The First Step to a New Me

There were children outside the kitchen window waiting for the bus, giggling, pure vitality. I stepped outside, the sun was warm for a December morning, almost like an early summer morning. I remembered how much I had enjoyed those first few weeks in town. They had a careful brilliance, a dancing optimism—like anything could happen. Life was vibrant.

Watching their youthful exuberance hurt. I walked back inside. Mania took hold, pulling the strings, flopping me around the kitchen, looking for anything that might at all ground me.

Pre-workout and a lift, I thought. Sure, let’s try that… Red streaks spilled down my shirt, as I tried to suck down the shaker cup. Nevertheless, I hopped in my car and headed the gym.

The main road was four lanes wide, two going East, two going West, with a parking median splitting them. Street parking was rare and I settled for one of the angled spots in the median. The light turned, while I crossed, two cars barreled towards me. I looked back at the car and panned my eyes back towards the gym, continuing onward. The old Chevy skitched on its brakes and blared his horn.

“GET OUT OF THE ROAD!” He shouted, from a complete halt.

Indifference grew. It didn’t matter, none of it mattered. I looked at him expressionless and said nothing, then continued across the street. I didn’t want to die, living just wasn’t worth opening my stride.

Even the gym was a lost cause. The same weights that whispered sweet nothings to me every morning, gently massaging the angst of the day-to-day living, were silent. Not a peep, just disapproving leers. An hour of sweating and breathing, trying to reclaim control, but nothing changed. Not an ounce of anxiety quelled.

I walked back out of the gym and across the street, fell into the Camry and drove home. There, I sat at the kitchen table, stirring, nerves rattling like shutters in a storm.

Completely unhinged, I begged aloud, “Please let me be anyone else! Please… Anyone but Louis ​​Hawthorne…”

There was nothing to flush away the awfulness. No one to talk to, not even John. Why burden him with this darkness? No one needed to live that nightmare, even second-​​hand.

For the first time, I was scared—undeniably riddled with a gripping fear. Sitting alone, reeking of vomit, sweat, and tears, there was no path ​​forward.

Humans run hot and cold, caught between existences. Compartmentalizing sadness, rationalizing vices, and tiptoeing along the duplicitous fringes of morality, until the lines get blurred, life gets messy, and then, before you know it—you haven’t a clue who you are. Then, the best bet is to aimlessly wander the earth looking for someone who wants to share the pain. Few have the motor to fight the misery that the boogeyman brings with any sort of honor.

Nothing could stop the paroxysm of anxiety. An utter unraveling. Recapitulating the past few months to myself, madness grew.

How many times had I told Heather, “You’d be better off without me,” I thought, only to go pick her up at the train the next day and take her out to dinner, pretending like everything was okay. How many times had I let Bella down?

Truthfully, none of that mattered anymore, not from the brink—nearing desertion of self.

Sputtering through the past worsened the situation. A true, unfiltered panic took hold. The hiss of the kettle buzzed between my ears, working me up into a lather. The sight of Heather, devastated, hyperventilating. A feverish, but silent rage seeped through me. No tantrums or shouting. My insides were burning.

What a liar I was?! To Heather... To Bella… To my parents… To myself… To the world…

I stood up from the table abruptly and walked into my room, dug through the chest on my nightstand and found exactly what I was looking for, a small metal hanger. About an inch long. My parents had brought it back from a fundraiser. They gave it to me a while back, maybe a year or two before. My dad said to keep it, something about supporting people who stand for something.

Eyes hollow and soul numb, I took the totem into the kitchen, pinched it between a set of tongs and held it over a crackling burner. I lit a cigarette in the flame and breathed it in deep, watching the hanger smolder into a crisp shade of orange, like a welder’s tool in a cheap television sequence. Once the hanger was ready, I dropped it onto the waxy side of a potholder, then took one last drag of the cigarette, held in the smoke, and slowly raised the potholder and eased it toward my left bicep. It hovered about an inch from my skin and I could feel the heat emanating from it, but there was no fear, no anxiety, no worry.

Nothing. I felt ​​nothing.

I unapologetically pressed the hanger into my arm, holding it steady as the outer layer of my skin melted away. My eyes winced shut and I pressed harder and harder, slowly exhaling the cigarette smoke.

A compilation of memories, dreams, tears, fears, smiles, love, hate—all of it—played like a slideshow. Until it all went black.

The hanger dropped to the ground. The skin from my elbow to my shoulder was beat-red. I took a pull of vodka, then splashed a measure onto the wound, which stung like all hell.

I found my way to the bathroom and stared down at the sink, splashing cold water on my face, then picked my head up, looking at the man in the mirror without an ounce of remorse or compassion.

For the first time in months, I felt justified in my actions.

The day needed to clock out, but the minutes refused to tick. I drank the rest of the vodka, watching some of the redness on my arm fade out like the sunset. By nightfall, all that was left was a perfect outline of the hanger, glowing—in the middle of my left bicep. There was nowhere to hide from what I’d done, no more pretending it hadn’t happened.

Life seeks to humble you. Especially after a fit of hubris, an offense proven to be a recipe for unmitigated chaos. It builds up, bubbling… steaming… hissing… demanding you stop taking life for granted… The universe knows when you’ve jumped the shark, the chickens have come home to roost, and the clock has struck midnight, and thus you yourself have become such an excruciating cliché that you litter your writing with them.

Ignoring the signs bolsters the storm, sinks ships, and drowns sailors. The storm rages on—until it has made itself known and history finds its ​​level.