Storm Front

I - I don't know how to write anymore. I don't know. How.

There isn't much I can do, that I am or have to say.

What to tell, any longer?

In the winter of grade 11, when I'd first got sick I caught myself almost doing suicide to myself - without possessing any intention to do so.

It was one of those bleary, dreariest of evenings. Chelle, Mary and I were cruising, ripping loser laps and darts by the waterfront. An ominous time to be out and about, driving slick, sleet-saturated streets, the black ice well-hidden, underneath. Later, parked at the river I stepped out, for dreaded distraction, to distract from a howling, hollow void inside, hoping to allay the potential panic festering within in the car, so instead subjecting self to the cold death feast. Walking to the bannister, I vaguely feared falling into the freeze in a torrent of slush. Staring out past the railings, beyond the breakwater cement barrier below, grim, silent, a silence deeper than any pain at the bleeding nightmare current, its mosaic of dark ice sheets.

The water, as everything else, was silent back. See, when you die, yet somehow are still living you expect something - anything - to offer a sign, or at least warning. At worst a demon providing cautionary tale, at best an angel telling you the person you once were still exists.

That's when I checked back in, barely, discerning with the anorexic bog of consciousness retained that mind had surveyed it as a place to die.

Et voilà, don't ya know I started testing this near-miss nigh immediately. Basically I am an extremist-scientist of sorts, a radical neurologist, perpetually endeavouring with examination of fear through deeply scrutinized fieldwork. Extrapolating evidence vis-à-vis hippocampal terror in attempt to assuage amygdala via preferred methods for research.

Generally, polar extremity of this consisted of bouts of boldness amidst severer attacks, sometimes pressing the serrated blade of a kitchen knife against soft underside of a wrist, tightening leathern belt around neck, at school gazing luridly from balconied levels unto ground, then waiting for data. Did I want to do it? What did I feel - nothing. Nothing was stopping me, literally zero. Never anything.

There are few resources to help comprehend the sheer nothingness life can become overnight (public sector doesn't seem keen to delve unto such depths), plus one may only send so many pleas into the void.

*****

Lily was the most gorgeous girl I'd ever met, and we dated a few months before I got sick. She stayed hung up on me for a while, and so we got back together at a modified rate I was able to sustain. Generally, this was in the capacity of after-school specials, functional carnality, weekly trysts.

She was roughly 5'3, slender and petite, with long blonde hair and light blue-green eyes that were like turquoise and aquatic-algae simultaneously. Mutual friends dubbed us the Abercrombie/Hollister couple, we were both athletes and socialites among peers (I formerly), and the only thing about her of remarkable girth was her butt. Her personality was the best thing.

I saw her out of a bus window and waved, she beamed at me, insanely beautiful. As I clambered off at the transfer-stop we hugged, kissing, unconcerned about any onlookers. Her face was cold, especially the button-nose pressing an indent into my cheek, frosted eyelashes tickling mine. We each wore pea-coats, breaths misting before our faces, the feeling of being in-love.

Many of our friends hollered obscenities as the buses rolled away from the parking lot. Holding each other's hand, we took on the cold seven-minute walk to my house. We were already making-out, merely in the door.

Upstairs, undressing another, eyes and lips locked, that was the best part.

Before she left, we were in the kitchen, I was sitting on the counter and she stood between my legs, nuzzling against neck, arms strapping waist.

'There aren't the right words,' I told her. 'I don't know what to say. It's like I'm broken now. I feel fucking dead and think about harming myself all the time. I don't want to bring you into this. It's indescribable.'

The look in her eyes was pure love - I couldn't doubt for a second that she really felt this way - though psyche said she didn't understand, and with thine stormcloud perspective decided not to drag her through it, with me.

In the summer, with stepdad's truck and Rog for company, I peeled down to the local psych-ward. He made jokes as I left him back in the parking lot.

The psychiatrist's office was sterile - orderly, neat and tidy - unequivocally. Perhaps this was the way she maintained herself. She was stern and aloof.

I told her my troubles:

'Sometimes it's suicide, then homicide. Other times it's ridiculous things that don't make sense, like incest, cannibalism, necrophilia. Also, that I might become gay or a pedophilia. Sometimes I get so afraid like it's all real, especially when it's mutilation and fear I might castrate myself.'

'Listen, dear. You are fine. I see a level of cognizance in you which the vast majority of my patients cannot imitate. I have actual patients who have removed their genitalia. I can tell that you aren't going to do this.'

'Okay, you're probably right. But I can't live like this anymore. I feel like I'm losing my fucking marbles constantly. So, what do you think?'

'You don't need to be admitted. I'll set you up for an outpatient visit with a psychologist, and prescribe Zoloft in the meantime. Please take it, it will help immensely - if you take it as prescribed - and only if you stick to it.'

After 1 pill, I flushed the rest and sobbed. My mind convinced me it was probably poison and ego that I couldn't become someone who pops pills.

