The Knock
I am so tired. I feel like nothing I do has meaning anymore. Like nothing I ever will do, or ever did, will amount to anything. So ‘what’s the point?’ I ask myself. My life is this linear, pointless road and for some reason I keep walking it. I can’t stop, I don’t want to stop walking, but I just don’t see the purpose of it.
I’ve pushed everyone away. They do not understand me and I hate feeling them staring at me. Why keep them around? It’s not like they know what to do to help me. They feel uncomfortable around me and me around them. They tell me hollow words, futile advice, empty promises. “You should get out of the house, go for a walk, breathe some fresh air. That’d make you feel better.” or “You’ll get through it, you just have to push on.” I’m alone in this, and somehow I'm ok with it. I feel better on my own… Or at least less worse.
I’ve been seeing a therapist ever since I got back - a military appointed therapist, with too many diplomas and distinctions on her walls. She says it is natural to feel like this after what I’ve been through. That doesn’t make me feel any better. She labels my mind and my pains with grand terms like ‘PTSD’, ‘Burnout’, ‘Depression’, ‘Paranoia’ and ‘Sleep Deprivation Hallucinations’. She’s given me pills. They numb my pains and dull my mind. They do put me to sleep a bit, at least. But when I wake, I still feel the same, the world is just a bit more muffled and blurred, not so sharp anymore. So that brings me to asking again “What’s the point?”. At least, she’s positive I am not ‘suicidal’. I still have that fight in me, she says. That, I definitely agree with. As I said before, I don’t want to stop walking. I don’t want to die… But it’s more like I do not want to exist. There is a difference, I think? She says it is a very good thing that I want to get out of it, that she’d have to have me hospitalised if it got worse. She talks too much sometimes. Maybe she shouldn’t have said that.
When I came back, I was discharged. They read my report, the ones of my commanding officers and discarded me like a used broken pawn. The loss of my left foot and the deterioration of my mental state made me unreliable, ‘unfit for service’ as they labelled me. A casualty. Unwanted. But it’s better that way, it’s not like I want to go back. My nightmares are all too real for me to go asking for more.
My days go by. I do not count them anymore. Maybe one day I will again. I wake from my slumbers and I couldn't care less about the time that is constantly passing me by.
Today, I sit up in bed, grunt and moan. I feel groggy and my head is splitting down the middle. I reach for my pills and I realise the bottle is empty. That alone puts me in a mood. The nurse comes twice a week. He’s supposed to have my prescription filled up. It’s his number one job. How the hell did he forget to bring me more? I reach for my crutches and struggle to stand.
I wobble to the living room and find my phone on the coffee table amongst a half-full pizza box, empty beer cans and the overflowing ashtray. Empty battery. Of course! I resist the urge to fling it across the room. Wanting so much to see it explode in pieces against the wall. I revel for a minute in the release it would give me. Destroying what upsets me. Annihilating it. Boom, done, it exists no more.
Instead, I take a deep breath and struggle back to my room to charge it. While I wait, I head to the bathroom. I need some water on my face. That usually wakes me up, calms me down. My face dripping, I pause in front of the mirror. I look horrible. I sure look how I feel. Bloodshot eyes, patchy skin, uneven beard, greasy hair. A million bucks. I see myself grinning and I start chuckling.
As I unsteadily make my way back to my room, someone knocks. On the window. My door is all wood. But I do have a sidelight. It just annoys me when people put their dirty hands on the glass. That leaves smudges. Why not use the very good brass door knocker. Its use is literally in the name. I head to the front door and, walking by my living room and the current state it is in, I bitterly chuckle at myself again. How hypocritical of me to bitch about glass smudges…
I decide to take a step back from my anger. Count to ten. Rationalise. The nurse is not due back here for two more days, but maybe he realised I’d be out of pills. Good man.
