Chapter 3: My Descent into Madness

Pushing someone can bring them to new heights and make them the best that they can be. If you push too hard, though, the fragile strings holding their sanity together can fray and finally snap...

Chapter 3

            When I got home from school, my mother was sitting on the couch watching the front door. She looked like she wanted to say something, but she wasn’t sure how, so she just sat there prolonging an awkward moment. I looked at her and waited, but when she didn’t say anything, I shook my head and walked towards my room.

            “Ian’s mom called today,” she said when I had almost closed the door of my sanctuary behind me, “She sounded very upset and more than a little angry at you.” I should’ve just let it go. I could’ve pretended that I hadn’t heard her and continued to shut the door; if it was actually important to her, she would come get me. But I was feeling like a fight, and my mother just happened to be sitting in the middle of my war path.

            “Surprise, surprise!” I said, walking out of my room and using jazz hands for effect. “When is that woman not angry at me? I’ve always done something to offend Ian or disrespect the church or betray my brothers and sisters. Why do you still believe her?”

            Rational people could have a conversation. Normal people could get over things and move on. People on good terms could fight, but eventually kiss and make up. My mother and I were, however, not rational nor normal nor on good terms…ever. She was cynical, close-minded, and a hard-core Catholic. I suppose to some degree I was too (except for the last one), but we butted heads over everything. And I do mean everything. Fashion to religious beliefs to family matters were all matters of contention between us. Something about each of us always set the other off.

            “I’m sorry Aedalyn, but I know the way that you can be when you’re around Ian. Granted, it’s hard to remain calm around the poor child, but you’re flat-out cruel to the boy! He goes to your church for heaven’s sakes! You should at least be neutral toward him if you can’t be friendly.”

            “Mom. You weren’t there! He was harassing this girl in my class today, and I had to do something before something really bad happened between them!”

            “His mom told me what happened! It was not your place to step in! She’s atheist, Aedalyn! Ian stepped in to do his Christian duty, and the fact that you would take her side over his really makes me question your judgment. Would it be too hard to make some normal friends? Maybe some of the girls from church?”

            Oh god, this wasn’t going well. I already regretted coming out of my room, but now she was bringing up an age-old argument about the strength of my faith and my sad number of Christian friends. I knew better than to take the bait, but it was one of those days. 

            “You’re going to bring this up now? I thought that we were talking about Ian! And, no, I’m not going to make friends from church! All of my friends are guys from school for a reason! I can’t stand the religious fanaticism and blind acceptance of everything that I get from the girls at church! Do you realize the hell I go through every Sunday? Those girls don’t like me. I mean, Jesus, Mom! I think differently than them, I look different then them, and I do things differently than they do things. We have nothing in common. The friends that I have are my friends because I like them for who they are and because they accept me for me!”

            I spend all day at school, and almost nobody can get me visibly upset. I’m calm and cool on the outside, but as soon as I come home, it’s time to light up the fireworks, because I think this woman likes to get me going.

            “Religious fanaticism? Blind acceptance? Aedalyn, I don’t know if you’re seeing the Catholic Church as a cult or something, but those girls are just solid in their faith. They know what they believe. They like it! I don’t know what you want or what you believe, but if it’s not the same as those girls, I’ve failed you somewhere along the line, Aedalyn. I don’t know when it was, but I’ve done something wrong with you and messed up. Now I may be too late to fix it.”

            The weight of what she said stopped me, and tears sprung up and threatened to spill over.

            “You’ve ‘failed me’? You’ve ‘done something wrong with me’? What’s that supposed to mean, mom? Are you trying to make me see what you actually think of me? Is that what this is about? Well congratulations. Now I know that not only am I your problem child and your rebellious one…oh no, no. I’ m so much more than that. I’m the biggest f****n’ screw up of your life!”

            I was crying, and she was crying, and she was trying to stop me, trying to say something that would fix what she had said, but it was too late. I was done. She had finally said what she had been thinking for a while, and I knew that she was probably right. It killed me, but she was right. All I could ever manage to do was cause problems and make her worry about her parenting.

            “Aedalyn, look at me,” she said, her eyes pleading, “You know that’s not what I meant. You know that I want what’s best for you. You just make it hard on your father and me, because we don’t know how to get through to you.”

            She was repentant. She was at least pretending that she was sorry and that she didn’t mean what she said, but I was too far gone.

            “Get through to this, Mom.”

            I showed her my palms where my cut-up hands were already forming scabs.

            “I’m done, Mom. I spent two hours on the bathroom floor at school today hyperventilating and trying to decide whether or not I wanted to kill myself. The anxiety I feel all the time makes for some awesome music, but it’s wearing on me. I don’t want to keep these thoughts at bay anymore. I don’t want to be like this anymore. Even now, I can feel myself shutting down. That’s not normal mom, and I don’t want to be like this!”

            “Aedalyn? Aedalyn? Calm down. Please, for me.”

            “For you? I’m not doing anything for you anymore.”

            My voice went deadly soft as I felt myself floating away. I was breathing too hard, and the dots in front of my eyes were coming too fast, but I needed to leave. This house was toxic. If I got out of it, maybe I would be better. This thought was the only thing that kept me going as I walked toward my room and shut the door.

            I could hear my mother outside of the door, and she even knocked a couple times, but I was too busy staying conscious. As long as I stayed awake, I was strong. As soon as I passed out, I became weak and a slave to this disease in my head. I couldn’t let that happen.

            So I packed, and I cried, and I sat with my back pressed against the door waiting until my mother gave up. She’d made her final mistake with me. She would never again hurt me or make me cry...ever again.

 

*   *   *

 

            Time passed.

            I don’t know what time it is.

