So, I did something pretty stupid yesterday. Once I realised I had done it, I tried to cover it up as I once would have: make sure no one knew. I'm proud, and my reputation matters. But then I figured that that's the same bullshit that I've been trying to get over. This is me, damnit, love it or leave it. So Tyler, I rescind my demand for secrecy from you, because here it is.
Some disclaimers are in order. First, a gore warning as this story gets pretty gross, especially anything hyperlinked. Second is the "Not a cry for attention" caveat. I'm writing this down as an excercise in writing and honesty. I've done stuff like this before, I just usually kept it under my lid. Read, and find in it the same morbid humour I do, and you'll be reading it in the right spirit.
So I was mad yesterday, furious, seeing red, tunnel vision. I left Tyler and Jhayne because I needed to be alone, because I wasn't safe, because people were making me more angry. Some time alone, to sit and think. So I wrote my last journal entry, because I've never written while that mad before. I mean, not counting carving things into your own flesh or household furniture. Not that those come out that legibly later anyways. A sucker for introspection, I wrote so I could look back and be like "Oh, so that's what I'm like".
But it wasn't enough, I was still furious. So I was writing more, private thoughts that wouldn't ever see the light of day (not on purpose, I had to unplug my computer later). And then, in a flash, I had grabbed the glass in front of my and smashed it down into the desk, palming it into shards. An explosion of clear glittering points of one molecule wide blades.
I'd always wanted to know what that would be like to do. I'd almost done it before, but there had always been someone to stop me. I'd be screaming, and I would have smashed plates all over, and carved words of hate and anger upon the coffee table. Then I grabbed a glass and hit it once into the bannister before someone took it from me, pleading that I stop.
But this time, there was no second strike, no person to stop me. It all happened so fast, and I'd be lying if I didn't say my first thought was "That's beautiful". In all fairness, my second was "Fuck, Chris, what have you done?"
Blood, everywhere. Like brightly coloured ketchup, or fake strawberry topping. I started laughing, and I ran to the sink and washed out the cuts, but they just kept bleeding. Eventually I tried to hold it over my shirt, but then it had a pool of blood. So now I was running around, blood pooling in my hand and in my shirt, which I was holding with my left hand. Then my panic shifted from hysteria to a more concerned panic because I was in shock and couldn't honestly figure out what to do.
So I phoned Jhayne. She's my friend, she's dealt with stuff like this before, she's partly at fault, she's someone I can trust, she's the one I love... many more thoughts flew through my mind as I dialed. She picked up,
"Hello?"
"Hello?"
"*whispered to Tyler* Get your shoes on, get my stuff, we're leaving."
"Hi, I may have just done something pretty stupid."
"Why? What have you done?"
"Um, well, there's blood everywhere and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do."
You get the idea. The whole situation was intensely morbidly funny. When I had smashed the glass, my computer crashed and wouldn't turn off, and the music was on, skipping into infinity and my power button wouldn't work. Like some horrible warning noise, it thudded and thudded and thudded. So I unplugged the computer to try and make the call, but the cordless is on the same powerbar. You get the idea. It was even funny in the moment, as I try to balance all the blood pools on my body, unplugging, dialing, replugging, dialing.
So I finish asking for help, demanding that only she come and that Tyler tell no one of this. I'm not that helpful, and apparently I was hardly making sense at all, but she was on her way. I then tried to busy myself, to do something to kill time. You might think that strange, but what else would I do? I take pictures of the whole sordid mess, I wash out the sink, wash the blood off the dishes. Clean up the blood off the floor, out of the bathroom, swept up the glass into piles and fail miserably to pick them up without a dustpan and only one hand. I laugh, a lot. I clean out the wounds twice (oh godsthepainonmythumb) and the x-rays later confirm that I got out all the glass.
I manage to shower off the blood from my body and get my stained shorts back on before she arrives. We climb onto the couch, and she listens to all that I need to say even though my wallet chain digs into her foot. When I'm done, I grab her an old t-shirt so that she can dress my wounds. I pull on an old long sleeved shirt, and my found kaos kult hoody. She helps me put on my boots and I marvel at the fact that I look more like a fashion statement than a hospital patient.
We leave my house and we're both smiles and sunshine. Water is falling from the sky and we both see Angus up ahead. Unable to resist ourselves, we sneak up to him and say "Hey, sweetie, want to come to the hospital with us?" The look he gave us was priceless.
Leaving Angus and his shocked eyes, we ride the SkyTrain to Burrard, running into a friend of Jhayne's whose name escapes me, and then walk to St. Paul's. We get admitted quickly, and the attractive doctor-man lets me know how it is.
"Oh jeeze."
Stitches will be required for most of the wounds, Jhayne guesses 6 in total. He starts freezing my hand, and I remember not to look. Pain is something I have next to no problems with: once you've had migraines everything else pales in comparison because at least it fades. However, anxiety about people pumping drugs with needles into my system is something that gets to me, so as long as I don't have to watch I'm good. It actually feels kinda neat, as I can feel some of it going down my veins and other parts oozing out of the wounds. Apparently, one of them spurted so far that it got the wall. I'm rather amused by that. The only real drawback is my thumb didn't completely freeze, which made the next part less fun. Hands are funny things anyways, they have so many nerves that just one shot you're done doesn't quite work. It's prick, inject, remove, prick, inject, remove, prick, inject. You get the idea.
I lay down, as I've gotten the horrible powerlessness-anxiety feeling which is similar to dizziness and nausea. Beside me, a patient talks about how people would be better if they just treated themselves right. He uses phrases like "solar panels" to refer to skin and both me and Jhayne really enjoyed listening to him talk. The anxiety gets better, and I get moved to another bed with a working light fixture. More injections, and by now Jhayne's in full photo taking mode.
"I love this lighting."
The attractive and friendly doctor stitches up the especially gross thumb knuckle wound first, three stitches. Then the wound in my palm, one stitch. Then my middle finger, two stitches. He leaves the one on my ring to heal on its own, then goes back and adds a fourth to the thumb. Seven all told, Jhayne was close.
Then the waiting, as he wants to x-ray the wounds for possible glass contamination. An hour goes by, the sun sets, and they eventually take pictures of the inside of my hand. Smooth sailing, they wrap up my wounds in bandages, and let us go.
.
Might write more, running out of steam, going to be busy for the next few days. We'll see.
Reusing posts, so the yousendit stays: RZA - Det E Sa Jag K (featuring Petter)
