Authors: Victoria Sawyer
Behind the register I have no freedom. People expect me to
stand there and ring groceries, take money and smile. There really isn’t any
option for escape, not without drawing the attention of several different
people. The manager, my bagger, the customers in the checkout line, would all
care a lot if I suddenly up and left them high and dry. At these thoughts, I
begin to flush, a red hot heat pricking my body like a thousand tiny burning
injections as my bagger returns to tell me that the man had been correct about
the price of the item.
I reach up to flick on the light above my register, making
it blink so the front end manager can enter a price change. My hands are
sweating as I stand there waiting for him to notice me. He’s at the far end of
the register banks talking to another manager. The night seems interminable and
I feel sick and nauseous and I can’t breathe, trying not to make it obvious
that I desperately want to drag huge breathes of air into my lungs.
Oh my
fucking God, hurry up, asshole!!!
Finally the manager comes over and enters the price change
and I’m able to resume the sale. My hands shake as I take the man’s money and I
will myself to focus on something, anything other than my anxiety. I open the
drawer, paying special attention to the change I have to count out.
Fifty
cents, sixty, sixty two cents.
Life is simply becoming too difficult to
live.
Thinking about my life now makes me think about my friends. Hannah,
Amanda, and even Kayla have called me since we left school. Everyone wants to
know if I can do this, or do that.
Let’s go to Montreal, we can drink there
and party like animals!
Or
, come visit me at my parents’ lake house two
hours away.
Or,
come with me to Boston to go shopping!
And I’m all
like,
ummm…yeah
…and then it’s lies, lies, lies. It makes me feel so
shitty. I miss them. I miss normalcy. Wait…I’ve never really known what it is
to be “normal,” so I guess I miss…being able to leave the fucking house.
And then there’s Jared. I’ve been…avoiding talking to him
about what’s been going on. We’ve talked on the phone many times since I
stopped leaving the house and I’ve been making up my oh so excellent excuses
about why I can’t see him and so far they’ve been working, but I can tell that
it won’t work much longer. He keeps trying to get me to talk about my anxiety,
but I’ve been silent and secretive about it for so long that it’s still hard
for me to open up. I mean, I know he knows the truth and I know logically that
he’s kind and compassionate and only wants to help me, but I can’t seem to
force myself to subject him to the true level of how damaged I really am. It
would drive him away, I just know it would, all those fucked up thoughts and
feelings. It’s one thing to say, I’m freaking out and another to explain
exactly why, to go into detail about how deranged my brain is. So I’m walking a
fine line right now, trying not to drive him away and trying to keep him at the
same time. I know if I continue to make up excuses for why I can’t go out,
he’ll get fed up soon enough. I’m not sure what to do. It’s only increasing my
misery.
Finally, after three hours of constant physical fear, it’s
break time, off the register.
Thank God.
I ask the front end manager if
I can go home. I’m not feeling well. His answer: No, we
need
you tonight
Victoria. Pleading eyes, all that bullshit. I groan inside.
Fuck no.
This
cannot be my life. I feel that bad, that on edge, that fucked up crazy that I
actually use my get out of jail free card excuse and they say NO!
WTF?
Yeah,
talk about upping the ante on my panic. As I walk toward the back of the store
with my lunch, I’m a mess. Tears almost cascading from my eyes, stomach
clenched, quivering, hot flashes, dizzy, fucked.
I want to die
. I guess
if I look at it rationally, I can leave if I really want to. Just up and leave
them high and dry, but of course I don’t, of course I feel obligated to stay,
to not look crazy, obligated to kill myself with my own anxiety.
Now lunch is over and I’m out in the aisles, pushing around
a cart of overstock that needs to be re-shelved and
fortunately
, it’s
one with a damn squirrely wheel. I’m leaning hard against the cart, digging the
handle into my stomach, wishing I had some weapon to disembowel myself with,
sicker than a dog. The truth is that I would love to call out sick every day,
or call and quit this shitty job all together. But I can’t. It’s not even
really the money. It’s because it would be admitting failure. I’ve already let
everything else go. I’ve already stopped doing all other normal things. That’s
how bad it is, I literally have not left the house for any other reason for a
month now. And every moment at home is spent feeling guilty about my stupid
mistakes, the fact that I won’t agree to see Jared or my friends and fear. Never
ending fear. Fear of Jared breaking up with me, fear of leaving the house, fear
for my sanity, everything.
