Broken Like Me

Chapter Sixteen: Pain

How many times a day was it normal to think about jumping out the window?

Kageyama didn't have a good frame of reference for normal things. He found these thoughts often swimming through his head. The voice wasn't even a taunting malicious one, it was his own exhausted voice offering himself the image of defenestration for some comedic relief. He would think about it for a second before continuing on with his day.

Random thoughts of death had become somewhat of a normal occurrence. He was in a constant state of suicidality, which was often misconstrued as always being on the verge of committing suicide. Feeling suicidal is more of a constant state of being in which one wishes away their existence. He was less focused on killing himself and more interested in the idea of not being alive. To live was to suffer, he was pretty sure he stole that phrase from somewhere. He didn't really discuss his lack of enthusiasm about living much with others, it was simply a fact about him like his blue eyes and black hair.

He didn't have an overly complicated reason for hurting himself. It wasn't that deep. It was a self destructive urge, like any other, harming himself had taken on various forms before it became cutting. He used to not eat, relishing how the weakness and sickness of his body matched that of his mind. He just never seemed to have an appetite, food tasted like bland nothingness. His taste buds had all wilted and died off, diseased with depression. Without the joy of flavor, eating became nothing more than a dutiful, exhausting chore. But his limited eating had quickly become unfeasible with intense volleyball practice, so he forced himself to choke down food three times a day.

One day he had simply picked up his shaving razor with an overwhelming urge to hurt himself. He had sat there staring at it for an hour before hesitantly pushing it against his skin to make the smallest incision on his forearm. He watched as nothing happened, until small bubbles of blood suddenly appeared. He had dropped the razor, suddenly realizing what he was doing. From then on he had thought about the razor sitting in his bathroom cabinet as a source of comfort whenever he was in great distress.

He knew it wasn't a healthy way to cope, but at that point he had destroyed enough of the world and relationships around him that all was left to destroy was himself. He didn't see how it was different from his constant urge to break the glass of the windows around him, or throw things against the wall. Any other harmful or violent action would lead to him being heavily reprimanded for destruction of property and insolence.

He was plagued by such overwhelming emotions, that raged their way through him like a forest fire, spreading from his body out into the world. His emotions craved destruction, craved to feel something real, to feel something that could silence all the overbearing and critical noise in his head. He craved the blanketing silence that pain gave him, it was the only release from his mind's lashing whip. His soundless escape from self hatred had a bodily cost that he was forced to pay.

He didn't know if he would describe the sensation as relief, it was more of a distraction. Pain had the ability to override every other bodily sensation and clear his mind of everything else. His body would go into overdrive, fighting back against his self destructive tendencies. Perhaps what he really enjoyed was the sensation of his body caring for him.

The seeping blood was always such a striking color of red. Kageyama found himself fascinated by the shade and the strangely watery consistency. He had learned to hurt himself in less noticeable places, and no one in his life cared to take a closer look. If they did notice they would think he was a teenager seeking attention, or in some emo phase, which bothered him immensely. He was endlessly frustrated when people dismissed self harm as attention seeking.Even if someone were hypothetically doing it for attention...why would anyone refuse to give someone the compassion they so desperately wanted and judge them instead? Was there some sort of legitimacy test for what pain was worthy of taking seriously? He was endlessly frustrated by people's stupidity when it came to the topic. Not that it mattered anymore.