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Scream
by Ilana Jacqueline
It took effort just to get out of the car. Just to open the door, and get out, and say hello, how are you? And to open the
door, and get back in again. To sit and wait for the pleasantries to end, and to drive away, far away, to anywhere but here.
It’s not that I don’t like my editor. It’s not that I’m all that anxious about what I wrote
in the issue. Its not that I’m nervous about anything in particular. I just feel it sometimes. I just feel it. A bubbling
nausea, a searing ache in every bone. A cluttered, dizzy sensation. Like you're drowning. Like you've always been
drowning.
I thrust open the paper on my lap and try to force the words out of my mouth. I keep trying to talk,
but I keep getting choked. I'm so tired. I just want to read my article . I just want to be normal for ten minutes. Just
long enough to get through this. Just do it. Just do it...
So I force the words out, and keep trying to read the
whole paragraph out loud. I keep having to stop and catch my breath, like I haven't been sitting for an hour. Like I've
been running my whole life, like I'm still running, and running, and trying to read out loud, and it's impossible.
It's illogical.
That's the thing that strikes me. That no matter how much I ignore it, breath, expand it
out, empty my mind, meditate, medicate, relax, sit back, and try, it doesn't work. It never works. It's a natural
disaster, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. A hurricane, a tornado, rushing through your veins, causing convulsions,
causing nausea, causing dizzy swooping sensations. Makes you want to cry, makes you want to never stop crying. You thrive
on logic, it's all you've got left. Because every waking moment is filled with the hopeless, helpless, fear that should
have gone away, that you should be able to will away.
You try.
You try so god damn hard that it's broken you more times than you can count.
She tells you that you can stop
reading. That you can cry, that you can scream. But you keep forcing every choked miserable word out, because you want it.
You want it so badly, you want to be able to open the paper, and read, but not just read a paper, you want to be able to sit
in a classroom, to go on a date, to get in an elevator, to ride with strangers, to kiss, to love, to be. So you choke out
every word, in a failed attempt at bravery, a futile realization, and an exhausting synopsis of every second of your life.
You keep reading. You have to. Every god damn person you've ever met has said to fight it. Has said to just do
it! Just do it! To just fight, and breath, and TRY like you've never god damn tried before. But you don't want excuses,
or exceptions. You want it. You want to fight ,and so you keep reading. And she keeps telling you to just scream. That it's
just "energy" that it just needs to be released. And you open your mouth, but like the words, you don't know
how to find them. You don't even remember what screaming is like, because you're always told to oppress, to control,
to be the calm. The calm you can't ever find.
She tells you to Just scream. Scream like you feel, scream like
you always feel. It's only us...just scream.
And you do, and it's so loud and wailing, and heartbreaking
you can't even recognize it. It's human. Obnoxious, and irritating, and illogical. Just illogical, and that's
the only thing that keeps you screaming, that keeps your tired slumped chest and lungs forcing out every molecule of oxygen
you've got in you. Maybe it'll take away from your brain, and end the clutter, and the panic.
And this
time, when you open your mouth, the words come out and don't stop until the end of the page.
Later you will
tell yourself that it makes no difference, that it didn’t really hurt. You will smile to yourself, tell yourself that
you’ve come a long way from who you were, tell yourself that you are changing and you are growing. Later, you will do
what you have been told, and forget and oppress and start all over again. You will upturn your lips at your wall of platitudes
--where quotes like “This Too Shall Pass” and “God Give Me The Serenity” --ebb their letters into
your mind. You will stare and try to wire yourself to think of them when the feeling threatens.
You will close your eyes
and pray like a child for nothing, to feel nothing, to know nothing of what you know. You will pray till you are on your knees,
small fists clutching the carpet, and you will wait and you will wait and you will wait until it all passes and you will know
nothing but the guilt of handing off your responsibility to fix this to some unnamed, unknown source.
Answers,
you think, will cure everything and make light of your suffering. As if you could sit around the table one morning and know
exactly why you spilt your coffee all over your lap and the cosmic justification for all of these little mistakes and inadequacies
in human nature would dissolve these burns with reason.
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