My phone blinks the blue light that lets me know I have a message, but I don’t check it. I don’t want to see. I want to see. I’m scared to see. I’m…

The playlist I created to ground me, but only ever really sinks me deeper, is playing in the background.

Something in my chest is uncomfortable. It’s not my heart—I mean, yes, my heart hurts, but that’s not what I’m talking about. There’s a knocking on my ribs caused by a fist of misunderstood emotions. It’s banging to the beat of the music.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

I feel an urge to squeeze myself together tightly, to keep all of the mess that I am from seeping through the seams. I want to curl up and wrap myself in a blanket and never come out so that even if some of my mess does leave my body, I know where it is. I know where it is, because I am leftovers in a plastic gallon bag. I am suffocating but I am whole.

How is that?

How can I be whole without air?

Well, I suppose that there is air around me, it’s just not the kind that I need. There are too many carbons attached to the oxygens I need, keeping my life just out of my reach. And I am the one doing this to myself. I am the one taking the oxygen and attaching the carbons, because I can’t stop or I’ll die, but I need to stop, or I’ll die.

I have turned over the phone now. I can’t watch that blue light anymore. I can’t stand that blue blink, blink, blink that taunts me and reminds me…

Why can’t I do anything right? I was worried, I was just worried, and somehow—somehow I messed everything up. I messed everything up with one stupid text and now the playlist is dragging me into the ocean, forcing my head under water, and I’m clawing at the water, at the nothing that surrounds me, and the keyboard in front of me is clicking, clicking, clicking, and it won’t stop, and I need it stop, because it doesn’t match the beat of the song that’s playing, but it can’t stop because it’s my lifeline.

And then it does stop, and I think. And I know this is wrong, wrong, wrong! I know I shouldn’t be thinking because thinking is dangerous—thinking gets you in trouble. I need to stop thinking but how does one stop thinking? And if I stop thinking, won’t the words stop coming? Won’t the keyboard stop clicking? And then I will be left to think again and so that means that not thinking only leads to thinking and it’s all so complicated and frustrating and I don’t know what to do about it and all I can imagine is me pulling my hair out right now, because my fingers are moving so quickly that the friction between my palms and computer is making my hands hot and I don’t know what to do and this sentence is too long, and I’m scared and confused and frustrated and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.