That fall, I sat with Rog in the McDonald's parking lot. We were both late for school, he'd said he really needed to talk to me. His gramma had just died, and he was head-over-heels for a friend of ours, in the year younger, who couldn't stop cheating and banging other guys. She truly was a lowkey nympho, yet we were too immature to understand this implication.

'Listen, man. I did something really bad.'

'Bro, just tell me.'

Rog was staring at the pavement, face scrunched up, licking his wounds in an aggravated manner I'd never seen of him before.

'It was really stupid.'

'Dude, it's me. It's okay. Whatever it is - just let it out.'

He began explaining, talking to the ground:

'I don't know why I did it - I was so lost in my own head. You know how shitty things have gotten, lately. Anyway, I tried killing myself. I strapped a belt around my neck on the spindles at my parents, don't laugh, I kinda just sagged out cause it wasn't very tight and then crumpled to the floor beneath. It hurt so bad, all I could think was fuck my life. Mom called down to me - I told her everything was fine - she said piss off get to bed.'

'Never again. You won't try anymore, promise?'

'I won't. I promise. I get it now.'

'Makes a pretty funny story, though.'

'Yeah, it does.'

'The pain doesn't really stop. You just keep going.'

'Yeah man, I realize that. I know it was stupid.'

'Fuck. Fuuuck. We're so sick of being stressy-depressy.'

Next winter at a house party, thrown at a friend's lavish mansion, Sarah approached me. She was an attractive little brunette number with a great body. At the start of the school-year we'd had a loosey-goosey, students-with-benefits arrangement. It ended amicably, we remained friendly.

She danced against me, pulling me in and then putting her face right in mine. Her hips were moving sensually, she caressed herself against me. She took my hands upon her waist and kissed me for a while.

'Let's go upstairs.'

'What about Chris?'

'What about him?'

Chris was a friend she'd been hanging out with. He was at the party. We went upstairs, kissing, getting naked in a younger sibling's bedroom, initiating operations with me arched behind, her flat, head turned back so we still could kiss. It was the best sex we'd ever have together.

'Wanna try the thing we've talked about?'

'Here, with everyone else? It's more of something for another time alone.'

'C'mon, why not?'

'Uhh, really.'

'Think about it - it could be totally awesome.'

'Okay, sure. But put it in slow. Ahh, that's it - yessss, mmmm.'

Afterward she cried, confessing she still loved Chris. He was the one she really wanted there and now he'd never want her back. I consoled her and for lack of know-how, half-hour later gathered him and her female friends.

*****

Prior to the party, a bushwhacking affair at our friends' hippy, Darcy's-Wild-Life house in the country, us boys used our fake IDs to procure booze, cigarettes, met with a drug-dealer for weed, and rode a few hot laps around town. This was a custom like a lost white boys' sweat-lodge, when one of us was going through it and needed to hash it out we'd crank the heat all the way up and go on a tear around the city until something got resolved.

That night at the party, the bohemian affair led our medley of high school students to assail a nearby elementary school with easy access to the roof. Watching them I stood beside Tash, an artsy free-spirit I'd grown closer with, amongst other colourful souls, since the beginning of my trials.

We were drinking red wine, my friend Michael had taken a liking to her.

'It's freezing out here,' she said.

'Yeah, ready to go back anytime.'

'I was having a much better time inside.'

'What do you think of him?'

'He's cute, I like him.'

'So, my matchmaking skills are perfection?'

'Don't know about that.'

'Figure out what you're doing next year, yet?'

'Seriously - right now?'

'Why not.'

'I don't know, man. I might go back out west, or maybe to school in the capital. I'm sick of feeling like we must make these decisions. What I want to do, what I love, has nothing at all to do with classroom-learning.'

'Yeah. I mean: yeah.'

'Well this is fun, right now.'

'Here's to night's like this, before they're gone.'

'Let's head back.'

'What about everyone else?'

'Look at them, up there, they'll be okay.'

We started along the narrow, steeping road back towards the house. Its lights were the only lit across the entire snow-capped land, save for the stars. You could see all them out, shiny-icy cosmic. We went past the barns, cedar fences, wide pond gaping towards the property. She continued for the house, I stopped to look at it briefly. The moment almost felt quiet.

It meant hockey. A game that some called pastime, which for me had been life. Everytime I'd gone to a rink, any arena, had felt like coming home.

It now was more a reminder of mind; everything was when you lived solely inside of it. The deep ice out in the distance the parts you can't face, which you must embrace if you ever want to get better. Like everything that our society, parents, genes and survival conditioning tells us not to do.

The people I loved. Precious moments. I couldn't see or feel any of it. Nor them. The only anguish in life is being cut off from connection, a singular thing worth moping about. That was my biggest regret, too. Under all the guilt and shame, aspect which my soul felt the most remorse over.

The surface was black and pooled with sludgy water where it caved and the snow fell around. Trees were decrepit, looking as though they'd died. I'd ceased fighting haunting emptiness.

Down beyond, I heard the merry racket of friends echoing up the hill.