Yesterday I yelled to -----, my mother. I don't really do it so often, just  when like normal people get normal outbreak, and yell, and scream and break things. It was one of those moments, I just went a little too far, and some things that shouldn't have were said, and then some more things were broken. Which is why I am now standing alone in a street, looking at the shithole my life has always been. And now I wonder what could have gone differently.

 

It all started when I got the normal problems of normal teenagers, coming of age, finding one's self, and all that crap counselors like to tell parents so they are scared of traumatizing their kids. It was just all normal; the shit in the shoe was that I am not normal. When I started having the outbreaks, the crisis and the long periods of isolation, "it's just an age thing" she said, which made sense. But I didn't feel like it was something I had to go through, you see, lying in the floor of the bathroom with a razor in one hand, pressing the wrist of the other , doesn't really feel like when you are lost in the Supermarket, or your first camp. It is not even comparable with the first day of school.

 

Of course my mother had to notice when she had to take me to the hospital bleeding my guts out. She freaked out, really bad. She kept screaming, and nagging me, and crying and coursing. She didn't understand then what was going on, but the look in her eyes-god, the look in her eyes- it was saddest thing I have ever seen. After the stitches and the sobs, she couldn't even look me in the eye; I knew she didn't know what to say. I was blank. "Sorry, mom" I cried "sorry." But I wasn't sorry, neither did I have the need to apologize, I was just empty, broken, a bag of bones and flesh lying in a hospital bed.

 

Days later I was in therapy, I think it was some sort of religious therapist, or at least he kept telling me about "the lord" and the "righteous way". I didn't even bother listening to him, what I felt had nothing to do with the absence of my father, which he kept insisting. The wound was not some child abuse thing, it wasn't. "It's just normal problems or normal teenagers" I said to avoid him, "I just can't handle well." I think even he knew that was bullshit.

 

After the incident my mother was not the same around me, she was careful, always treating me like some China collection of dancing Geishas. But the sort of careful that is not meant to mean love for the China, but fear of breaking it, fear it will all go to hell. She avoided words such as depressive, sad, good, bad, suffering, unbearable, common. Those still hold a close relationship for me. 

 

She always asked "Are you fine?" every single time she saw me, after school, before dinner, during dinner, before going to bed. "Yes" I always said, then she asked "Are you sure?", and all I thought was "Of course not! Look at me, I can't make human contact, a day can't go on without me having some sort of outburst, and entering to the bathroom for the daily routine is the most painful thing in the world, having to keep my eyes from all those edgy and pointy things, so to don't relapse." But I kept silent.

 

Very recently she started speaking with the school advisor I think, because he had started a tendency of calling me to his office, or asking me to participate in normal activities done by normal teenagers. I hated it, not the decorating the gym for stupid Homecoming, or being forced to help the Drama club raise funds. I hated being seen differently, those pathetic attempts done by normal people doing normal things, trying to include me, trying to make me feel oh so fucking special. Thos attempts that were obvious segregations to help the depressive kid, to make the fuck up feel good about his fucked up life. That's what I hated.

 

I could come off as some hermit who spent his days writing dark poetry and diaries. I am not. I do speak to people; I gather after school, I mock teachers, heck I even sometimes flirt. But there is just something in me, very deeply incrusted, stabbing me, something that brings me back to the bathroom episode. It all brings me to the sensation of having the razor pressing my wrist, back to the moment when I saw the blood sliding across the tiles. It was not happiness, it was not peace, but fuck, was it reliving.

 

But mother doesn’t understand this, and I can’t tell her, I wouldn’t have the heart to tell her, her son is likely to die in a bathroom floor without ever giving her grandchildren, without ever seeing Europe, without going to college, or any of those normal dreams normal people have. So I just keep silent, nodding, letting her know I’m perfect and recovering.

Then the pill episode started, which was not the answer, at least for me. When my mother started talking about it, I thought it was only natural, dose the crazy, that’ll keep him away from running with scissors. Yet it all seemed very absurd to me, it still does, how can you teach a generation of kids that drugs are bad, when you stuff the happy kids with Ritalin, the imaginative with Lithium, and the sad one with Prozac? Adults these days…they have a magic potion for every kid.

At first I didn’t care, it just made feel numb, always numb. Gladly I was no longer angry, sad, or had the need to run to the balcony and jump. I was just numb, which doesn’t mean happy, or joyous, or anything else; it means numb. But later I felt the need of the pain, like when your legs are numb from sitting on the floor, and then you stand up and they hurt. Sure it might not be nice, but the pain lets you know the legs are still alive. I needed that, the pain after the numbness, the soar wake up after the long comma. But I was healed, I was numb.

It couldn’t last for long. “It kills my soul” I told my mother, who thought was a fair trade for having her son alive, in a bag of bones and blood. I didn’t care; I started flushing it down the toilet, which brought the pain back; letting me know I was alive. You possibly think it is stupid for someone suicidal to look for feeling alive, to search that sign of heart beat. But it is not, isn’t dying the ultimate proof that we were once alive?

Maybe not for normal people.