Self-Inflicted Consequences

What kind of person could say “I punched my boyfriend” and truly mean it?

She could. She could not count the amount of times that she had punched, kicked, screamed, cried, scratched, and slapped her Partner.
What made it worse was the way he said “It’s fine” every time she would apologise.

It tore her up inside.

Thinking about it made her breath stop short in her nostrils, her blood pump faster, and her mind to go numb because there was nothing she could do about the past. Nothing.

Nothing.


She desperately wanted to make it better. She would do anything.

There were knives in the kitchen.

It was a set that had been passed down from her Abuela to her Mother-- who already had a much nicer set of the same brand--to her. She was happy to have them; they were an excellent brand that got the job done and got it done properly.

Her Partner drowned himself in video games. She wasn’t sure if she was initially the cause of such behavior or if it was just his modus operandi. In either case, it still stopped him from keeping her away from the knives.

She wondered what she would do with it, as she gingerly unsheathed the smallest knife from the wooden block. She most wanted to cut her fingers off. She didn’t know why, exactly-- Maybe it was because she used her hands in her trade as an artist and she felt it would be a fitting punishment for someone who both used their hands to create and to destroy.

Tears were still running down her face from memories of what she had done to her Partner. Most recently she had punched him in the jaw.

She’d had a reason for doing it, but she just could not remember what that reason was. She did, however, know that it was not a valid reason.

What she did remember was that it all happened on the last official day that she and her Partner were visiting his family in Tennessee for the Christmas Holiday and that she’d had quite enough of people and parties and Christmas altogether. She did not celebrate Christmas the way others did. She mostly saw it as a time to shower gifts upon those that she loved and did not care if she got many gifts herself; she just wanted people to be happy. She saw it as more of an excuse to be extravagant in her giving and not as a Holiday at all. She loved to give. She felt like giving was a way of saying to her family and friends that it was all going to be okay now.

But even then, Christmas was not her Holiday. She was not Christian. That, in itself, is another story.
Instead, she celebrated Yule. Since her family-by-association in Tennessee was Christian, she was not free to do so and felt, even before leaving to go to see them, trapped.

In her mind, she was a caged animal and her Partner’s family consisted of onlookers, throwing stones and peanuts at her. She sat there, cornered, growing inwardly ever so much more angry at each passing comment about her: how they should have stayed at the family house instead of a hotel; about how her Service Dog was not a “real dog”; She especially felt self conscious at the dinner table since the whole family was skin and bones and she was buxom and, compared to them, overweight.

But the final straw did not hit her back (as she saw anger differently than she saw depression) until that final night. Something happened. She could not remember it, but something snapped within her. Someone said the wrong thing, made the wrong gesture, posted the wrong message on Facebook. Whatever it was, the Monster within her grew so hulkingly large that it burst up through the chasm she often banished it to and took over her motor functions in the split of a second.

If human eyes could glow, hers would have been white hot with hatred. She approached her Partner, the look in her eyes clear.

He was just not quick enough.

She punched him full-on in the jaw.
She uttered words dripping with fear and anger intertwined, like a poison that melted every eardrum that heard what she said.
She did not remember what she said.

Everyone left the room very quickly, but she did not notice; all she could see was red in her periphery. All she could see was an adversary standing in her way.

She went at him again.

This time, he was ready for it and blocked her punch. He ducked the next. She managed a slap somewhere in between and, as she tried to pull her hand away from her final gesture of seething hot hatred, he grabbed her hands and held her still.

She became the caged animal once more.

She screamed and yelled for him to let her go.
He would not.
She told him how awful he was; how much she hated him.
His face was stoic.
She crumpled onto the floor and began to cry, his hands still holding tight to her wrists lest she get a second wind and come after him again.
She did not.

A water main burst from her eyes as tears poured out and flooded her cheeks. The Monster was swept up in the raging river of tears and swept back into it’s abysmal existence at the bottom of the chasm where it would lay in wait for its next opportunity to crawl out and wreak havoc upon the world it knew-- the family the Girl loved.