            I just want to leave, but I can hear my mother’s occasional stifled sob from the living room, and I can’t bear to look at her. I can’t listen to her beg me to stay as I walk out of the house with my car keys in one hand and my bag in another.

 

*   *   *

 

            I think that I may have passed out for a little bit, but I’m not one hundred percent sure. All I know is that the same thoughts kept going through my head.

            Breathe in.

            Breathe out.

            Breathe in.

            Breathe out.

            Breathe in.

            Breathe out.

            Breathe in.

            Breathe out.

            It could’ve been hours or minutes, but it seemed like eternity to me before I heard the sigh of my mother as she lifted herself from the couch and the resounding bang of her room door closing. It may have just been my writer’s imagination, but the sound seemed so final.

            I lay there trying to quiet my breathing.

            Breathe in.

            Breathe out.

            I looked at my watch and timed how long my mother had been in her room. When five minutes had passed with no sound, I struggled to my feet, and I opened the door as quietly as I could. I half-expected to see her sitting there waiting for me, but she wasn’t. From our argument earlier, she had to have known that I was leaving, but she wasn’t there to stop me.

            So, with my bags in one hand and my car keys in the other, I made my way through the house. It seemed empty and cavernous, and every sound I made seemed to echo towards my mother’s room.

            The door was unlocked when I reached it, and my fingers hovered, unsure, over the doorknob. I wished more than anything at that moment that my mother would come running out of her room and try to convince me to stay. I didn’t care if she was angry or sad or wanted to pretend like nothing had happened, but I wanted her to stop me. I would have stayed if she had.

            She didn’t, though, and my pride wouldn’t let me stay. I had committed to leaving; I wasn’t going to stay in this hell-hole. My hand seemed to be moving in slow motion as it lighted on the knob and slowly turned.

            I can’t do this.

            Breathe in.

            Just turn the knob and step out.

            Breathe out.

            I can’t do this.

            I can’t do this.

            I can’t do this.

            I can’t do this.

            I will do this.

            Time sped up as the door came silently open and my feet led the way out onto the porch. No boards creaked. No stray cats or dogs yowled when my presence startled them. The house just stayed complacent and seemingly oblivious to my departure.

            Up until that thought, I was pretty sure that I would be able to hold it together until I made it somewhere safe, but the fact that not even my childhood home could say goodbye destroyed me. I couldn’t do it. As overdramatic as it seems, I just wanted to die. I just wanted to lie down in the drizzle and end it.

            My foot tripped over the top step of the porch and I fell down the stairs over my bag. The bag landed beneath my stomach, and the books inside seemed to be trying to tear a hole in my torso. This final indignity hurt me so badly physically and emotionally that I didn’t even move when the drizzle turned into rain and the rain into an all-out downpour. I lay there with my face in the ground crying and feeling sorry for myself and trying to decide if my spleen had ruptured.

            Eternity passed, and my anxiety rose and ebbed. I didn’t know anything except that I had reached an all-time low. My life had officially become the worst it could be, and I was only sixteen.

            For the third time throughout the course of the day, I don’t know how long had passed before some higher power decided to move me from my self-pity. I had moved my body off of the bag and was curled in the fetal position on the sidewalk when I heard a door slam. It could’ve been the door to my house, a car door, or even the door to one of those damn NASA space shuttles; I didn’t know. I was drifting in and out of consciousness, and I think that I went temporarily insane. Everything seemed surreal and impossible. It was a fantasy woven from my thoughts that had been dyed around the edges with my nightmares.

            Some of the strangest things started happening. The rain stopped, thank god, but the world seemed to pick up speed without me, so it began spinning and spinning without control. I think I actually reached out my hand and put it on the curb to hold the world still at one point, but that could’ve been a dream for all I knew or cared. Visions of my personal demons walking out of the house assaulted me, and, because I didn’t have the strength to move away, I closed my eyes and buried my head deeper into the ball that I was in so I couldn’t hear their conversations.

            Then there was warmth. Physical, emotional, and mental. My eyes had long since fallen shut, so I couldn’t see what caused it, but I knew that I was warm. I was warm and floating through the air, listening to a steady beat in the background. What was that? My heartbeat? Funeral drums? So steady and comforting and…I don’t know. I had left reality for the spaces of my mind and was now skipping through the twilight plains with reckless abandon.

Reviews

[Samuel Jack]

What happened? Did she die from having too much on her mind? It seems like maybe for this big emotional explosion there should more stimuli. It's just my opinion, and I know it's set in school, but it seemed to me like a bit of a teenagers hissy fit. Maybe have more chapters? The second chapter was my favourite, i had room to breath and take in the sights, there were more characters about and the ending hinted at something interesting. I'd love to see Aedalyn and Arya (love that name, was going to call our child that but He was born a.......He) anyway, would love to see the lady's have some adventures or at least another interaction.
So in conclusion, I reckon more chapters if you want this brain melt down ending, so you can credibly build to it. More characters or more character interactions so it's not so sparse.
Keep working towards your vision(s)

[Magnolia Liberato]

Oh. The book isn't done yet. I have a LOT more to write. My main thing was I needed some outside critique on my book before I continued on, which is why I posted the first couple of chapters. The people in my area love to tell me how great it is, but I don't get any actual critique. There's more to come, BELIEVE ME! Aria has her own past to share, Aedalyn slowly sinks into madness to the point where she can't determine between reality and her imagination, and, of course, the grand finale. ;)

[Samuel Jack]

Don't get disheartened lady please, that was merely MY opinion, you need to get those read requests out! I saw p e person called "storyworker" who looked extremely helpful. You write well and it did feel like proper writing. These were just my thoughts on it. So reach out to some more people to get a fuller picture :) look forward to reading more chapters. Like I said chapter 2 was class!