Call Me Crazy

Prologue

Prologue

With an effort of will, I force my feet to carry my body into my second-period history class. I’m almost unsuccessful. I’d rather be anywhere than here.

And I can’t sit still right now. I need to walk so I can think. My mind darts from one thought to the next, never bothering to stop and complete any of them. There was assigned reading for homework last night. Did I do it? Of course not. That would have been too easy. I can only hope Mr. Dickinson won’t call on me. If he does, I’m screwed.

I can hear the whispers from the other students, similar to the whispers I heard at home, only the whispers from my parents contained words like ‘schizophrenia’ and ‘bipolar disorder’ instead of ‘psycho’ and ‘nut job’. I can feel the stares on the back of my neck and I just want to turn and scream at them, just like I had screamed at my mother last night when, once again, she and my father were discussing my mental health or lack thereof. My foot taps and my hands shake like an addict desperate for a fix. I’m not an addict, though. Wouldn’t it be nice if my problems were that simple? Instead, I’m fundamentally broken. Something inside of me is defective and refuses to operate properly, like a busted radio that won’t tune into your favorite station.

Looking down, I notice that I actually brought my history book today. I utter a prayer of thanks as I pull it out of my backpack. I open it to a random page because I have no idea what unit we’ve been learning. I have no idea what the topic has been for the past couple of weeks. Would I like to know? Absolutely. I would love to do my homework like everyone else. I would love to pass a test once in a while. But broken people don’t do homework. Broken people can’t pass tests and, as much as I would love to do those things, the malfunction inside me simply won’t let me complete those tasks. Getting from one second to the next is all I care about, it’s all I can think about. Just breathe, Tally, in-out-in-out.

I don’t even realize class has started until I hear my name being called. My jaw clenches as Mr. Dickinson’s nasally voice reaches my ears.

“Tally.”

I look up and briefly meet his stare before my eyes dart away. I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. Does he see the monster crawling under my skin, clawing to get out, to take over? If he does, he gives no indication.

“Would you care to summarize last night’s reading?” He gives me a knowing smirk. Perhaps, I imagine it.

“I can’t.” My throat is dry and my voice is gravely. I sound more like a smoker of twenty years than a seventeen-year-old.

Mr. Dickinson adjusts his glasses on his long beaklike nose. His condescending smile reveals two rows of coffee-stained teeth. No, I wasn’t imagining the smirk. “You can’t, or you won’t?” he says.

My pulse begins to race, and my hands grow clammy. In my mind, I can picture my blood beginning to boil, bubbling up and over the edge of the pot like hot water. The sounds in the classroom, the clearing throats, shuffling papers, and incessant whispers, suddenly become background noise as the voice in my mind begins yelling at me.

I do my best to ignore the voice but I rarely succeed. “Nobody understands you!” It screams at me. “You will never be okay! Nothing will ever be okay again. Just give up. GIVE UP!”

I grit my teeth in a vain attempt to keep the words from spewing from my mouth. But part of me doesn’t want to hold it in anymore. Part of me wants to release it, to finally open the wound that has been festering, growing more and more infected until it poisons everything good inside of me. My nails dig painfully into my palms. Like many times before, I welcome the pain. For a brief moment in time, the pain centers me enough to ignore the voice and despair.

I don’t understand why I’m so angry. It’s not like Mr. Dickinson did this to me. Mr. Dickinson is a jerk, and everyone knows it, but he’s not the one who made me crazy. And I’m not special to him. Every student in his class has, at some point, been on the receiving end of his degradation. But that doesn’t matter to me right now. The only thing that matters is the fact that I can’t handle his smart-ass comments. I can’t handle his belittling. I feel enough shame already. The scars on my arms have seen to that. Adding his crap to the mix, well, it’s just too much.

As his beady eyes stare down at me, I feel like a coke bottle being shaken until the pressure inside is too strong. At any moment the lid is going to fly off and the contents are going to explode into the room. As his eyes narrow on me, I know there will be no swallowing it down—not this time. This time, the lid is coming off and every bit of emotion that has been building since I woke up this morning is about to be released on these poor, innocent, untroubled minds. They already think I’m off my rocker. Why not let them see I’m not simply off my rocker, I have thrown the damn chair out the window and watched it crash to the ground into a broken mess? Like that rocker, I am splintered and broken and useless.

“Ms. Baker?” He draws out the ‘s’ so that it sounds like a snake hissing. I can’t help but imagine a snake with Mr. Dickinson’s eyes and beak nose slithering toward me as I bring a shovel down on its neck, cutting off any more hissing he might do.

Slowly, as if speaking to a toddler, I respond. “If my answer had been I won’t then that is what I would have said. The word won’t is a contraction of two words—WILL and NOT.” My voice steadily rises. “This would imply that an individual has the ability to perform a task but chooses not to. Since that was not what I said, then that is not what I meant. Any person of average intelligence with even a rudimentary comprehension of the English language would know when I said that I can’t summarize the reading, I meant that I don’t have the ability to summarize the reading.”

Some far away part of me knows I need to shut up. It almost feels as if I am watching someone else say these things. Unfortunately, it isn’t someone else, it is me and no amount of telling myself to stop talking will shut me up. Not this time. “At this point, an appropriate follow-up question you might ask would be something like, why can’t you summarize the reading? That would give me the opportunity to tell you it is because I did not do the damn reading.”

I realize I’m standing now, but I don’t know at what point in my tirade I’ve gotten to my feet. I look around at my classmates who stare back at me wearing mixed expressions. Some smirk, some giggle, and others just let their mouths hang open in shock.

When I look back to Mr. Dickenson, I see his face is bright red. I can tell he is about to let me have it. I want him to. Let’s have it out, Mr. Dickenson, right here, right now. Nothing would give me more pleasure. But, for some unknown reason, I finally do something wide, instead.

I exhale and calmly walk to the classroom door. I ignore Mr. Dickenson calling my name, threatening to have me suspended as if I care. Being suspended is the least of my worries. My movements feel mechanical to me as I walk to the girls’ bathroom. I imagine myself as some type of android stalking through the halls of Broken Arrow High School. I wish someone would reinstall my operating system.

There is only one thing that will pacify this pain, this rage that scares me to death. After checking to make sure I’m alone, I let out a slow breath and pull the blade from my pocket. I slowly sit on the floor with my back against the wall and pull my sleeves up. I shake with the anticipation of the relief I know is coming. As the razor glides across my skin, the sting nearly sends me into a trance. But the trance is fleeting. So, I cut again, and again, over and over, craving the single moment of physical pain. I don’t notice the blood pooling around me, and I don’t even hear the screams. All I know is relief, if only for a tiny second in time. And I don’t care if I have to cut every inch of my body to achieve it. I need the relief like I need air to breathe.