She loved her family with all of her heart and abhorred the existence of the Monster. She wanted to kill it; to slay it in cold blood and shout victoriously:
“I have won! The Monster is slain! He will never return to hurt us!”
Then she would put its head on a pike for all to see. For all to gaze upon her victory. For all to benefit from her knowledge of how to destroy it and to destroy the Monsters that lived within themselves.
Her Manic Mind imagined world peace. Her Depressed Mind knew, without a doubt, that this would never ever happen.

As she cried unabashedly, her Partner’s grip on her wrists ceased and she curled up like a terrified hedgehog.

“... too much...” was all that escaped her lips between heaving sobs and unfettered wails.

Her Partner fetched the backpack that she always carried with her. It held her emergency supply of medicine and several first aid items. She called it her Stuck In An Elevator Emergency Pack. She was terrified of elevators and the idea of being stuck in one. She did not like to be trapped.

She did not like to be caged.

She realised where she was: at Mama’s House.
Mama was a large black woman who spoke with a very deep accent and was always in her pajamas. She was also always sick with something. Despite that, Mama did not seem to suffer from depression and not only did she cook but she had the cleanest house in the world. You could eat off of any surface in that house and KNOW that Mama had just cleaned it with bleach. The house always smelled faintly of bleach.

Mama was called Mama because everyone who called her biological son their friend became a child of hers. In her eyes, the Girl’s Partner was her sons brother. She was their sister. Mama had dozens of sons and daughters, all of whom were busy marrying each other and giving her grandchildren.

Mama’s word was also law, for the most part. One had to earn her trust before she could call you a son or daughter and that meant listening to what she said. If she said “don’t marry that skank” and you went off and married that “skank” and brought her over to Mama’s, there would be hell to pay. In her younger days, Mama had been known to cane her children with whatever she could find. However, for some reason, the Girl’s Partner had been spared the rod more times than his brothers could take. They would beat him up after Mama was out of sight. But if Mama  found out that her “favourite son” had been beaten by her other sons, she would cane the rest of them. Then she would hug her Favourite. It boiled his brothers’ blood but he was, through and through, her favourite. She even seemed to prefer him over her own biological son and would often yell at him to “leave my little cowboy alone!”.

Yes, her Partner was called Cowboy. He never took off his felt cowboy hat so the name stuck. He had grown up on a horse farm so it wasn’t as though the name was just backed up by the ceremonious wearing of the hat. He rarely ever took that hat off but when he did, he had beautiful rich brown hair that curled at the bottom when he let it grow past his ears. He often let it grow past his ears.


Today was not a day that she wanted to be in Mama’s house. She thought Mama would understand but she did not. Instead of asking what was wrong, Mama yelled at her to stop crying:
“There no cryin’ ‘n this house! You stop yo’ cryin’ this ins’ant!”

She tried to choke back the tears but she just wailed even louder.

“You should be with her,” She overheard.
“I’m getting her medicine.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s in here somewhere... I don’t know which one it is.”
“Does she need water?”
“She has some.”

“Stop dat cryin’, girl! You stoppit righ’ now! I don’ allow cryin’ ‘n this house! Nevah evah.”

“Shut up, mom!” Her biological son left the room and went out into the living room to talk to his mother. She was always in the living room in the same place on the couch.     

The Girl felt betrayed as she choked down her pills. Out of everyone in the world, she thought Mama would understand someone who needed to cry. Mama had called on several occasions, crying her eyes out, to tell Cowboy that she was dying and that the next surgery might kill her. She was not being dramatic-- many of the surgeries she went through were very iffy indeed. But somehow she lived through them. It was always a miracle of science that she did and, in the faraway future, books will be written about Mama and her staunch ability to beat out all odds and live longer than anyone could ever imagine.

She pictured Mama as the first woman to reach one-hundred and fifty years and shivered just a little.



After taking the pills she was given and calming down, Mama demanded to talk to her. She had demanded earlier but had met with another “shut up, mom!” from her biological son.      

A half hour later, as the pills had begun to work but had not quite put her to sleep yet, the Girl decided to venture into the restroom, which passed within close proximity of Mama’s couch. She had no choice: it was use the restroom or pee in her pants. She chose to use the restroom.

As she walked as quietly as she could by the couch, Mama turned her head in an unnatural position, not unlike how an owl turns theirs, and said, rather harshly, “Talk to me when you get out of there, Girl.”