I’ve gone to the bathroom several times now because I feel
like I’m going to throw up, the panic only making it worse. For literally hours
on end my heart has been beating so hard I thought my chest would explode and
my stomach is tense and tight, aching. Heat is constantly rushing over me and
my legs are so weak that I’m holding myself upright with this cart. I can’t
stop shaking and everything seems unreal, as if I’m floating above my own head,
watching myself drown under my own self-imposed terror. And my mind is the
worst, flying through every scenario, every sick twisted fear, even inventing
new ones. I almost laugh at how irrational and fucked up I am because now even
talking to someone for a moment makes me crazy.
Now I’m wandering around, nerved up, everything making me
jumpy. A woman approaches me and starts talking and her voice sounds like
mumbles, nonsense, and her face is swimming before my blurry unreal vision and
I can feel myself not listening. All I can think is,
how can I escape this
conversation?
My stomach heaves and then I think,
how can I get away
without embarrassing myself? Can I run away? What can I say to get away? What
can I say that won’t make me seem like some kind of insane person?
She
stops talking and just stares at me, buggy eyes piercing me with their gaze and
I panic. What did she say? What does she want?
“Can you repeat that?” I finally say, leaning hard into my
cart-walker and she repeats herself.
“Can you tell me where to find the candy aisle? I’m looking
for gum drops,” she says again, looking at me strangely and my thoughts
continue to race and my brain is clouded, but finally I look up at the signs above
the aisles and remember that the candy is in aisle 12.
“Aisle 12,” I finally gasp out, uncurling my claw hand from
the handle of the cart, racing away from her, toward the bathroom. I can feel
her eyes boring into me as I rush away, like a bullet in the back as I retreat.
She’s thinking I’m fucked. I know it.
I rush to the bathroom and I’m sick. Sicker than I’ve ever
been, and in public again too. As I’m heaving and purging, I’m cringing and
hating myself and hoping no one will come into the bathroom, damning myself to
hell for this affliction that I cannot cure
. I can’t do anything anymore! I
can’t even exist on a basic human level!
I’ve left normal so far behind I
don’t even know what normal is. I really feel like I want to die, right here,
and it would be a blessing.
Finally I’m done being sick and I leave the bathroom. I walk
back to my abandoned cart very slowly, careful of my tender stomach. Each step
jars it and I know I shouldn’t venture to the other side of the store away from
the bathroom, so I try to focus on putting away items on this side of the
store. I’m just rounding a corner of an aisle when I hear two cashiers talking
as they break down some shelves. I walk slowly toward them and every word is
crystal clear.
“My roommate last semester was fucked in the head!” the
blonde blue-eyed extra skinny one says with a laugh.
“What do you mean?” asks the taller curvy girl, her long
dark hair falling down her back in a thick braid.
“Well, she was fine at the beginning of the semester but
then she was sick all the time and she’d freak out when I asked her to do
anything. She just wanted to stay in our room and cry and basically be a pain
in the ass! God only knows what was wrong with her, although I do know that her
mother is in some crazy house. It probably runs in the family,”
“Haha…fuckin weird.”
“Yeah by the end of the semester I didn’t even try with her
anymore. We were done…freaky bitch. And I put in a request for a new roommate
next year.”
I slowly turn my cart around and walk it very quickly down
the aisle. Time to be sick again, like some kind of demented fucked up loser.
Finally, after emptying my stomach again of what must have
been yesterday’s lunch and maybe last week’s food, I complain again and they
let me leave. I walk out to my car, hands gripping my poor aching stomach and
before I get in to drive away, I throw up all over the ground.
Again.
And
it’s even more disgusting and embarrassing.
Thank God no one saw.
