Immolation

The sunlight from my open window barged in, rudely snatching me from my deep slumber. My eyes were pried open from the rays beating down on my eyelids, causing me to retreat to the safety of my covers. As I began to orient myself, I could feel an immense pressure inside my head, pounding and pulsating like an unexpected visitor at the door. With each beat, the regret from the night before seeped in, revealing a fragment of my memory every time and causing me to fumble to remember the whole story. Like I ever could. Finally steeling myself for the labours ahead of me, the abyss of the previous night continued to coordinate its meticulous attack.
I was out with my friends, but what happened? I can’t really remember…please tell me I didn’t do anything stupid. What if I said something offensive...?
I hit my leg several times until I could feel it begin to numb, and made the motion of cutting my neck open in order to divert myself away from last night’s events and veer towards something more productive than self-loathing.
I directed myself towards the shower and fell back into the arms of my routine. Hair first, then chest, then lower body, then–
Okay, but what if I said something racist and they all hate me– 
No. Go back. Wash that again. It’s not right. It’s not clean.
I sighed and of course relented, not wanting to disobey and face the possible consequences. A few extra minutes of effort paled in comparison to the idea of being dirty or tainted.
I mean, what if I really did miss a spot? I can’t even remember last night, how could I know wha-
I shuddered for a moment, as if my body were trying to hit the refresh button and pull me away from the runaway freight that was my thoughts.
The feeling of hunger began to surface, politely at first, before very quickly becoming a roar demanding to be heard. I managed to find the motivation to shuffle into the kitchen and made my way to the countertop. The mix of anxiety and sleep deprivation formed a smog inside my head which gave me the feeling that I was a marionette on strings designed only to dance to the beat of each intrusive thought. My input was never necessary for my body to juggle and perform; it was merely a shell used to host a cacophony of thoughts and feelings. I reached into my fridge absent-mindedly, caring only about silencing the hollow wails inside and not for the food that I was about to consume. My hands made contact with a tub of butter and decided that preparing a sandwich would require the least amount of energy. As my hands completed my creation, I felt a sense of disgust beginning to build from my chest, until it became a corporeal blockage inside the back of my throat.
There’s a spider inside that sandwich.
The thought grabbed my mind entirely and refused to be shaken off so easily. It clung to my brain and pierced it with its tiny hooks; it took the driver’s seat. The idea that six words could throw the balance of my body off so hard was frightening but not unexpected. The words bubbled up like heat from a pan with each and every letter, searing themselves onto my frontal lobe.
Don’t eat it don’t eat it don’t eat it don’t eat it
I began to wrestle with myself, desperately looking for anything that could quell the panic, but between that and my raging hunger, it felt like my brain was being torn asunder. I was so, so hungry, but what if one did crawl in and I was just too tired to notice? What if I took a bite and then–
Don’t eat it don’t eat it don’t eat it don’t eat it
The anxiety in my chest festered as the continued thought caused me to writhe in disgust. No attempt to take my mind to another place was successful and merely resulted in a leap right back into hell.
“Fuck this.”
The suffocating image had goaded me for long enough, and I was too tired to dedicate any more of my brain to keeping it at bay. I needed food and to be in a safe place and I needed it now. I bit the bullet. As I tore a piece of my sandwich away with haste, the image of the spider gripped my mind, and it would not let go. I imagined it crawling around hurriedly inside my mouth, dashing rapidly from cheek to cheek until my incisors ripped all eight of its legs from its helpless body. The feeling of biting into each gangly limb was like an explosion. I felt the meaty taste enveloping my tongue, demanding that I pay attention to every minute detail. By this point, I was on the verge of vomiting, and my only thought was to spit the sandwich out immediately. Before I could do this, I imagined the egg sac of the spider exploding inside my mouth and releasing hundreds of mini spiders. I imagined them all scurrying to find an exit from the toothy prison that they found themselves in, until they eventually started flooding out from any crevice they could find. I saw them spilling onto the floor from my mouth, falling from my ears, until I felt one squirming across my retina and dragging its abdomen from out behind my eye and…
I finally managed to spit it out. My mouth felt bliss while my brain felt blitzed. I scrambled to complete every ritual that I could to get this image out of my head, to feel safe for just one second, but to no avail. I staggered across the kitchen, back to the countertop to clean up and feel some sense of control.
I fumbled for the knife that I was using, but my tremoring hand refused to comply and instead dropped it to the floor. I knelt to the floor until I was almost level with it and caught my reflection in the stainless steel. The tool in front of me had nothing to offer except a jagged reflection of myself. My image was sad and distorted and the knife rendered only a quivering mess back onto my corneas. I knew exactly what I wanted to use it for but tried to dance around it, to turn my mind into a fortress that could stand strong in the face of any adversity. I tried to be a stronghold, but ended up being a dam; my foundations had been rattled and the surface cracks were already showing and beginning to give way to the pressure of the steady stream of intrusive thoughts. I had flashes across my mind and my reflection now instead showed a steady streak under my eye stretching down towards my chin. 
I knew it wouldn’t make me feel better, I didn’t even really want to, but the whole of my body was now urging me to do it. This thought was no longer just rooted in my mind, it had taken control of my entire nervous system. I jerked my body to try and shake the idea off, but it would not give up so easily. While I tried to regain control of myself, the thoughts managed to creep back in, utilising every momentary lapse in my defence that they could.