I open the door. No nurse, nobody. I pause. I feel the rage boil in me. Breathe in, two, three, four, hold, two, and out, two, three, four. Just asshole kids playing around. Nothing to get angry about, I tell myself. I slowly and gently close the door, and I marvel at my control. My psych would be proud. Two months ago, I would have slammed it so hard that I probably would have made some damage. Instead, I just daydream of me acting out my anger. That, she probably wouldn’t be so proud of. But small steps. Better to daydream about it than actually do it, right?
In my room, I sit on the bed and stare at my phone. I turned it back on and forgot for a minute what I wanted to do with it. It comes back to me. The nurse, my pills, prompto. I tap on his name and press call. And my luck does not change as I hear his answering message greet me with his infuriating cheerful voice. Fine. I send him a text. I unplug my phone and take it with me to the living room. It is nowhere near full charge but I want to be able to answer when the nurse calls me back and I have no other use for it anyways, so 9% battery will do it.
I turn on the TV, shove the dirty clothes and packets of chips off of the couch so I can sit down and start eating my stale cereals. When I’m done, I light a cigarette. I barely register what’s on TV. Force of habit I guess. Or more for the distraction. It gives me something to look at. Makes the house not so empty, not so silent. I nod off a couple of times. Hop to the fridge, take a couple of beers with me, light a new cigarette and numb my mind a bit more in front of the idiot box.
When I wake up again, I do with a jolt. Flashes of searing flesh, the screams, the smell of blood and fire. On the TV, they’re playing some Civil War re-enactment documentary. I guess that triggered me, even in my sleep. Shaking, I turn off the TV, and take a minute to collect myself. Slow down my pacing heart, quiet the pleas and cries echoing in my ears, fade the flashing images of the atrocities. When I am ok again, I realise it is dark outside. I look at my phone. It is way past visiting time, and the nurse hasn’t shown up. Now, I’m fuming. This guy is supposed to be reliable. He hasn’t even called me back. But I have spent the whole day without having taken my meds, and I feel I managed it without too much hassle. Tomorrow, I will have to muster my courage and dignity and go to the chemist myself.
I am not hungry, but I know I should eat something. As I take a look in my mostly empty fridge, I hear the knocking on my sidelight again. But it doesn’t come from my sidelight, I realise. But from the back of the house, towards the bathroom. My windowless bathroom.
My heart pounds again. But I know I am just prone to panic and anxiety. There is a rational explanation. Maybe I misheard. Yeah, the fridge door must have bounced off the sound and made it sound like it came from behind me, when really, it came from the door. After a few breaths, I calmly close the fridge door, clench my hands on my crutches with contained rage and head to the entryway.
“Who is it?” I call out. I am surprised by my own gruff voice. After clearing it, I repeat my question. No answer. “Fine, play your little games, I’m not opening this door!” I say as I hit the door with my flat hand in frustration.
Back in the kitchen, I deliberately make unnecessary noises - slam the fridge door closed, the drawers, the microwave, tapping my fingers on the crowded counter, even hum a tuneless song that has been stuck in my head forever - just to fill the void and help me focus on something else but that deep feeling that now resides in my stomach. Fear. Irrational, yes, but definitely there and clenching at my insides.
The microwave dings and my pre-made meal is ready. The steam rises to my nostrils. Despite the unappetising dish, that usually make my mouth water, but my mind is still in panic mode and I cannot smell anything, nor can I taste it as I am eating. I just sit down on the same spot on the couch and act as if everything is normal, eating, TV on. But now, I am alert. I feel watched.
I know it is stupid and unfounded. The kids have probably gone to bed by now, but I just feel unhinged and I hate them for it. I don’t need this. The world is enough to trigger me. Why can’t they just leave me alone? The insipid romance on the TV slowly brings me back to a somewhat more relaxed state.