“No.”
She closed the door behind her and wept bitterly into a wad of toilet paper. She sat in there until she was sure that Mama was talking to someone else. She attempted to quietly escape.

It was a futile attempt:
“You c’mere, chil’.”

She tried to be polite:
“I can’t talk right now, Mama, I’m sorry.”

“Th’ hell you mean you cain’ talk righ’ now? Come ovah hee-yuh.”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

Mama ignored her:
“You know, one’a yo’ sistah’s was like you. She cry an’ cry an’ she end up in a mental house where they ain’ evah gon’ let her out. Do you wan’ be like huh? No you don’ so you quit yo’ cryin’ an’ you--”

She interrupted Mama with her hands up, showing that she held no malice against her.
“I can’t do this, Mama, I can’t--”

“You gonna en’ up jus’ like huh--”

“--can’t do this. I’m sorry. I have to go now--”

“Now you listen hee-yuh, girl--”

“I’m sorry, Mama, I really am. You have to stop.” Each word came out of her mouth without any emotion at all. She felt as fragile as a mug made of China that she had once thrown against and broken on the wall. There was still a dent in the pantry door.
She also felt as stubborn as a palm tree in a hurricane. She bent with the hurricane force winds of Mama’s poisonous words but she would not break.

She refused to break.

The meds she had been given were starting to kick in and kick in hard. Her vision began to blur. She was sure that Mama was still talking but it didn’t matter now. She stumbled into Mama’s son’s room, which had a mattress on the floor. She collapsed in a heap of clothing and exhaustion onto the side closest to the wall. She liked being next to the wall; it made her feel safe. A wall to lean against but not to be surrounded by.

Don’t let me be surrounded, she thought as sleep began to overtake her.

Mama was still trying to get her to come back. To talk. But Mama did not know what Bipolar Disorder was like-- all she knew was her sickness and all she knew was that laying down was not an option. Standing her ground was her way of fighting. Allowing herself to fall into sleep was the Girl’s way of combating her own illness. There were no similarities at all, so it seemed.

Mama’s voice was drowned out by a game that Cowboy and Mama’s son had started playing. Cowboy, her Partner, the one she had punched, put a jacket over her to keep her warm while she drifted off to sleep.

Much later that night, the two of them left Mama’s house. For the first time since she’d known him, her Partner did not shed a tear when he left Mama. She could tell he was, if not angry with her, at least not happy with what had gone on. That made her feel a bit better.

She was only awake long enough to put on her PJ’s and slip into the bed that was in his old room at his parent’s house. It had a lot of springs in it and was difficult to get into.

She grabbed onto her Partner tightly before she drifted off to sleep again.

“I sorry...love you... thank you...” she managed before falling into a deep, drugged sleep.

She did not feel it when he leaned over and planted a soft kiss on her cheek.



She was back in her home, in the present, still fingering the knife. She pressed it against her skin until it drew blood.

It did not hurt.

She drew a line across the top of her arm. Then she drew another.

“Fascinating,”  she whispered to nobody in particular.

She carved hatch marks across her skin until blood started to flow out of the papercut-sized wounds. She wanted more blood; more sacrifice for her deeds. She couldn’t say why.

She criss-crossed the blade into her skin until she felt somewhat satisfied with the amount of damage she had done. She did not bother cleaning the blade and set it down on a nearby table.

Automatically, she held onto her bleeding arm and walked into the kitchen, where she ran cold water over it. The water turned pink as it hit the white porcelain sink basin.
She had bandages just for this kind of thing. She patted her arm dry, applied some triple-antibiotic to the affected area, and covered it with gauze, which she held in place with white bandages.

She looked at her arm and realised that she wasn’t going to be hiding this from anyone unless she wore a long sleeved shirt. She found one that she didn’t care too much for and put it on. If it got dirty, it wouldn’t matter.

Her Partner was still playing video games and was none the wiser. He would find out eventually, of course, but for now she just revelled in the fact that he didn’t know.

Her arm began to hurt. She finally realised what she had done, grabbed her bandaged arm, buried herself under some blankets, and wept quietly.