Frobisher laid awake. His eyes staring at the ceiling. He looked for answers there. Sally Lou nestled in the curve of his arm. In such a calm setting, he did not feel calm.
The kids, Tony and Shari, had gone to bed hours ago. They weren’t bad kids. Often, Frobisher even caught himself liking them. It was that kids made him nervous. He had never really planned on having kids around, and he resented sharing the time with Sal.
Try as he might, he couldn’t settle his thoughts into sleep. He felt uncomfortable in his life, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He had slipped into a pattern of responsibility. Unwanted and unplanned, he didn’t think he could slip out as easily.
* * * * * * *
The Parent part of my life was invasive. I began to plan my escape. I longed for a dramatic attempt. I day dreamed about the event that would change my life.
I began carrying a razor blade to school. Tucked carefully in my folder with a paperclip, I felt prepared for the day when I would be ready to make the ultimate statement.
I pictured myself in the girls’ restroom. Wrists slashed, my counselor, Kantor, comes in at the last moment and saves me. How to make sure that my counselor arrived at the precise time was the stumbling block. Even though I couldn’t work out that difficulty, I replayed the event in my head again and again.
* * * * * * *
I felt like a pressure cooker. Functioning was just this side of impossible. The Parent was debilitating, and my customary release was unavailable. I went to school day in and day out seething. I saw Kantor once or twice a week I was being crushed.
I saw and felt others being crushed inside of me. I knew their names and their pain but very little else about their lives. Sasifraz was no help. He only commented on their being part of The Mark as well.
I endeavored to at least try to express some of what I was feeling by using the characters inside me in a story. I shared it with Kantor, but it only served to focus my attention more on the turmoil inside.
The emotional pain seemed to characterize itself as physical pain. At times, the next breath felt like mental agony. One day while I was in a class at school, I heard Frobisher scream in my mind. I couldn’t take another second of it. Fingering my razor blade, I drew it across my index finger and cut deep into the pad. I went to the teacher and ran out to the nurse’s office. Conveniently, the nurse wasn’t there, but Kantor was. She helped stop the bleeding.
“It’s pretty deep,” Kantor commented.
“I know.”
“Press this very tight. Sometimes, it takes a lot of pressure to get a cut like that to stop bleeding.”
“Ok.”
Then, Kantor looked straight at me, “Did you do this on purpose?”
For a second I thought, “Ah, what to answer, what to answer?” Instead, I hesitated only a moment before I said, “Yes.”
“What did you use?” I told her. My counselor replied that she’d have to talk to the principal because carrying a razor blade was “breaking a school rule.”
“My god,” I thought, “that would never have occurred to me,” instinctively thinking that suicide took precedence over school rules.
* * * * * * *
I ended up meeting with Kantor and the principal—the principal needing to decide whether or not to tell the Parent. He sent me along back to class while he made his decision.
I felt pretty numb about it but knew he wouldn’t tell the Parent. Later, undoubtedly because of Kantor’s influence, I was informed the Parent wouldn’t be notified. The principal said, “It sounded like that would only cause more harm” based on what the principal had been told about my home situation.
Thus, my private pain became a little more public by maybe one or two. But, the war inside didn’t change, and the score kept by both sides kept accruing.