Writer's Block 4

There is a devil in my mattress, he hears my dreams. He grabs his hands through the sheets and wrings my neck. I breathe faster, and I do not know it. Maybe I am choking. He wakes up twice a week and cannot hold himself back - he needs the rotting flesh of my brain - completely unwound and sitting like cold soup between the walls of my skull. I wake up in the morning with visions of his wrinkly skin in its dark tint, the cold, sharp talons of his hands and the deadness of his eyes. He follows me through my days, making sure I have a switch every three hours that is so quick it gives me a headache.

I had a headache from slamming a book against my head. It was my brother's favorite book about dinosaurs. I thought of the different names as I hit my forehead - brontosaurus - brachiosaurus - triceratops - until the pit in my stomach was filled with adrenaline. I sighed and through my crying eyes I could see the specks floating around - the ones that turn from black to white and escape to the sides of your vision. I have never seen one up close, they are just as elusive as I am. Some things aren't easy to look at head-on. The whole experience made me tired, and I didn't even need my trazadone to fall asleep. The salt in my tears washed my alertness away and I could fall asleep whenever I wanted. Of course I had wanted to spend my evening writing - but nothing came out of my hands the way it used to. I suppose that's what you would call major depression. I missed the sound of my fingers clattering away at lightspeed with ideas and revelations. I thought each one was profound and I took them all very seriously. I would spend hours thinking about the significance of Friday the thirteenth, birds, octopus, the Meyers-Briggs test and God, and how they were all connected. I didn't yet have a hypothesis about them, but I knew they were all related to each other.

The first scar I ever gave myself is still visible, and that was nearly six years ago. A tiny dot on the back of my right hand. It was experimental and soon became an activity I couldn't live without. I think the cigarettes replaced the self-harm, but on nights like these, I needed a combination of the two. My guilty pleasure. Only guilty because people told me it was wrong and bad, and that I was killing myself. I didn't have the right moral compass to stop myself, so I did it privately and away from anyone that could hear me. I restricted myself to only concussions - I promised I wouldn't draw anymore blood and I intended to stick to it. I knew I would relapse eventually, but I needed the right reasons. Things were so dreary and mundane that razorblades no longer appealed to me, even though I was obsessed with edges. That in itself, was an uphill battle.

On my latest lucky cigarette, I wished for a psychotic break. I was to turn twenty in three days. I wanted to spend the night with friends, and then go home and have a wild ride of spirituality that only ever made sense to me. I knew my thinking was skewed already, since it was winter time. Things that didn't make sense started to make sense, and I thought of Cat from the hospital, who knew so much about nothing you would think she was an expert. She was like a retired CIA agent that knew more about the inner workings of America's mind than even the president. She was thin and magnetic. I wanted to trade heads with her, but mine was so bashed in I couldn't remove it. 

Reviews

[matrixmark]

What an interesting take on writers block. I loved the imagination behind the whole piece. Writers block does feel like something which is following you around (an unseeen force) which is relentess in its pursuit of making you watch that terrifying cursor blinking at the top left of your laptop screen.
A fascinating read. Well penned and well structured too.

Mark.