A Million Little Pieces - James Frey [78]
I break through a stand of thick Evergreen and into a small, tight, circular Clearing. I stop walking forging pushing fighting and I close my eyes and I take a deep breath and I hope that the breath will calm me but it doesn’t so I take another and it doesn’t another doesn’t another doesn’t another doesn’t. I want to be calm but there is no calm for me.
How I am here. How I have arrived in this place at this moment on this day with this feeling history future problems life this horrible fucked-up good-for-nothing waste of a life how. Fifteen minutes ago I was holding a lifelong Criminal and cocaine Addict who spent his childhood with his Father’s dick in his mouth as he cried because he was scared to go back into the World. I ate my lunch with some kind of menacing middle-aged movie-star Look-alike and a three-strike Fugitive and a Steel Worker with torn-out hair plugs and a one-hundred-ten-pound Ghost who used to be the Champion of the World. I was given a coloring book and told it would help make me better. I watched some Judge’s stupid fucking video and I was told it would help make me better. I got sick, just like I do every other fucking day, and I am not getting better. I am twenty-three years old and I’ve been an Alcoholic for a decade and a drug Addict and Criminal for almost as long and I’m wanted in three states and I’m in a Hospital in the middle of Minnesota and I want to drink and I want to do some drugs and I can’t control myself. I’m twenty-three.
I breathe and I shake and I can feel it coming and rage and need and confusion regret horror shame and hatred fuse into a perfect Fury a great and beautiful and terrible and perfect Fury the Fury and I can’t stop the Fury or control the Fury I can only let the Fury come come come come come. Let it motherfucking come. The Fury has come.
I see a tree and I go after it. Screaming punching kicking clawing tearing ripping dragging pulling wrecking punching screaming punching screaming punching screaming. It is a small tree, a small Pine Tree, small enough that I can destroy it, and I rip the branches from its trunk and I tear them to pieces one by one I rip them and I tear them and I throw them to the ground and I stomp them stomp them stomp them and when there are no more branches I hear a voice and I attack the trunk and it’s thin and I break it in half and I hear a voice and I ignore it and I throw the broken trunk on top of the branches and one half of it is still in the ground I hear a voice and I want it out of the fucking ground and I grab it and pull pull pull and it doesn’t budge not an inch I hear a voice and I ignore and I pull scream pull and it doesn’t budge this fucking tree I want to destroy it and I let go of it and there is a voice I ignore I start kicking kicking kicking and the voice says stop stop stop stop. Stop.
I turn around.
Long black hair and deep clean blue eyes and skin pale white and lips blood red she’s small and thin and worn and damaged. She is standing there.
What are you doing here?
I was taking a walk and I saw you and I followed you.
What do you want.
I want you to stop.
I breathe hard, stare hard, tense and coiled. There is still more tree for me to destroy I want that fucking tree. She smiles and she steps toward me, toward toward toward me, and she opens her arms and I’m breathing hard staring hard tense and coiled she puts her arms around me with one hand on the back of my head and she pulls me into her arms and she me holds me and she speaks.
It’s okay.
I breathe hard, close my eyes, let myself be held.
It’s okay.
Her voice calms me and her arms warm me and her smell lightens me and I can feel her heart beat and my heart slows and I stop shaking and the Fury melts into her safety and she holds me and she says.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Something else comes and it makes me feel weak and scared and fragile and I don’t want to be hurt and this feeling is the feeling I have when I know I can be hurt and hurt deeper and more terribly than anything physical and I always fight it and control it and stop