I start massaging the stump on my leg. Every once in a while, to add to my misery, I feel pins and needles where the foot used to be. No, not pins and needles… It starts as pins and needles, and just gets more and more intense, like shocks of electricity. It’s a cruel reminder of what is lost. Rotting flesh, somewhere. I refused the prosthetic. Courtesy of my “What’s the point” philosophy… I guess I didn’t mind the crutches. It gets painful, but having a foreign object stuck to my already throbbing limb felt like it would only make it worse.
Sometimes it is not painful. It just feels like it's still there though. Like when I look at my right foot and wiggle my toes and I can feel my left foot doing the same. The fabric of the sock on my skin, the hardness of the floor on the plant, the toes against each other. The itches, the muscle cramps, even feeling my nails grow. Absurd. The beauty of the brain. ‘Phantom Limb Syndrome’, they call it. Another grand word that doesn’t really help me. Rarely, it feels like it is not here at all. Like my brain is catching up with the reality of things. That’s when it gets harder, I suppose. Because the truth really sinks in then. It is not anger and bitterness. It is the dispassionate recollection that there is nothing to be done about it. The hopelessness. It actually, truly is gone, lost, rotting away somewhere, far, out there in the world.
With a sigh, I slump back on the sofa. The flicker of the TV enveloping me and reassuring me. Lulling me as I feel myself slip towards sleep.
I get suddenly woken up from my dreamless slumber. The TV is still on. It is cold, early hours of the morning. Something woke me up. I sit up and turn the volume down. The knock. Definitely coming from the bathroom. I immediately feel a cold sweat on the back of my neck. My eyes locked on the TV. I just press the volume button again, this time up. Up, up, up. I just have to ignore it. The knock becomes insistent. I am intent on drowning the noise with the TV. If I don’t hear it, then it is not happening, right? Knocking, more and more urgent, and then banging. Glass shattering and then silence.
I am shaking and whispering to myself, repeating my breathing techniques. The only thing I can hear now is the blasting TV. Slowly, I turn the volume back down, mute it even, hold my breath, so I can focus my ears towards the bathroom, eyes still fixed on the screen. Nothing. A few more moments, not a whisper. Nothing. Have I imagined things? Is my mind playing tricks on me? Might be one of my hallucinations. Shouldn’t be, as I haven’t had any in months, but maybe the fact that I skipped today’s meds have triggered it? I reach for my crutches and rise off the sofa. ‘Hello?’ I yell out feebly. Again, nothing. I carefully make my way to the bathroom. Slowly, quietly. I push it open and turn on the lights. On the floor and in the sink, lay the remnants of the mirror. The bathroom itself is otherwise empty and in its normal state. Ok, so I am not imagining things. I am looking around to find a rational explanation. How did the mirror get shattered?
My racing mind goes through many possible logical answers. After a few scenarios roll through my mind, I bank on the variation of temperature. The heat is abnormally high this summer and it rose quickly in the past few days. And the knocking? Well, I decide, it was the kids from before and I let it bother me so much that I started to dream about it. Simple. Yes. That’s a reasonable, sensible explanation.
As I am standing in my bathroom doorway, my eyes lock on my reflection in one of the broken mirror pieces. I realise I have the same strange look on my face as this morning. This grin, like something is funny. I notice my eyes, devout of humour, dark, hateful. I almost look like… I briskly step back, turn off the lights and close the door. I pause in the hallway, running my hand on my face. After a minute, I limp to bed. I lay awake for what seems like hours. I might have tried to convince myself that nothing is amiss but I cannot help thinking about the events of the day, that face staring back at me in the mirror.
Is it my guilt that is torturing me? My psych certainly thinks so. ‘Survivor’s Guilt’, she calls it. But she only knows what the reports say and what I could bring myself to tell her. I know the whole story. And now, I keep on seeing my broken reflection in the mirror, and this face grinning back at me, and I cannot stop thinking about him and what I did. The nameless young man’s face is haunting me. It accompanies me to the realm of dreams.
Original story & Copyright by Julia Mesrobian
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