The Ugly

If you're weak of heart or stomach, skip this one.

How do you write about the worst moment in your life?

Do you delve into the story, first person, locking the feelings on paper like a butterfly on a page? Do you show it from the outside, as if the audience was watching over your shoulder? How far back do you go to explain what exactly was happening? Why are you writing this at all?

This is the worst of it. This is the ugly bit.

I'm crying. Great, gulping, heaving sobs that sound more like a wet donkey than anything else. No restraint; I'm crying like you cry when your world's ended and no one can hear you.

I'm in the lobby of the busiest hospital in St. Paul.

The chair is standard waiting room fair. It's red. I'm wearing a red bandana, a faded blue sundress, tights, and battered converses. Glasses. Someone is talking to me from a safe distance. They're asking if they can call someone.

They don't get close. I'm covered in vomit.

I'm panicking, so far down that they almost send me to the ER, almost strap me to a gurney and take my shoes away, almost take me back to 5900. The two stolid shrinks from the outpatient program are called down - they talk to me softly, gently. I met them just this morning, sat through their program. Now I'm waiting for my dad to take me home, only I panicked with all the people, all the busy, and I threw up all over myself, sitting in the lobby of the busiest hospital in St. Paul.

I can't stop screaming his name in my head.

We broke up - he left - less than a week ago. Two days after I had gotten my shoes back. Six before I would start this program, and talk to any therapist. His loss is an unthinkable betrayal, except I deserve it for being so broken. I scream his name again and again, except I can't tell if it's a cry for help or a curse to the darkest circles of hell.

I think it's the former and I hate myself for it.

I can't hear the therapists. I can't hear anyone. I can't bear the look in my dad's eyes when he finds me like this. I can't bear the smell, can't bear the shame, can't bear hurting so much and being so alone.

This is the worst moment of my life. This is the ugliest part of my disease.