Gone Crazy Be Back Soon Part Fifty Five

Mom came home1

Around three in the afternoon
She took one look at the mess
And my filleted finger bleeding
Crazy amounts of blood before
She proclaimed that I needed
Stitches and I needed them now2

Grandpa agreed and mom took me
To an urgent care clinic downtown3

“We won’t have to wait as long there as we would at an ER.”4

Mom explained to me
As she re-wrapped my finger in paper towel
And grabbed an entire extra roll to take as back up5

In the car mom asked me
How the injury had happened
I repeated my story about
The lid slipping when I was
Removing it from the can of olives
Guilt nibbled at me from the inside
But I was too ashamed of myself
And too scared of mom’s reaction
To tell her how things had really happened6

At the Urgent Care Clinic7

They took one look at my finger
And led me through the doors
Into one of the exam rooms8

A doctor numbed my finger
And then four stitches later
It had stopped bleeding
The doctor also asked me
How it had happened
I repeated the story
Of the slipping can lid
And then prayed that
The truth would stay hidden9

Mom took me home
With a numb finger
And throbbing guilt10

I didn’t even tell Anne and Christine
The real way my finger had gotten
Sliced open to the bone
And I told them everything11

If I really thought about it12

The finger incident had been an accident
I had been trying to cut my chest and stomach
I hadn’t taken the lid to my finger and deliberately
Attempted to slice through it13

So I wasn’t really lying
When I said it was an accident
The lid had slipped
So my story about it slipping
Wasn’t exactly untrue
It just wasn’t the whole truth14

I liked looking at my injured finger15

The stitches stayed in for a week
I had to keep them covered with
A white tube of guaze that slid
Over my whole finger and kept it protected16

I liked privately peeling up the guaze covering
And looking at the stitches
Part of me wished I had done it to myself on purpose
Because then I would feel like I had power
It takes a lot of inner power
To transform a normal looking finger
Into a Frankenstein finger17

That’s what I had taken to referring
To the injured finger as
It was my Frankenstein finger
The wiry black stitches
And pale puckered skin
Really looked like it belonged
To a monster
And I even felt like a monster
It was good that my outsides
Now matched my insides18

Sometimes when the voices
Were trying to make me feel
Like I was a nothing
Like I was a nobody
I would look at the finger
And pretend I really had
Purposely done it
And then I would feel
A surge of control
A surge of power
And the voices would quiet
Ever so slightly
In respect and awe
That I could destroy my body
Almost as well as they
Could destroy my mind 19

When I returned to the clinic20

To get my stitches removed
I felt a sense of loss21

It felt weird to have string
Sliding out from under my skin
It felt sad to lose the stitches
That had been binding my finger together22

I briefly wondered if I could borrow
Some black wiry thread from the clinic
And use it stitch back together
The pieces of my mind and life
That felt fractured and out of place
Maybe I could bind my life back together23

The skin had healed nicely
Where the stitches had been
Now it was nothing more then
Another scar telling the story of
All the pain that had haunted my life24

I had lines of scars on my legs
From where I had cut
I had lines scars on my chest
From where I had cut
I had lines scars on my stomach
From where I had cut
I had lines of scars on my upper arms
From where I had cut
Now I had a scar on my finger
From where I had slipped up
And I had scars on the inside
That just didn’t come out in nice little lines
And didn’t heal as neatly or easily
As any of the other scars I had25

Life continued26

Crashing over my head in waves
Of confusion and hurt
And me not being able to deal27

The voices were loud and their pleas
For blood and pain were overwhelming
I felt helpless to resist their commands28

I was still going to school
But spent almost no time in class
Mostly I sat in hallways outside the various
Guidance counselor’s rooms
And waited in a fog of hallucinations
For someone to come out and give me an answer
I wanted help
I really did
But no one seemed to be able to
Give me the kind of help that I needed29

Teachers started to talk to me
About assignments I hadn’t been doing
I felt like I was swimming naked
In a sea of things that needed to be done
Things that I couldn’t manage to do
In the state I was currently in30

I continued to cut
And had started to wonder
If I should just cut too deeply
And bleed out right there
In the guidance counselors hallway
That thought made me laugh
They would finally come out to see me
And I would be dead
It would be too late
Maybe it already was too late
That last thought sobered me up
I stopped laughing
And started crying31