Today’s Undertaking

Millions of Americans spend at least one minute of each day doing what they can only do best, and often, only in their short moments of aloneness: Act Naturally. I am unsure as I attempt to trace back to when my natural state went from a place of relatively content emotion, to a fear of constant and sudden death. Each day, I awake deformed.  Throughout these days,  I tip-toe mental circles questioning the deformity, walking around it as if a great ring of salt possesses me, and though I can not reach the middle, the target, I am imprisoned by the circle; unable to break or cross it. And each night, as I slowly return to my sheets from a long day, beckoning for some sort of relaxation, I know that it will only take minutes before I am surely doomed to a long evening within which I lay awake and consider this deformity.  Once my paranoia was pure fear. It taunted me and I fled or attempted to make my amends; speaking it down. Now, with a habitual pattern of attempting to talk the deformity away, I have slowly noticed that I have began to taunt it. Rather than lying petrified, I almost consider this death, this outcome- tired of it’s psychological advances upon me. I wish only for everything to become so much quieter than it is.

I work in a place filled with all types of normal people. They live their habitual normal lives, some working hard, others married to those who worked hard once. They come in for their coffee, or cigarettes, or whichever vice it is they have taken fancy. Some cry on occasion, others laugh; they have allies on their side to speak with, love with, moan or cry to. Others are alone and prefer it that way. Each has their own eccentricity.

This day, a day like all other days, I am behind this tired old counter finding anything I can to keep my mind from it’s natural paranoiac state. I am considering death; I am considering nothingness; I am considering love and all sorts of options and outcomes; but most feverishly on my mind, is the appointment I have imagined. With this appointment, I  am to walk out of the doors of my workplace at the end of the day, and head straight to the north-west part of town, finding the right door to go through as I advance to the receptionist, who is wearing a white dress suit, and say “Excuse me, Ma’am. I’ve been feeling very ill. I was wondering if perhaps you could aide me, somehow; maybe allow me to rest for a few days; come up with a solution.” Of course, this appointment is imagined to be much easier than it would be in real life, if I had chose to have done so this evening after clocking out and finding my way out the door. Here, behind the counter, I am frozen. My  mind has left entirely; my body makes movements; my lips speak the same script for each customer, and I am without any inclination to which day of the week it actually is.

My next customer asks for a pack of Marlboro Lights. I acknowledge this; leaning my arm backwards, without moving my head. I dial the correct numbers in the cash register, “$5.70, please. How’s your day going?” My eyes are blank; I’m afraid he can see how blank my eyes are- Can you see how blank my eyes are? They feel blank. Are you sure you’re not seeing that….? I am silent. His day is fine. He hands me the money. I hand him the change. He has small spikes coming out of his forearm. Something is wrong with his bone structure.

His arm is much akin to that of the back of a stegosaurus.

There is something wrong with his arm.

That doesn’t happen, not usually. I quickly shift my gaze, commanding him to have a nice day.

….. I am deformed. Hour to hour. Day to day, morning to night, I awake in fear and fall asleep in angry frustration.His deformity is external- and if he is deformed, like that of a stegosaurus, does that mean my deformity is not real? Is my psychosis really this advanced? This pushes me further into my appointment. I weigh the options between taking a few days off in a nice clean room with nurses to take care of me and tell me nothing’s really actually wrong – “You’re not going to die of this affliction, little girl.  Mother’s little helper tells me so.” Oh, but how banal that is. These people don’t know! God is punishing my mind- God has crept himself into my veins- He is punishing me for sins committed so long ago they have nearly been forgotten. And this is why- God does not want me to forget, forget the things I said that day.

I might hate God.

And that might be why this is happening; this is why I should walk out this door to the nurse- tell her I need a mother; I need a prophet; I need a saint- I need an exorcist- God’s punishment has created an infection- and it spreads, spreads right from my veins. up to my neck and onward.

Twenty-seven customers later: The man’s face is half one color; half the other. This ratio is not split in the middle. It is more like a collage of shades; certain colors glued on top of other colors; stapled next to shades that tried to be the same but just didn’t quite make the grade. Maybe this is melanoma.  Maybe this is why my mother always warned me not to go outdoor without the correct SPF numeric. This man is damaged too.

Five customers later: Everything about this man looks normal. When he speaks; it takes five minutes to complete one sentence. He repeats his words, five times maybe. He stutters. He elates his voice on certain constants. He is trying to make out a sentence about the elevated price of a lime Popsicle.  It doesn’t come out right; he starts from the beginning. I have a line of seven people. My ears are ringing, my head pulsating.

My boss comes out of a green door; I am ecstatic to see her face. She offers me a cigarette break; and I am more than happy to oblige. Outside the world is quiet; for five minutes. I am sticking a book straight into my nose; my back is curved. I am hiding; I am imagining what the waiting room for the institution smells like, what the color of the walls are, do they have an corny inspirational posters? Do they tell me not to live my life in silence, but to speak my mind and tell others when death sounds like a long vacation?

I return indoors; the fifty seven year old depressed poet walks in; he asks me how I am. I tell him I am a carousel gone upside down. I am spinning, and as I accelerate, I am in search for the bars to cling on to but they have been, so far, unfound. I tell him I have spent much of my day considering institutionalizing myself. He tells me to write more. I am probably fine, he says; I need to spend more time inside.

I take a long breath. I reach for the dials again; concentrating on the smooth texture of the cash register buttons as I hit them so swiftly it were as if I were playing an instrument. “Six dollars and seventy three cents, but I have the three.” Things continue in their usual fashion. I am calming down. I am taking a moment. I am breathing.

“You need to see your mother; perhaps she will make all of this feel easier. Having her here again.”

I nod. I am not sure that I agree to the solution.

My mind wanders back to the forearm. Those spikes; sticking straight out of his arm- tall enough to go unnoticed. I wonder if they hurt when pressure is applied to them. Does this man set his pillows out differently than the rest of us? Do they double as attack weapons against zombies when the apocalypse comes? Does his deformity mean that I am not deformed, or that my deformity is a silent one. One in which my eyes go blank; and I appear serene, relaxed though inside, I am living some internal death. Some suicidal notion; some pain of certain degree; head pulsating, sheer isolation against any one else in this god-damned world (other than stegosaurus man, who I look at as both my equal and my feared outcome.) My imagination wanders back to those halls; some servings of apple sauce and benzodiazepines, an unbelievable ride into a sudden recovery.

Because I DO NOT KNOW.

Am I truly dying? Will I talk myself into death? Will my paranoia become the outcome? Will I have gone so far into anxiety that in the days when no one has heard from me; it is in fact that the pressure in my mind truly did become too much and has left me dead on my apartment floor? Or will I overcome this- lead a steady and normal mental life- without fear of sudden death and agitation? Will my deformity at some point vanish? Will I make my coffee in the morning, admiring the rain, sure that this day could surely be the greatest of my life? Or will there be that constant fear again?

Once in my life, I thought I knew. I told myself that some sudden day I would overcome all this paranoia; this psychological cranial pressure. I am not sure these days. I am not sure at all. Maybe to say it would dis-spell it; but even that I can not trust.

This is one long breath. One great deformity. One night of sleep. Another day of awakening. Another question in a great book of questions. One street in all the streets of the world. Pay no mind; dear reader- I am sure you may not have even made it this far. This is…today’s undertaking.