"Car Radio"

Chapter One: "Thoughts"

Sunday came and went like the autumn breeze in late October. The last of the leaves were beginning to shed themselves from the branches of trees. I sat, content; as I fiddled with my own fingers, contemplating life's ultimate questions. I was alone, even though there were half a dozen people around me.

***

I had this inkling, this urge that I couldn't fufill. Somehow the words that were on the page, didn't make sense to me. They felt unreal, like I wasn't the person writing these phrases. It wasn't me. Every time I tore a piece of paper out of my notebook, it tore my heart apart. Something wasn't right, but I didn't know what that something was.

I was on the brink of life and death at this point. God wasn't exactly giving me any reason to believe or even care. What was I doing with myself? I couldn't help but feel these nagging questions playing ping pong with the corners of my mind, trying to fight myself as if I didn't already know the outcome was going to be the same, every night.

I was alone, of course I had a few of my friends, my family, and I had my church behind me, but something didn't feel right. I wanted more. Self-validation wasn't enough to keep my mind going. Where was this life headed? Where were my goals and aspirations taking me? Was I destined to stay in this little town? Grow up, and become a basketball star? It felt like that's what I wanted, but my subconcious wanted something different; something -- bigger.

I felt my fingers rake across an old journal I kept, I was told journaling my emotions would be a good start to keep the depression away. Or so, that's what my therapist thought. I absentmindedly flipped through the empty manilla pages, my fingers fumbling with each page to turn it without ripping or fracturing the paper itself. I grunted, how was I supposed to fill up these pages, if I couldn't even think about my emotions, properly? Was I just supposed to pretend I knew what I was doing, and just start writing random words down, hoping maybe between the nonsense and the confusion, I'd find myself in the nonchalant jargon of rhetoric I was spewing.

I grabbed the journal and threw it across the room, grunting as I watched the lifeless book, plunk against the floor with ease. How was it so easy to express my emotions physically, but when it came to talking about it, I couldn't do it. I could scream and use my bat to hit things, but I could never truly say what was on my mind.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm broken.

I came to the conclusion that I was broken, many times before, but; this time it stuck with me. It sat harder with me than anything I'd ever done before. The sleepless nights seemed to plague me with insomnia, so much so; that I'd get up in the middle of the night, and go outside, just to walk into the forest behind my house, and just sit there, for hours. Not doing anything, not thinking, just listening. To nothing, and yet the nothingness seemed to be louder than the thoughts I had inside my own mind.

Tonight was the first night I'd break that silence. I'd shatter the stigma I'd given to myself that it wasn't okay to break down. It wasn't okay to show my emotions I didn't care if they didn't come out the way I wanted them to. I stood up from my bed, and walked over to the wall where I'd thrown the journal, and grabbed my pen, and I walked downstairs, not paying any attention to my mother or her bible study group in the den.

It was time to put my mind to the ultimate test.