feel? I reach for the gun again, resting my hand on the butt.

  My phone rings in my short’s pocket, breaking the silence. Rude, obnoxious, breaking my misery for a moment. I forgot it was there. It’s Jared. I answer reluctantly not sure what to say. What can someone wishing for death, just about to pull the trigger, say to her very alive, very normal boyfriend?

  “Hi, Victoria,” he says, his voice soft, muted.

  “Hi,” I reply, deadpan, unemotional as I can be with my nose filled with the snot of my depression.

  “How are you?” he follows up, kind, sweet, worried.

  “I’m okay,” I say, holding back tears, my voice shuddering, on the edge of letting go.

  “What’s wrong? What’s been going on with you? Why haven’t I seen you in so long?” he asks, hearing the tone in my voice, the distress.

  “Oh God, I don’t know. Something is wrong inside my head,” I say, trying not to talk much, shutting him out, clamming up, shutting down. Sarcastic, self-depreciating me.

  “Seriously, Victoria, don’t do this to me. I know something is up. I know something serious is happening with you and your panic attacks and you won’t talk to me about it,” he says, his muted voice showing just a touch of anger, just a touch of impatience with my flippant tone. Now I’m through with games, my cold depression and misery breaking through ready to spew all over him. Every…last…terrible…thing.

  “Fine, you want to know. You can hear it all. You can see the real me,” I say, my voice hard, the words coming out fast and messy. “Listen, Jared, I’m broken. I’m scared of being judged, of people not understanding me, of being trapped and crazy, of living within my own mind. I literally want to die because I can’t do anything anymore. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, or any of my friends,” I rage, my voice low. Tears are creeping in again and I can feel the emotion building. I know soon I’ll be unable to hold back the crazy any longer, I’ll only be able to spray it over him like a fire hose.

  “Why would you ever say that you want to die? Don’t say that. Seriously, Victoria, don’t fuck around with that,” he says, his voice angry and then suddenly soft, “I want to help you. I wish there was something I could do, that I could relieve your pain, take away your worries.”

  “There’s nothing anyone can do for me. It’s in my own head, it’s me. It’s who I am and I am fucked. I’m obsessive, scared, controlling, irrational. I hate my life. I hate my brain. I can’t control this anymore, I can’t hide it. It’s coming out, it’s exposing itself so that the only thing left for me to do is to hide physically, to avoid everything and everyone or to drink myself either to death or to jail with a DUI. Do you know how miserable that kind of existence is? It’s horrid because you can’t even really understand me. No one can and what I’m saying right now, the shit that is coming out of my mouth is jibberish, crazy talk, insane ravings. No one can understand unless it happened to them,” I say, biting, hard edged, honest, just cold hard facts.

  “I want to understand, Victoria, I really do. But you won’t let me in. You won’t explain it to me.”

  “Jared, what is there to explain?? None of it makes sense! It’s insane. People start to look at me weird if I try to explain. People are not kind. People are monsters. Terrible judging monsters who care only for themselves and want to mock someone who’s different.”

  “Don’t include me with those people. I’m not like that! I care about you. I just want you to tell me what’s going on, so I can help you, be there for you.”

  “Do you know what happened yesterday? I heard two bitches talking about someone else, they described how she was feeling and acting and it sounded…like me and do you know what they did? They laughed. They called her fucked in the head. Do you know how that feels to pretty mu
ch hear someone call you fucked in the head? The best part is to hear it and know that it’s 100 percent true.”

  “Victoria, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry that people are insensitive. Those people are stupid and you shouldn’t listen to them. They are not compassionate and they don’t know the full story. Please don’t say that about yourself...”

  “Jared, the only thing I do anymore is go to work. Do you know why? I go to work because if I don’t I will have to admit that I’ve lost complete control of my life. Do you know what that feels like? Do you know what it feels like to be scared every single second of every single day? To constantly feel sick to my stomach, tense, on edge, worried, exhausted. It’s miserable. And I’m weak because I can’t fight through it, so there’s another reason to hate myself.”

  “Why don’t you think about medication? It could really help you, Vic. Seriously.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I hate that option. Besides it would require me to talk to someone about it. I’d have to admit to my doctor what’s wrong with me. I would have to tell someone that this is real, that it is beyond my control, that it has beaten me down so far that I can’t come back on my own. I don’t like the idea of being on medication forever, of depending on something like that for help and I can’t see how my irrational fears will just go away if I take a pill. I mean Jared, I am totally crazy.”

  “Babe, you are not crazy, there is a chemical reaction gone wrong in your brain. It’s nothing to be ashamed of! Why do you beat yourself up like this? Why do you assume you have no self-worth?”

  “I’ve never had any…self-worth, I’ve never thought much of myself. Honestly. I can’t really say why. I’ve always felt different. It’s hard…to have self-worth when you know there is something wrong, when you know other people will make fun of you for your irrational fears. It’s hard when you feel ugly and crazy and just off in every way,” I say with a sob, my voice catching. It’s coming out now, the tidal wave of shit.