By this point, I was questioning the reliability of my own memory again. I knew that the spiders crawling from every orifice was just a mirage, an underhanded trick that my intrusive thoughts sought to rattle me with, but how could I be absolutely sure?
What if it was real somehow?
What if I actually did eat a spider and I bit into it and–
It felt like the temperature in the room had been raised by several hundred degrees as I felt a wave of heat engulf my body. My heart went from pounding to pummelling in what seemed like half a beat; catching me off guard and causing the panic to threaten a full takeover.
Wh-what if...
I contemplated for only a second, but that hesitation was enough to show my weakness and signal to my thoughts that they were winning.
What if I swallowed one?
I gulped. My heart felt like it was inside my mouth and that I had just devoured it whole.
What if one is crawling around inside me right now and I can’t get it out and what if it lays more eggs and what if it grows bigger and bigger until it-
The thought didn’t linger this time. It didn’t need to. Just once was enough to send my mind into a frenzy before it quickly followed itself up with another one.
Burn it
“What?”
The only way to kill it is to burn it, to burn yourself
I paused for a moment, feeling the flow of time almost come to a halt as my body felt the pull of the void tugging incessantly, begging me to take just one step closer. In that moment, I was prepared to do its bidding, but managed to delay my submission a few moments more, allowing me a few precious extra seconds for contemplation. In all my time on this Earth, I have done some seemingly “crazy” things, some ridiculous things and some dangerous things. This thought certainly wasn’t the worst that I’d ever had, not even slightly out of the ordinary. But this…this feeling, this feeling was certainly something new. Even though I knew it was more than in character for this type of thought to force its way in, it lingered with me and left its sting, making it almost impossible to wrestle my mind away from the throbbing wound. In the past, it would be something that entered my mind for a few brief seconds before I hastily shooed it away, but this time, it felt like I was actually considering it.
What i-if? No, surely…
The gears began to turn as the anxiety spread throughout my body like a pestilence. It began at the heart and pumped itself outwardly before making its way back, causing it to feel like a piercing void. It was mere seconds before my body had fully succumbed to the anxiety vice-grip, and my dangerous train of thought did nothing to ease this.
“What if these aren't intrusive thoughts anymore?”
Just uttering those words felt blasphemous to the rest of my being. A mutiny was being committed inside my brain.
“Of course, that’s ridiculous. I’ve been dealing with this for as long as I can remember; what else could it possibly be?”
A pathetic utterance that I tried to reassure myself with, knowing that my words were futile while still in the middle of articulating them.
“But if these aren't intrusive thoughts anymore, then…”
The more I questioned it, the more my brain delved into a dangerous train of thought. The idea that bubbled up inside was ridiculous, impossible, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to my brain. I hated that it did, because I knew that it was unfathomable. At least I thought that I did. Surely, it is.
“All this time…”
I began to say to myself, softly at first, but louder as I thought more and more about my upcoming defiance.
“Since I was a child, trying desperately to stop my food from becoming contaminated and preventing myself from turning into a doll or god knows what else, until now, trying desperately to just exist in peace. What if it has never been my intrusive thoughts, but instead something else?”
“Why, why, why, why?”
What started as a question, turned into a cry of rage, of disbelief, of sorrow. The words contorted in my mouth until they no longer felt real, and I had had more than enough.
“For pleasure? For a game? To torture me? To train me?”
I began to cry these words out in anguish. My brain was exhausted, but would not be bested. Not anymore.
“All this time, these thoughts have been used to torture me, but what if I gave in? What if I burnt myself to get rid of the spiders scuttling around inside me, gnawing at every artery and begging to be put out of their misery?”
I was out of my mind and I knew it, but I couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. What thoughts could I trust? Which of them were actually me? What if they’ve all been me? What if all this time, it’s just been me, and I’ve never had intrusive thoughts? What if I’ve thought about all these things on purpose? I was unaware of what was driving me anymore, but the fact that I was in the right mind to do anything anymore was astonishing. If there are spiders inside me then I must get rid of them. If there is something else controlling me then I must get rid of it. That was the only thing that I could be sure of: that I had to cleanse myself somehow. I needed to do it and quickly. Forcing myself to expel them wouldn’t work. How could I ever be sure that I was fully rid of them? That they wouldn’t come back sometime in the future? I had to be sure. I had to be sure…
Only one idea sprang to my mind. The one from before.
The only way to kill it is to burn it, to burn yourself
Was that me? Was that the thing trying to control me? Is there a thing trying to control me? Thoughts swirled with destructive force like a maelstrom, pulling my train of thought violently from one place to another and shutting down any other activity.
Maybe I will do it. Maybe then they’ll be gone. Maybe then, I won’t have to think another wretched, putrid thing ever again. Maybe I will be better off.
Yeah, fuck it, I'll do it. I will. I will, I will, I will.
A gurgling noise snapped me back to the conscious plane. I’d almost forgotten what I was even down here for until the sudden return of my stomach raging against its hunger jolted my memory.
I am quite hungry…
I picked up the knife that I had dropped earlier and threw it into my sink and washed my hands, trying my hardest to pretend that they didn’t feel rotten and infected. I did it once again for good measure, this time making sure to wash every inch of them three times over, four times over, five times over. I re-opened the kitchen drawer and pulled out a fresh knife.
Nothing to do but to try again.
Category:Mental Illness