My Broken, Bleeding Brain

Transferring the sensations of depression from my brain to words on a page

Shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up, I scream at my brain, trying to silence the voices in my head, stop the poison — bubbling black — from dripping, dribbling into the cracks and crevices of my skull, trying to dull the sharp knives that are stabbing the space behind my eyeballs. And I am crying in desperation because I don’t know what to do. I tell myself to stop feeling, stop absorbing stimuli, cut off all sensations. I try to will the pain away, chanting to myself, Feelings are bad; numbness is good. Feelings are bad; numbness is good. Because my brain is bleeding, and I can feel it leaking, and I just. want. it. to. stop. Happiness is a lie, and joy is an unfamiliar taste, but peace? Peace tastes like barley and hops in the back of my throat. Peace is the first long drag of a blunt, the gradual release of tension in my shoulders, my thoughts bending and blending and ebbing and flowing and floating from one idea to another. Peace is indeed like a river. Peace is passing out on a couch and waking up to find out you have evaded the demons for eighteen hours straight.

You’re broken, broken, you’re fucking broken, I yell at the piece of shit that calls itself my brain. Excuse me; my brain is broken. It was like this when I got it. I would like to return it, I tell the long-haired fellow at the counter. “No returns or exchanges,” he answers, not even looking at me. But this one’s broken, I whine, wishing I had the balls to poke my finger at his chest. Instead, I stare at him, pathetic, helpless. He shrugs; he doesn’t care.

What the fuck am I supposed to do with this broken piece of trash? Do I throw it out the window so that the cats can devour it? It probably tastes like shit. Can I tape it together? No, that’s stupid. Maybe I can glue all the bits in place, but there isn’t a glue in the world that can hold it together. I tried to staple it, but it turned into a mutilated mess, and the pieces just busted apart.

I tried to find help. I really did. I handed my brain to people who I thought cared. They tried to mush the pieces together in their hands, as if I were a piece of moldable clay. But my brain turned into a soggy mess, and my head hurt more than ever. My mother tried to sing love into the ridges, in hopes that her encouraging songs could heal the sickness. That’s what she called it: a sickness. Mom, it’s broken, I told her for the millionth time, exasperated. It doesn’t work that way. And my father had a different approach. He wanted to smash the whole thing, his logic being that if he broke it, it would have to repair itself. “It’s reverse psychology,” he told my mother. He believed that once the outer shell was destroyed, maybe something from the very center could be salvaged and grow into something new. No, Dad, no, I yelled, as he held the gooey flesh between his fingers. There’s nothing good inside. You’re going to kill what’s left of it. Disgusted, he handed it back to me and wiped his hands on his jeans.

I heard a rumor once from a wise magician that love could save me. So I went searching in hallways and museums and churches and coffee shops, but all I found were peoples with little fractures and chips in their brains. No one was whole, and every man claimed his brain was broken too. They don’t understand, I scoffed. You don’t know what it’s like to be broken, to be hanging on by threads. Yours is defective at best.

So here I am, trying to capture the sounds of a broken brain that won’t shut up, spluttering half-formed thoughts and incoherency, hoping that if I write as it dictates, it will reveal its own solution. Come out, come out, please, please, please come out, I am begging, pleading with my brain, trying to transfer the brainwaves to my fingertips so that my mind is free from clutter, so that the pages will be filled with poison and blood instead of my soul.