Authors: Victoria Sawyer
Angst
Angst
Victoria Sawyer
Copyright © 2013 by Victoria Sawyer, An
S.R.H
Publication
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may
not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written
permission of the Author except for the use of brief quotations in a book
review.
Published in the United States of America
Amazon Kindle Edition, 2013
Angst Anxiety Panic Publishers
www.angstanxietypanic.wordpress.com
Cover Design: Scarlet Serpentine Designs
Cover photo Credit: Photos by Kerri (
www.photosbykerri.com
), Kerri
Lavertu
Font credit: Misprinted Type, Eduardo Recife (
www.misprintedtype.com
),
Misproject, Porcelain
January 10, 1992, Five Years Old
“May I be safe from inner and outer harm”
Loving Kindness Meditation
For D
It’s my own life
My own story
Will you hold me forever?
You, framed in that moment
in my mind
a wall of a thousand memories
may yours be the brightest
How vividly intense your eyes were in that instant
when you said I was beautiful
despite the scars
I let you touch me
I let you inside
I showed you who I am
Broken, beaten, destroyed
And you loved me anyway
Socially Unmentionable
“Victoria, what the fuck?!” he says in a harsh, tight, angry
voice. Low, deadly low. I’ve heard this voice before.
“What the fuck, babe,” I say half-heartedly, not sure where
this is going. What can I say to lead him astray? What can I say to stop him
from finding out about my problem?
My stomach is still aching something fierce and I feel bile
rising in my throat at the thought of getting into that car. I
need
that
damn alcohol on the counter over there or I’m going to freakin lose it. I need
it like an alcoholic. I imagine mentally zinging that glass into my hand from
across the room. I can already feel it, like it’s in my hand, the warmth of the
alcohol burning down my throat, the terrible fear banished beneath 17 shots.
Oh
my God… Am I am alcoholic?
I am…except…I only need it right now to feel
calm. But here’s the thing…I can’t start acting distant or like I want to get
drugged and drunk out of my mind and expect to keep him. I imagine his
ex-girlfriend drinking, snorting coke, smoking grass, taking X and then
cheating on him. He won’t like it. He just won’t.
Ok, I’ll tell him my secret, my well-guarded truth. I’ll lay
it on the line right now and see what happens. He can make his choice. Choose
the drunk, drugged out chick or the crazy one. Whichever he wants. Spin the
wheel, win a prize.
Some fuckin prize
.
“Here’s the thing,” I begin, facing him, noting his blazing
eyes, tense posture, that stiff necked look that I know so well, and I know
that I can’t push him any further. But before I can continue, a frat brother
walks into the room, startling me, causing my boyfriend to look away. My chance
has been lost.
Damn
. I
was
going to tell him. Really I was. I
wasn’t going to chicken out at the last minute and somehow magically come up
with a really nice doozy of a lie. Or was I? It’s impossible to know what I
would have done.
“Ready to go?” he asks us, and my boyfriend just looks at
me.
“Yup, let’s go,” I say with another fake brittle smile.
Let’s go, Mr. Officer, why don’t you put on those cuffs
and actually restrain me even more. I need to be humiliated. I deserve this
shit for even imagining that I could handle it. Mandated corporal punishment
from the social officer for the crazy chick.
I follow his tense back outside and I can tell that he’s
still not satisfied with our encounter. What must he be thinking? He walks into
the kitchen to find his girlfriend of a month alone, chugging a full glass of
vodka at a party before we leave to go somewhere else. What does that mean? Is
she an alcoholic? What other reason could there be? I’m sure it makes no sense
to him.
Now the car is in sight and I realize I need to go to the
bathroom,
again
. But I just went and I can’t really have to go pee again
right?
No.
If I had to go again it would mean
something else
. Something
socially unmentionable
.
Perhaps, if I’m really lucky, I can convince him that not
only do I have a massive secret drinking problem, but I’m bulimic too.
Awesome!
All the things I’m not, simply to hide the one thing I am.
Ok, I’m focusing on me again, nothing new, and I’m sick,
dead sick. My stomach is slamming and sloshing and the bile is rising and I’m
sweating and burning up and the world has been left behind, gauzy and ethereal,
but not in a pleasant way, in a terrifying way. The car doors are open now and
they want me to get in. It’s like fighting a black hole, a social dragging
unpleasant sucking black hole. But I fight it.
I can’t do it. I can’t.
I’m
full on panic mind fucked.
I can’t!!!!!!
Already I’m in the shit
I. Am. Crazy.
The thought keeps repeating like a heartbeat, a tattoo
inside my head as I try to focus on the road before me, a black tar path
snaking its way toward my panic filled final destination. The gunning of the
motor as I shift into fifth gear makes me cringe. I’m flying toward fate,
toward my first day at New Hartford University.
My self-defeating mantra is one I can’t escape, a screeching
vinyl record, stuck on the same three words. I groan,
faackkk I’m so nervous
,
as my stomach slithers, hands shaking on the steering wheel, silver ring-clad
fingers gripped in a death hold around the black plastic, like somehow my death
grasp might make me feel better.
Nope, not working. Can’t do this…can’t
.
Blood pounds in my temples, blurring my vision and the road is suddenly swimmy
and smeared, my arms weak and boneless, totally without the strength to turn
the wheel at the appropriate time.
I’m hysterical.
Crazy.
