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Troubles
Anonymous
blood, blood, blood: spatter-constellations of blood all over the floor, the wall, the bedsheets; blood-trails down the hallway and through the family room and the kitchen as i corpse-walked, already past the event, the bolt of will, to call 911. and still i half-considered going all the way with it, enacting the fantasy, or plan, that had been visiting my thoughts like an evil spirit for months now, which was to slit both wrists, run some lukewarm water in the bathtub, pour in a little salt to reduce the chances of blood clotting, to step in and lie down and let the light-headedness and then the blackness fill the mirror i lived in from which i saw myself, where my mirror-fingers probed the Real like the soft feelers of some underwater creature to find ash and flames creeping back from the future. the first layer of skin is called the epidermis. the paper towels i wrapped around my wrist were almost instantly soaked through, like great clumps of scar tissue that'd fallen away from my body, and i thought, good, this means i'm going to die after all, and i thought, what if the paramedics can't find my house?, and i went to the front door while my mother got out a mop and started cleaning and cleaning and i thought, so this is where i inherited my insanity. and instead of an ambulance there was a police car and then another police car: it's against the law to try to kill yourself, one of the nurses in the emergency room later told me. sorry about that, i said, and smiled at her. after the epidermis comes the dermis proper, layered into the papillary and reticular dermii. an attempted suicide at 5:00 in the morning does not bring out the friendliest in a group of already-overworked medical personnel. hurts like hell, doesn't it?, a nurse said to me. i don't really have a point of comparison just yet, i said to her, but i'll try and get back to you if i can. he thinks he's smart, one nurse said to another. they're going to use an anesthetic before they put the stitches in, aren't they?, i asked. of course, of course, the nurse explained, we're not that mean, and smiled at me. now jackie's face passed though my mind like a short eclipse. i said, listen, it wasn't really a suicide attempt. a cut that deep? yes but you can't just determine suicidal intent based on the depth of a cut. i'd just come home from a one-night-only assignment with this temp agency, i'd just gotten out of the shower; i'd thought, one little cut and maybe i'll feel better: the frustration, the sadness, will've gone someplace, then i'll sleep. why don't you want some help?, the social worker asked. i do, i mean i do need help, but, and i don't think you'll quite get this, but it has to do with freedom, right?: the reason i'm here now is cause i'm so isolated; i'm financially trapped in this place with no friends and some days not enough money to put gas in the car to see if any of my friends 20 miles away, in whose lives my appearance is invariably a comedy of human insignificance, such that DESPERATION is probably the correct word to describe it, if not PATHOS, such that this very probably isn't friendship at all, but LONGSUFFERING on their part, are even home, and then the rest of my time's spent to and from job interviews where they give me a data entry test and a typing test and a business math test and a microsoft word test and a microsoft excel test and a microsoft access test and a microsoft powerpoint test and then go wow, you got 95% on this and 93% on this; you should see how most of our applicants score, and they say well, there's no work available today but we've got a few contracts coming and of course we have to operate on a first-come, first-served basis (next is the hypodermis or subcutaneous connective tissue) so try calling us later on next week, and i call later on next week and i call later on the week after that and they say well, we have a three-day assignment on an assembly line at a meat packing plant, and they say well, we've got a temporary part-time assignment at UPS, and they say no, nothing's available yet try calling again next thursday or friday; my b.a. in english is next to useless and i have to get out of this place somehow, so how is isolating me more going to help anything? i've heard of people going from upset over something to playing with their own feces locked up like that. and the social worker says, so you're saying you don't want to be admitted voluntarily? and i say, what do you mean by that? and the social worker says, well, you can be admitted voluntarily or we can D-19 you. you have to laugh at them, the codes, the neologisms: they're there in any institution. is there a way i can not be put in a psych ward?, i ask. with a cut like that, you're getting sectioned, she says. thank you for your honesty, i tell her. my mother is almost 70 and she spends more time asleep than she does awake. the only girl i've ever been in love with, and who loves me, is in england and now i'm