All I have to do is go around the corner
To the other entrance to the parking lot
This should be easy
Driving is easy
I pull up to the road and look both ways
And horror strikes me to my core
The street isn’t empty

My knuckles turn pale as I grip the steering wheel
Like a cross to keep myself from shaking
My foot is on the gas pedal
The direction that this 3,000 pound machine goes
Is under my control
I lose control of my breath

I pull out onto the street

Swerve into the left lane
My mind says
There’s a family next to you
A mother singing along to the radio
A father stressing about his job
A little girl playing video games in the back
Next to her baby brother, still in a car seat
Their lives are fragile
My mind tells me
Slaughter them

I stop at the stop sign and look both ways

Humans are made of paper and glass
They collapse and shatter in a gentle breeze
And with this car I am Prospero
I can call tempests
I can crush their ribcages
Beneath the weight of metal and horsepower
Even if mother and father live
They must live with the empty space
Left behind by their much more tenuous children
I am collapsing under the weight of the power I hold
I am overwhelmed with visions of what I could do
What I might do
What I fear I will do

I turn the corner

I want to reach into my skull
And rip my brain free from its cavity
I do not want it to control me
I have no power over these obsessions
Despite the cocktail of medications I am prescribed
Despite the therapy
The conditioning
I can always pull the steering wheel
These intrusive thoughts will always infect me
They spread from my head to the rest of my body like a disease
I am sick

I pull back into the parking lot

Maybe I hurt myself...

To keep myself from hurting you...

With the thoughts begging to become actions...

First you hide the feelings, then you hide the money
You're standing there eyes unblinking, as your silver tongue lashes out
You can tell me anything, your mother says; you don't have to lie honey
You shake your head and smile, this was much easier than last night's bout
You say you're studying in your friend's house but you're black out drunk in his backyard
You say you're in your room but you're on a train, a thousand miles from home
You never look someone in the eye, you have too many secrets to guard
And then you tell them one more lie, at this point, you must be made of stone
Soon every carefully laid out facade becomes the truth, it takes over your mind
You'll watch the sparks fly, scratching your prison wall, as though waiting for a fire
"I'm not a thief, I'm not a liar, I'm innocent, there's nothing you can find"
But this one corner of your heart tells you that once a liar, always a liar

I have this thing
This thing that I do
It's no big deal
It's just this thing that I do

I took three steps
That's one less than four
Even though four is not a bad number
It is too close to the ones that are
Three and eight are the best
Followed by twelve and twenty-four
And all the numbers of seven
Well not the numbers with five
Those send shivers down my spine

Even numbers are better than odds
Excepts two
Which combined with three is five
I said odds are worse
But thirteen is pretty great
As long as it doesn't mix
With the ones that I hate
And eight is Ok
But sometimes it makes me think
That eight is too close to nine
And to make nine you must have five
So sometimes I don't think
That eight is so Ok

This is the thing
This thing that I do
I know this behavior is strange
But this is just the thing that I do

Check.

Relief.

Check.

Relief.

Check.

Relief.

Pause.

Don’t check.

Un-pause.

Sudden and devastating irony that one’s skin can crawl, yet none of their limbs work.

The only animated parts being my heart as it hammers against the rigid, perspiring cage that it so desperately tries to keep alive.

And my lungs, as they desperately gulp for air like they may never taste it again.

For who knows if oxygen exists in the darkness that lurks at the epicentre of the collision between fact and fiction.


Check.

Check again.