Fucked up.
A caustic, self-destructive bitch, hyped up on anxiety and
caffeine, leg jiggling with nervous energy.
I shouldn’t be terrified of my first day of college, I
should stop this nonsense. After all, I know it’s irrational, I know it’s
insane, but I can’t help it. I can’t seem to stop the feelings, any more than I
can stop breathing.
I mash my foot down on the accelerator of my junk Ford and
shove these thoughts away because they don’t matter. I’m
so sick
of my
own bullshit. I don’t want to deal with this at all, but this is my life,
almost every day. And somehow,
don't ask me how
, I’ve managed to hide my
spectacular mental defects from just about everyone under an exterior of
sarcasm, laughter, and excuses. For ten years, since I was eight years old,
I’ve been mastering the art of inventing excuses and now I’m a queen of social
sleight of hand. I guess you could call my excuses lies,
dirty
self-preserving lies
.
My stomach churns and a blistering heat races over me.
Fuck!
I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I’m gonna feel so trapped in that classroom.
In a last ditch effort to stop the physical feelings I forcefully wrench myself
back into my physical present, sitting in my car, flying down the highway
toward my first day of college. I shift my focus to the double yellow line as
it zings by along with cars, houses, scenery; I’m mentally trying to chill,
meditate, zone out. But no matter what I do, it’s useless. I’m only capable of
focusing inside my own head on every thought of catastrophic embarrassment or
having my craziness revealed at the hands of my peers.
I can’t. I am so
crazy, too weak.
I start singing along with the loud, sexy, thumping music,
my long dark hair blowing in the wind of my open window, distracting myself
from the persistent thoughts and my hot sick body. Oh God, I’m desperate, I
don’t want to be so paralyzed and sick with fear that I can’t even walk in to
my first class on my first day. What I need to do is to
shut the hell up
!
I’m
the most
frustrating person, ever. I try to ignore my crowding
thoughts, clicking on my right hand blinker, zooming toward campus, about to
take an exit to my new life.
But I can’t fully ignore my obsession. I never can. I do
have to live in here, in this head, with
the fear
. And my damn pessimism
isn’t helping matters either. It’s so hard to grow up and realize truths about
yourself, truths that you can no longer deny.
I can’t deny that I’m
depressive, sarcastic, compulsive, pessimistic, nervous, self-conscious,
anxious, over-sexed, and yet prudish
. I’ve begun to face these exquisite
details of my existence head on and I will freely admit to myself that I am a
mess.
Yup, a damn pathetic mess of a girl.
There's truth for ya
. And
I’m forcing myself to do this thing called college,
because it is expected
,
not because I want to.
I switch gears in an instant, eyes snapping to the shoulder
of the road as I pass a guy running, no shirt on, athletic shorts, nicely
tanned pec muscles moving in time with his arms, his abs glistening and one
word comes to mind.
Sex
. And maybe a second and third.
Drinking
and
partying
. I take a minute to imagine my fingers skimming rock hard
pecs, his mouth on mine and then start to think about alcohol.
Oh, sweet
alcohol.
I need to get wasted. I want to get so smashed that the real
Victoria will fade away to be replaced by a sexy, confident stranger who wants
to seduce men, somehow feel good about herself and escape her ridiculous,
persistent fear of everyday things. And since I’m admitting all my personal
failures as a way to make myself feel worse, I know I have some kind of sick
desire to be wanted by guys like Mr. Sexy Runner. I have this need to feel
worthy. Worthy of what, I have no idea.
I smile crookedly as the University sign wings by me on my
right and I slow down, realizing that I’m almost on campus now.
Let the testing
of my strength of will begin.
Smiling wryly, always able to amuse myself at
my own expense, I launch into another loud verse of my dirty rap music, cursing
like a fiend, as I turn the wheel a hard left into A lot.
#######################
I’m on foot, surrounded by other students, faculty, people
moving everywhere at once, everyone on a mission. As I stride down the hill
from the commuter lot in my black tank top, tight low-rise jeans, oversized
sunglasses, red lips, hips swaying, I’m a sight I can only imagine, trying to
view myself from the outside in. My mirror usually says the first layer is
polished and confident, shiny even, yet the inside is oh so unsure,
self-conscious, pathetic and ...crazy.
Yeah, I’m that awesome.
Campus opens up before me, sprawling, terrifyingly so, and
yet at the same time I have a sense of expansion, people everywhere, electric
excitement. I smirk to see the things that are at odds here. Buildings that
look like 19th century permanence, brick, nicely landscaped, old world,
scholarly, but the student body is a different matter altogether. Instead of
buttoned up conservatism, I’m looking at people who want to show off the goods
and
yeah, they’ve got ‘em
.
There are several types of fashion here: gym-ready, glam,
goth and the crunchy-grungy chicks. The gym-ready casual girls are wearing
spandex yoga pants and tight NHU Panthers t-shirts, while the glam girls are
all about tight jeans or skirts, tiny tops and struts that could bowl you over
from a mile away. The grungy, crunchy chicks have dreads or lank hair and wear
patchwork skirts, plaids and hemp bracelets. The guys are harder to classify,
but you’ve got your typical jocks in gym clothes, woodsy dudes in plaids and
shit-kickers, potheads with their glazed eyes and long hair, almost everyone
else is in jeans or camo cargo shorts with shirts that advertise beer.