I'm writing three books with the overall name "Imbalanced." The story is a fictionalized saga (based on several real events) of four young people, three men and one woman ages 15-20, in the mental health system. The first book is called "Intake" because it concerns our foursome having breakdowns, three of whom aggressively experience such breakdowns for the first time, and my fourth being more experienced in the mental health system.
This snippet concerns one of my characters who is bipolar with very manifested OCD. He's a freshman in college. It's December. He's drunk off his ass and has just had a horrible experience with an unfaithful female friend in an on campus dance club. He's stumbled outside in the cold and it suicidal.
(Pardon the ill looking format but you can't tab or properly organize a manuscript in these blogs. Inner monologue lines are in italics but you can't do that in this blog, either. Thanks for your patience.)
The shock of the cold numbed his brain for a moment but the intensity made it liquid nitrogen, burning rather than relieving. It was snowing heavily now, a near blizzard, and was rapidly covering the landscape a thick, white layer. He managed to pull his jacket on and stared in a stupor at the small line of people still waiting to enter the club, their combined breaths coagulating into a smoky cloud, their expressions showing the fresh anticipation of the night ahead, like people waiting happily for an amusement park ride he had already taken and thrown up on. He stumbled past the line towards his car, looking into the eyes of everyone he passed, before making a small misstep and falling to his knees. He tried to smile, tried to seem cool and nonchalant, and tried not to think about how many of them thought him ill or drunk or sad or broken or finished or just stupid. A harsh word would have shattered him but none spoke. He creaked to his feet.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah!!!! His thoughts were more intense and out of control with each passing second. Instead of making him feel better, they flew completely out of his control into space. He shivered and wobbled, not from being drunk but from a kind of instability and exhaustion that staggered him he’d been hit on the head. He couldn't stop his runaway train of thought.
Die you have to die you have to die it’s gone it’s too late it’s over die die you have to die you have to die it’s over it’s the only way it’s the only way you can’t go one now you can’t have it back it’s too late you have to go you have to leave.
He zipped up his jacket, put his hands in his pockets and tried to achieve equilibrium, his stomach now boiling and churning uncontrollably. Wandering the parking lot, he walked in the wrong direction, finally got going the right way and, Just short of his car, his nerves agitated by his footfalls in the crusted ice there from previous bad weather, he threw up, drowning the snow in putrid vomit. The music he had just heard thudded loudly in his head and drowned him in thunderous bass.
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM. The car’s door handle was freezing; he opened it. The car seat was freezing; he sat on it. The interior was freezing; he shrank in it. Everything outside himself was freezing, everything inside himself burned with darkness. He sat for a several moments feeling the cold, thinking of the cold, thinking of the burning, thinking of the darkness, his breath cloudy, his body shivering, his mind searing. Slowly, with great difficulty, he pulled his keys out of his pocket, turned the car on, activated the front and rear window defrosters and turned on the heater to its highest setting. His head was destroying him. As the car thawed, he began to cry. There would be no shady lanes, no private gardens, no private liaisons, no pinks and greens, no romance. None of the things that he wanted, and needed, badly. Only death could save him now. Only death could stop the pain that spread like a forest fire through his entire body. He squeezed the steering wheel hard, released it, made fists, shook them in the air then slammed them down onto the wheel. He would never be good enough for anyone. Crying uncontrollably, he gently put his head onto the steering wheel. Tears came hot and hard, falling noiselessly, dripping onto the steering wheel then onto the soft, velvet material of the car floor; he took his hands off the wheel and wrapped them around his stomach. The crying continued and he felt drained and empty but his brain gave him no solace.
The only way to be free is to end this. It doesn’t matter anymore. You don’t matter. You’ll never matter.
He hated himself. He loathed himself with the most violent energy of this life. The crying eased slightly then ended completely. He felt the strange sense of peace many feel when they become resigned to death. He put the car in drive, maneuvered it out onto the treacherously slick road and drove off into the face of the intensely driving snow. He was fixated on only one thing. All he wanted to find was a nice place to die.
