stoptheworldIwanttogetoff
Photo Credit: thedailybeast.com
I take a drag off my cigarette.God, it tastes so fucking good.Why would I think that in my head?Why would I preface that statement with God, when I am not a believer?I look up and he is still looking at me.Still waiting for my answer.What was the question again?I can’t remember the question.I stare back at him, hoping he will say something and offer me some sort of clue as to what the question was. He doesn’t.He just keeps looking.Why do they always look at me like that?Like there’s some sort of question they’ve asked me that I can’t answer.Everyone always looks at me that way!It makes me anxious.It makes me want to run.My heart pounds, I can feel it pumping the blood through my valves, I hear the swooshing of it in my head; when they look at me that way.I want to scream at him, “STOP LOOKING AT ME!! I DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER TO YOUR FUCKING QUESTION!!”But I don’t scream, I drop my head and take another drag off the cigarette.I try to formulate an answer in my head.How do I give an answer if I don’t know the question? I will have to ask, I have no other choice.Speak!I tell my mouth.Tell him you didn’t hear him, or that you didn’t understand.Which would be better? To tell him I didn’t hear him?How could I not hear him?We’re the only two in the room, and there’s no other sounds, except for the whirring of the blades of ceiling fan.The whirring, moving the air around the room, and it sounds like the swooshing of the blood in my head.Move the air, move the blood.So maybe I just tell him that I don’t understand, I don’t understand what he has asked me.Yes, yes, better.Better to tell him I don’t understand.I, um, I don’t really understand what you’re asking me.I tell him, without lifting my head. I watch the smoke rise from the end of the cigarette.I know it will float, flowing towards the ceiling fan, towards the spinning, the constant spinning, never stopping around and around like a merry-go-round.No, you must stop it, you must let me off, I can’t stand the constant spinning, it makes me sick to my stomach.I stick my foot out, trying to drag it in the sand to stop the spinning, the whirring, the swooshing of the blood, dear God just make it all stop. . . .
*I wrote this for this week’s prompt over on Tipsy Lit , “A Little Bit of Crazy”. The prompt was to write about insanity. I chose to just delve right in, and imagine myself inside insanity. Clinically, I don’t think I am insane, but there are certainly times in my life when I think I walk a very fine line; when I hang at the edge of that cliff, fearful I will lose my grip. Some days, I wonder if insanity is easier than living in this crazy, fucked up world trying to act “normal”. Anyway, this is just what I imagine it might be like—I have had this sort of tornado in my head before, swirling around, trying to think and pull my thoughts out of all the crap blowing around in my head. I took all the spaces out between the sentences for effect—I wish I could have taken all the spaces out between the words too, but it would’ve been near impossible to read then.