not even sure if by getting married to her i'll be able to work there and we can live together. there's no one around to talk to. i can't find a decent job even though i've got an interview tuesday and unistaff promised to call me back as soon as they've found something, just like half the other agencies in the phone book: these are real problems, i'm not just some kid whose cat died, any one of these'd be enough to fuck with anybody's head, can't you see? oh you did a great job, said the doctor who looked inside my cut: you've severed your radialus longus, your abductor digitus minimi, and hey, there goes the anterior interosseous nerve... stitches? we're gonna have to put your tendons back together... (that would explain why i could only feel two fingers on my hand...) jackie, you'll wonder why i haven't emailed you in so long. you'll think maybe i've "gone off" you, as you put it in your delightful london street slang. i can only hope there aren't any surprises waiting for me at yahoo.com: steven and i... rachael and i... please just say you're having a good hair week and you've just finished cleaning your flat and the honduran embassy rang and said you can start work tomorrow. mom, i said, why wasn't i slicing up my wrists when i was making these desperate (or, i wondered, is the word pathos?) jets to london? why wasn't i cutting myself in san francisco? and at last my sister, the physicist, admitted, look, you don't need to be here; this is an economically depressed area and there aren't that many job opportunities. maybe you could find a job in dc... the doctor who first looked at my cut said, you do NOT want to piss me off, when i instinctively touched his hand because the antiseptic he was applying stung. i was terrified, i really was, when i first saw the cut i'd made, i saw white strips hanging from my arm, i saw blood-soaked meat actually moving inside me when i bent my fingers. in the operating room the surgeon said i can give you general anesthesia or i can just sort of push all the blood from your arm and replace it with an anesthetic, and i said why don't you just inject a local anesthetic, then push all the blood from my arm and replace it? one moment i was lying on a bed in a white room with doctors and nurses all dressed in white and surrounded by white machines, and a nurse was injecting something into my i.v., the next moment i was waking up in that same room; i asked: can you send me back to sleep? and a nurse said, we're almost finished... and then i woke up in a hospital room. what day was it? and someone came in and asked, do you feel like hurting yourself again? yes. no, i said. do you feel like hurting anyone else? no. can you feel this? (i could feel my fingers again!), and i started crying and went back to sleep, then woke up later and started crying then went back to sleep. do you hear voices?, a psychiatrist asked. do you feel sometimes very depressed, and sometimes very ecstatic? are you heterosexual? do you have health insurance? down the hall a woman would periodically begin screaming; she sounded much like a cat a friend and i found once alongside the road. it had been run over by a car; we took it to a vet and he put it to sleep (as they say). everything on television was either boring, stupid, or both, so i switched it off. on the second day they brought in another patient, an old man who'd apparently swallowed a bunch of very not-meant-to-be-swallowed shit because he couldn't stop belching. ever. and when he went to the bathroom, well, INDESCRIBABLE is perhaps the appropriate word. so you promise not to make yourself sick like this again?, a nurse asked him. and you live all by yourself? see, in the eyes of the State, a likelihood of doing yourself harm is the same as a likelihood of doing someone else harm. on the phone to 911, at least, i'd told them i'd had an accident. you should be able to get a bus ticket in no time, my sister said. what a loser, my sister's husband said at one point. an auditory hallucination??? or had he been unable to help taking advantage of a break in the conversation to throw in a kind of open signifier: if i'd said fuck you i heard that would he have said oh no no i didn't mean you i meant...? stating the obvious anyway isn't it? opening quote from the book i started reading because everything on television was still boring, or stupid, or both: "every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject's roots are plunged. the natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters..." i'm typing this with one hand, the other's in a big white cast. where do you see yourself a year from now, the psychiatrist asked me. not here, i said. listen, um, the counselor i called told me he can't see anyone who doesn't have health insurance. but i have arranged to get you a prescription for antidepressants. just don't give up, ok? ma vie en rose and eyes wide shut were due back at the video store the day after i was hospitalized; if they ask what happened maybe i'll tell them, just for laughs.