THE BAD PLACE
It is the end of September. I just now realized it is Thursday, not Friday.
I am in my office. I am in my bad place. My office is not a bad place; I bring my bad place with me, like a guilty photo ragged at the edges and stuffed unseen in my wallet. Everywhere I go.
My bad place is not tangible. It is not a room or a spot or an area. It’s a place in my head and I could feel it coming on this morning. It is a cross between a slow, oozing wound and a brittle snap. I could feel it coming. I didn’t know what to do. Now it’s here. Or maybe I’m there. Whichever. It doesn’t matter. The bad place is back.
As I sit here, literally and truly, with no exaggeration, I want to scream. I want to scream awful things. Horrible things. Wicked things. So the world will know how bad I am and why I should be killed.
I want to punch myself in the stomach. The thighs. The face. Like I have done so many times before.
I want to break everything in my house. Feel each bit of crockery shatter and send tremors up my legs that rattle my ribs together like windchimes.
The destruction feels good. The sound of shit breaking feels good. Punching myself feels good. Screaming awful screams feels good. This is the bad place. I don’t know why I am here or what to do about it.
Right now I am sitting and writing. I have to remind myself to breath because there is very little breathing in the bad place. I have not broken anything. I have not screamed. I have not hurt myself.
But one.
Little.
Thing.
Will do it. Will TRIGGER it.
Maybe it’s banging my pinky against a door frame. Maybe it’s misspelling a word in this article over and over and over and over and over and christ jesus fuck you in the face who the fuck ever let me near a keyboard you useless piece of shit die.
That’s all I can hear. That’s the echo of the bad place.
An hour ago I was doing “jazz hands” for children and their moms in a place that is nearly a second home. I teach children how to read! I should be proud of this. It should make me happy.
They don’t see the drive home. They don’t see the breaking and the screaming and the punching. They don’t see the visceral hate I see in the mirror. The face that says You must not just be destroyed, you must be torn apart.
This is the bad place.
What went wrong this time? What was today’s “trigger?”
There is no trigger. There is just this. This is its face. I listened to encouraging words on the way to my job. I tried to breathe on the way home. I put on a good show and got great feedback. I also got a rejection on a query letter, but that ain’t shit, that’s the business.
There is no trigger. There is just this. It just comes when it wants to.
My wife and children are healthy and safe. I have a home. My dog is loyal to a fault. My friends and family love me.
It’s never enough to stop the bad place.
There is no trigger. There is just this.
I should probably cry. That would probably help. But I don’t. I won’t. I won’t, I refuse, and I’ve been told this is bad for me. It is. I agree. So instead I come here, to the bad place, and try not to break, to scream, or to punch.
I don’t know what to do now. I don’t know how to come up for air.
There is just this. The visceral need to destroy and be destroyed.
All I can do . . . all I can ever do . . .
Is wait.
Wait just one more minute.
Wait one more minute.
Don’t give up for one more minute.
Don’t give in for one more minute.
Just stay safe for one more minute.
As of this moment—let me get a calculator—I have been here for more than 23,126,400 minutes. I just need to hang on for one more of those.
They start to add up, don’t they? A minute here, another minute there. One after another.
Pretty soon you have a life.
A life where not every minute must be spent counting the minutes, but one in which some are lost to the bad place, yes. I can’t have those minutes back. But there are so many other minutes…minutes with my wife. Minutes with my children. Minutes with my friends. Minutes with my art. Minutes for ice cream and coffee and pizza and walks around the park. My minutes. My good minutes. There are so many good minutes to be had, and so much potential in each one.
So yeah. The bad ones suck. But not every minute is bad and there’s only one way to find out: Stay here.
I am still here.
I am still safe.
I have made it one more minute.
Too many of us have not.
So today, I promise—I will wait just one more minute.
Now promise me: You will wait just one more minute. That’s not so much. Breathe with me. Even in the bad place, breathe. For one more minute.
23,126,401
23,126,402
23,126,403
One more minute.
About the campaign:
#HoldOnToTheLight is a blog campaign encompassing blog posts by genre authors around the world in an effort to raise awareness around treatment for depression, suicide prevention, domestic violence intervention, PTSD initiatives, bullying prevention and other mental health-related issues. We believe fandom should be supportive, welcoming and inclusive, in the long tradition of fandom taking care of its own. We encourage readers and fans to seek the help they or their loved ones need without shame or embarrassment.
Please consider donating to or volunteering for organizations dedicated to treatment and prevention such as: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Hope for the Warriors (PTSD), National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Canadian Mental Health Association, MIND (UK), SANE (UK), BeyondBlue (Australia), and the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.
To find out more about #HoldOnToTheLight, find a list of participating authors and blog posts, or reach a media contact, go to http://www.HoldOnToTheLight.com and join us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/WeHoldOnToTheLight
