Just an picturesque description of adolescent stress, and a portrayal of how emotional pain can eventually turn physical.
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She sat on the closed toilet seat, doubled over like she’d taken a hit to the stomach. The pain was becoming more intense, more acute—more real. Her lips were slightly open, trembling like a lost child in a winter chill, air hissing in and out, in and out. A spike of agony from her abdomen—she let out a strangled cry, then sunk her head even deeper between her shoulders, hair covering her face, covering the tears that painted her cheeks. The fat, gummy, alligator droplets remained hidden until they became too heavy and fell to the floor.
Finally, clutching her middle, she stood and swayed, then opened the seat and gazed into the pool of red; a grotesque soup of blood, clots, and toilet water. Disgusted, she flushed it, stumbled to the sink, and washed her hands. Crimson swirled down the drain.
Bottles of pills lined in a row as she stared at them, wondering what to take. She doubted three ibuprofen for the cramps would work—she also had little hope for the naproxen the doctor had prescribed, it didn’t do anything in the past. So instead, she decided to double team aspirin and ibuprofen, three of each, then took a five milligram Zomig for her throbbing migraine. Her stomach was empty since it would not stop aching, so it wouldn’t be long before the pills were coursing through her veins, working their magic, stealing away the pain. Then, since her stomach ache would not subside—the doctor had called them “stomach migraines”, and had promised the Amitriptyline would take them away, along with her normal migraines, but so far she’d proved him a liar—she took a strong antacid that used to only be available via prescription.
Her body hated her, she had concluded, and she hated it back with a searing passion. The end result was a bitter rivalry that caused different, but always very intense, pains. Today she was unlucky, very unlucky—faced with menstrual cramps, migraines, stomach pains, and a heavy period all at once. She wished for nothing more than to curl up in a ball and take a gun to her head and get it over with all at once.
But all she did was curl up in a ball, under the covers, closing her teary eyes. She cried from the pain in her abdomen, but crying was a trigger for her migraines—it either caused or worsened them. Stress, too, was a trigger, and her stress levels were clearly off the charts. She rubbed her eyes red and wiped her nose, letting out a choppy breath. The curtains were closed to block out the sun—light caused more pain. Her stereo was off—sound, too, intensified the agony. And in the dark, in the silence, the demons inside of her crept out of crevices of her mind, snarling and smiling and ready to play.
She thought of him. Oh, he was beautiful, the most beautiful boy she’d ever met, on the inside and the outside. Those eyes made her heart melt, that smile made her stomach flutter. She thought of him and even more tears swam to her eyes. Confusion consumed her and warped her vision of those eyes and that smile into a weapon, stabbing her heart over and over. She yearned for him, craved him, but was almost positive he did not feel those aches for her. He had said he did, but every day she began to doubt it more and more. She would constantly insult herself, hoping that he would find it ridiculous and counter her word, but he did not, and only remained silent. The silence allowed time for her own words to settle into her mind, making her feel even worse and doubt his word even more.
She was lonely, so bitterly lonely. A kiss was only a memory—a faded one. Its feeling was lost to her, only the shell of the recollection that she liked it. Nothing had happened for a long time, and she thought that he would change that—that he would make something happen. She felt like she was on cruise control, waiting for the road to turn, jerking the wheel back and fourth and seeing nothing happen. She tugged and pulled and hit and yanked, but to no avail. Hearing those words that he said, that he felt for her, had given her hope that he was that turn in the road—but now, now that hope was strangled, suffocating more and more as nothing kept happening.
No, she was on cruise control, and now imagined him as a car coming straight at her doing eighty. Yes, the wreck would be spectacular—for he was not a car, he was a large highway truck, and she was a small Ford Taurus. Surely he’d drive away unscathed; but she, she would be left in the wreckage, bleeding and broken and fully conscious as the fire spread to the gas tanks, creating a beautiful explosion she wasn’t sure she could escape.
Despite all this, she felt compelled to keep moving. She wouldn’t pull her emergency break and call it quits, even though she felt like it sometimes. She’d had elaborate dreams, symbolic visions of her death—chugging poisonous paint and hurling a rainbow as it slowly killed her; cutting her wrists and leaving a poetic, bloody message all over the walls; or perhaps to mimic Juliet, taking a dagger and shoving it straight into her heart. All had tempted her at one point or another, but she kept on going. For what reason, she didn’t know. It certainly wasn’t for herself—her body revolted against her, and her mind was two-faced; it would turn against her when the sun went down, leaving her to herself.
She had decided that she was her own worst enemy.
Soon, though, she was deep in sleep. The medication was winding through her blood; the tears were drying against her pillow. And in this unconsciousness, she dreamed a dream that she would not remember when she awakened—that she would only recall in bits and pieces every now and then.
She was in that car, that little Ford Taurus, driving straight towards a highway truck—jerking the wheel madly, screaming, head pounding, stomach churning, cramps intensifying, blood leaking from her jeans onto the seat…
And then, the majestic finale of flame and shrapnel.
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