The Man in My Head
I lift my eyebrows and the little man sitting across me mimicks my movement. He has scraggly hair and a gold tooth. My head tilts to the side and he follows my movement. I laugh quietly and his laughter drowns my quiet whimpers into silence. I cry. He slaps me on the face. My head whips to the side. He turns his back on me. I wish he would go away.
I stare across the room to the magnificent mirror adorning my wall. My pallor face stares back. There are dark circles under my lacklustre green eyes. The baggy clothes hanging on my scrawny frame give me the appearance of a scarecrow. I bite my tongue and look away.
I hear my mom call me for dinner. Her voice echoes in the silence of my mind as I make my way downstairs. Photographs of my brother and me adorn the edges of the staircase. I feel like a delicate passerby as I walk down the stairs. I can imagine the happy memories floating into each other. Isolating time. Creating a void through which no happiness can escape.
The void fills me up. It weaves patterns with the sounds of laughter. The patterns dance across my exterior. They breathe life into my brother. His voice carrying me across the world and to the past. It’s a beautiful escape. And one that gives me my brother back.
My mother’s reprimanding voice cracks through the void sharply. I enter the kitchen to see my parents staring at me reproachfully, sucking the happiness coating my crumbling body. I remember that my brother is an institute for attempting suicide. My shoulders hunch. My eyes droop. My face crumbles. I am disgusted at my fragility. I scream.
It escapes me in a hush of strong wind, the sound pumps me with strength and I pull the table cloth on which dinner is set. Chaos ensues. The spaghetti dish plunks to the floor and the glasses and plates and forks rattle against each other before flying and crashing against the wall. This jarring melody gives a voice to the cracking silence of my heart breaking. I think I’m still screaming. I want my parents to actually look at me. I am in pain. I want my parents to see that. I need them.
My parents look at me with anger and disgust. Its the way I look at myself in the mirror. I hope I’m wrong but I think that my parents hate me the way I hate myself.
I look out the window and I can imagine that little man with his scraggly hair and gold teeth staring at me angrily. He is too far away to slap me. He shakes his head at me. His frown deepens. Then a pause. His lips move. I feel devastated. My lips start moving of their own accord and painfully morph into a smile, the screams skidding against the walls of my mind fading into silence. I have lost.
My parents are still staring at me. My tantrum only lasted a few seconds. It felt like an eternity. They keep staring at me as if I’ve gone crazy. I allow myself to ebb into the emptiness of the silence surrounding us. My brother is gone. Everyone knows it is my fault. I stare out the window at the little man. My only companion is the man in my head. I feel a little better.