"Make it stop, make the fuckers stop!" was all she seemed to think these days. Not a scrap of energy left in her spent body, she would catch herself in the mirror when she went to the bathroom and find herself thinking "Who the fuck is that!?!" Too tired to even shower, she shuffled her way down the hallway resisting the urge to break everything she saw as she went.
Hatred consumed her. "Have a cigarette" she thought, but there was no longer even any pleasure in that; just a sick feeling that gnawed at the pit of her stomach and the taste of bitterness trailing over her tongue.
The sky was blue and she didn't want to look at it. Averting her eyes, she wondered how there could be beauty when she felt so overwhelmed by ugliness as if it was eating at her very core, making her bones brittle and like her mind, ready to snap at any given moment.
"Fucking garbage day, it's fucking garbage day" she remembered as she reached for the rotting fruit she had intended to eat. Like so many intentions in a fleeting moment of strength the fruit lay stinking, rotting, blackening, like her heart. Grabbing the black banana, she hurled it across the room at the same time kicking the lid off the bin and in the other direction. "Fuckers! Dirty stinking fuckers!" resonated like clashing cymbals in her disturbed mind and another sea of bile rose from deep within her to rest upon her drying lips.
Eyes open she envisioned the razor sharp edge of the knife, laying so easily within reach on the breadboard, slicing through her skin. "Perhaps wrists would be a better choice" she thought. She had heard you must slice longways rather than crossways and she became curious as to how messy it would be.
Every morning was the same. The night before full of ideas, plans, changes to make; but every morning it was the same. Get her a cup of tea, get her tablets, make her a toasted sandwich, check the heater, make her bed, empty the commode and listen to the fucking Morning Show so loud that it shattered any chance of a peaceful start to another long and arduous day. Then, of course, would come the proverbial icing on the cake, the inane fucking chatter about the prodigal son and the successful daughter, absent bar a five minute fucking phone call but ah, what legends - fucking legends. "What the fuck!?!" seemed to be a constant catch cry in her mind.Today she couldn't even look at her. Shoulders slumped, she felt as if she was the one that should be turning 90 and the anger consumed her once again.
"Get out, get the fuck out of the house" banged around in her head like a cricket ball being bounced against the walls of her skull. The urge to break plates, glasses, throw pots, smash windows, fucking kick something - hard! - was overpowering. It was like pieces of her body were all working against her, a war of control raging through her and she no longer trusted who was going to win.
Even the dog couldn't console her today; her trusted loyal and loving companion that was at her side when no-one else was, even he could not comfort her. The tides were rising. A tsunami fucking motherlode of pent up frustration was about to explode into the open and she was desperately trying to contain it. So many questions about herself ran through her mind and she wondered if she was broken beyond repair. Again the debating teams took to the podium in her head and she squeezed her eyes so fucking tight trying to get them to shut the fuck up!
Isolation and the overwhelming feelings of imprisonment, combined with complete and utter exhaustion, fed her contempt for the absent siblings her mother seemed to care more about than her. Confusion battered her about as surely as if she had been physically abused. "Family, what the fuck does that word mean?" she seemed to continually be asking herself. She had no answers, she didn't know. Just like she didn't know herself anymore. She felt like a trapped animal desperately trying to claw its way back to the reality and freedom it once knew. She was self destructing, she knew it but she didn't know how to stop. Eventually all things take their toll.
She edged her way deeper under the doona trying to block out the daylight that reminded her so cruelly of the life she was missing. Clasping a pillow to her ears she made a vain attempt to shut out the voices and she closed her eyes ever so tightly in the hope of putting a stop to the images of that taunting serrated knife, praying to make it through another day.
She had never known she was capable of such violent disdain for another human being, let alone so called family. "It's the hypocrisy of it all really" a calm voice echoed "Fucking irony of it all"
"Maybe I better stop watching Dexter" was her final thought as sleep saved her from her torment.
(c) Dianne Traynor 11 July 2013
"She"
Who is she that no longer knows herself? What will become of her? I will tell you ...
She uses the pen as her sword, ravaging pages until she is spent ... and saved.
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