As I
drive home in the car, I start sobbing. I’ve got my Pink Floyd CD playing
The
Thin Ice
. The words feel poignant to me, real, with such terrible
suffering.
I really feel like this. I feel like my life is the thin
ice. I feel that I might slip out of my mind. I’m honestly scared. I’m sobbing
listening to this, tears blurring my vision and I don’t care. I keep thinking,
what
if I just drive my car into a tree on the side of this road? What then
? But
my next thought is,
no, I might not die, I might only be injured and that
would be far worse than I am now.
Really, I’m pathetic. I know other people
probably have much bigger things to worry about, bigger problems, real
problems, and here I am blubbering about my “issues.” I hate myself, I really,
really do. I’m a huge baby. Most people would think that what I deal with is
not a big deal at all.
God, how bad do I want a normal life. Is that too much to
ask? To be a normal dumb fuck, who never worries about anything. I would kill
for that life.
Finally I’m home and thankfully my parents and brother are
shut in their rooms so I don’t have to face them. I go upstairs, close the door
to my bedroom and sit on the bed facing the mirror across the room. My face is
a mess, tears, redness and suddenly I hate myself with such a passion that I
want to break something. I watch my face react, sad, sorry, stupid bitch.
Fuck,
I even feel like breaking me.
I start by punching my pillow, harder and
harder and harder. I want to scream, but I know I can’t without someone
hearing.
I start punching myself in the leg, just to feel the pain. Thwack,
knuckles jabbing into my thigh with every smack, harder and harder. I want to
throw something in my room, break something I care about. But I’m a huge wimp. I’m
even a failure at this. Eventually I stop punching myself, my leg seriously
sore.
I lie back on the bed, full of self-hatred, nails digging
into my palms, impotent to do anything about my panic, knowing that I can’t
kill myself, but wanting to.
Oh how I would love to kill myself.
I don’t
think I can even get close to an attempt. That’s how much of a wimp I am.
Pathetic!
Pitiful!
And, then I get out my journal and start writing about how stupid
I am. I am depressed out of my mind.
I can’t seem to catch my breath and my stomach keeps
clenching like a thick rope knot, pulled tight under pressure. I curl over in
the seat and try to drag a deep breathe into my lungs. Tears prick my eyes. I
don’t want to walk to the bathroom. I don’t want to feel this way.
The June sun is beating down on the hood and windshield of
the car and I feel smothered, trapped, out of my mind crazy. The fucking air is
so hot, stifling, because the window is only cracked a sliver and all I can
think is
I’m in my own personal fiery hell
.
I’m on vacation with the family at the lake like we do every
year. At the moment, I’ve locked myself in the car, curled up on the seat,
nursing my agonizing stomach. It rumbles, tightens, and I almost pull open the
door,
again
, to walk the 50 feet to the no-electricity, very dark
bathroom. But I don’t want to. I try to breathe, head against the glass, tears
about to seep over.
My parents are sailing right now, racing their catamaran
which means they are completely out of reach.
Incommunicado.
My brother
is at the beach with a friend and he can’t help me anyway. Instead of enjoying
myself
on vacation
, I’m in the car on a hot summer day. I choose this
spot instead of the tent or camping area because it’s closest to the bathroom
and therefore the safest place, but it’s still not close enough. My problem is
that I need to stay seated to stop the piercing pain that rips through me every
few minutes. Walking hurts too much and being too far away from the bathroom is
not an option.
I’ve been sitting here for three hours and have walked to
the bathroom in agony seven times. As laughable as it sounds, I wish I could
set up a camp chair right outside and just sit there. But I could never do that
because it’s too obvious and extremely embarrassing.
I think about the bathroom again, the dark, old, spidery,
log cabin-esque bathroom. I hate that bathroom because I can’t relax. I can’t
relax because someone might come in and hear me being sick, or because a spider
might crawl onto my head, or because I am panicked out of my mind and also it’s
pretty gross and dirty in there. It’s not like I can just camp out in there. It’s
not comfortable, it’s not convenient, it’s horrible for someone who feels like
shit.