Boo.
I look up, and glare at my reflection.
Evil.
The knowledge sears my delicate sensibilities. It burns away every fanciful image I once had of myself, every cheerful fantasy of the man I had hoped I was.
Bad.
The shame bites deeper. I smash my hands into the mirror; beat my head against the sink. Lose myself in a moment of aggression against myself, against my world. It doesn’t help. My hands ache, my eyes sting and the pain inside grows ever stronger.
Wrong.
I feel like I am seeing myself for the first time. My darkest fears have been realised. I am the man whose morals flit away in the night, leaving a hollow being, a shameful lie.
Easy.
That’s what scares me, what torments me most. This wasn’t some crime of passion; this wasn’t some cathartic release of powerful emotion. It was an empty gesture, a cold offence against nature. Defenceless, even to myself. I pour myself another mini-bar drink, and wonder into the bedroom. The television taunts me with its shrill joy, a vapid screaming pleasure meant for normal people. My mask was broken now. I had proven to one and all who I was, and I wept for the skin I had shed.
I stared blankly at the dull walls of the room. I finished the drink, my shaking hands almost missing the table as I replaced the cup. The booze was a failed attempting to knock myself out, use the alcohol to avoid the inevitable guilt-ridden insomnia. The nausea was too much though, my body needed little help to sicken with itself. I flicked the lights and the television off and lay down. The darkness and the silence compound my fractured brain. I start seeing what I did, moment by moment, awful freeze-frame by awful freeze frame, the theatre of my mind transforming my crime into my punishment over and over. For the glimpse of a second, it all starts to lose meaning, to become just objects moving against each other, adrift from any objective judgement. For a moment, I am nothing, what I did means nothing; I am adrift in an existential paradise. My pleasure brings fresh waves of guilt, and I find myself adrift in shame once more.
Sleep never came, or if it did my dreams matched my thoughts so closely as to be indistinguishable. Certainly none of the hoped for refreshment and fresh perspective. Everything looked the same in the morning light. Just as broken as before. The view out of my window was grey and featureless, the city’s dingy atmosphere and the morning fog combining to give the exterior world an endless feel.
I checked out of the hotel. Paying my bill, tipping the help, I realised I was I playing a part. Slipping easily back into a role I hadn’t even realised I’d been playing my whole life. Interacting with people, being forced to hold my chipped mask back up to my face, I could hold off the gnawing emptiness I felt inside. Necessity forced me to fit back into my old mould, and maintain. I may not be still one of them, but I could pretend.
Once back on the road, the internalising reawakened, and I found it difficult to drive. My concentration flicked constantly between the road and my self-hatred. After a very close collision with a tiny hatchback, I forced myself to stop the car and have a walk. I needed to focus. I had a long way to travel, an enormously long way, and this wouldn’t do. I walked down the little high-street I’d parked on, and found a little newsagent. On a whim, I bought myself some cigarettes. I’d quit six months ago, but that seemed meaningless now. The person who quit, who was trying to change his life, get fitter, more productive, better, was long gone now. Leaning against my car, smoke idly drifting out of my nostrils and into the slow breeze, I tried to calm down. The nicotine helped, but what made the difference was picturing what would happen if I didn’t make it to my destination.
Back on the road, I turned my music up as loud as it could go, and that helped to. I was able to lose myself in the pulsating rhythms, let my mind slip easily into that easy, loose driving gear.
Leave a Reply