[Yesterday, I reached a breaking point in tensions with my family, and had an outburst along the lines of what gets most people sent to the psych ward. Luckily, the worst thing that happened was that my mother hit me in the face.]

     My spinal column came roaring out of me today, like a brass coated wallaby. I didn't know I was at the breaking point until it came, after my mother had hurled criticism veiled in a thin love disguise at my forehead; in between spiny insults, profanity and turning her back on me, I opened my mouth and out she came like a thundercloud. My top exploded and my words became garbled, and all I was aware of was that I was in the midst of a primal scream, a gutteral, ugly sound, not like in the movies, not like in anything you've ever seen that passes for art, not in any play, not in any music, it sprung forth from the depths of my depths and started hurling papers and pens and plastic wastebaskets. It roared up from the core of my being, my hurt and anger and pain and sadness. I had no control over it, I was completely at its mercy. My rational brain had nothing to do with this. This was not my choice. I watched almost objectively as my insides turned outside and I raged like a 6 year old, a 7 year old, a 13 year old, and a 24 year old all at once. I threw papers at her, I didn't want her near me, my stepfather came down the stairs to peer in at the menace in the dining room (which, to my great surprise, was me), and I met his gaze and attempted to kick a wastebasket at him. My mother pinned me down, pinned my arms against my chest, I struggled against her, I didn't want to be held, and she smacked me, hard, on the cheek and the ear all at once, I don't know how she did it, and then my focus readjusted from my carnal rage to complete indignation that my mother had just hit me, what does this mean, am I about to be institutionalized? Is this the part where I'm institutionalized?

     And that was almost fine with me, in the moment, almost fine that the Normatrons would have won. It would forever place me in a seat of honor among the mad ones and the mental outcasts I've always resonated with so strongly. I would finally be at the table. I would count, I would be in, I would also be there, my suspicions about the fears of the world and the irrationality of prisons and mental hospitals will have been confirmed - anything to contain the chaos! Anything is better than chaos! 

     What I showed myself in that particular moment today was not so much that I was crazy and needed to be locked up, but that extreme things are right up at the surface - that it's not so unfathomable, the terrible things that humans do to each other - I mean, my own mother hit me today. If that's possible in this world, where does my world end? Where do I begin? What's all right and what's not all right? I was hysterical, yes. I was on the verge of breaking things, yes. Would I have physically injured anyone? I sincerely believe not. I don't think my focus was specifically on hurting anyone. I just wasn't thinking about that. I was just a ball of pure expression. My goal in and of itself was to express, to be heard, to make the physical world around me reflect my internal chaos, to see manifest some reflection of my mangled feelings and my hurt. I wanted to shake things up and make things move. I was not focused on hurting. I was not trying to inflict harm. I was not trying to inflict pain. I was just focused on getting it out of me.