Regression

Content warning; mention of self-harm, a panic disorder, and bullying.

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I sit on the cold floor of my old elementary school. With knees to my chest, I notice the slowly sinking sun through a window as if after a storm. The lights inside are dim in the late afternoon, painting everything in a hazy yellow.

The back door is slightly propped open as if to welcome me back into the world, but there is nothing out there either, is there? Everyone — everything — has gone to sleep and moved on. I am stuck back in time where I ventured, in a place I should not be allowed to access.

And again, I'd hurt myself. Moving my arm sends a fresh burn along my skin, and I bleed once more. It's still fresh. Still the only thing I could feel other than the emptiness and the numbness.

Even here now, on this cold tiled floor, while smelling the staleness of old crayons and a time gone past, I can't feel a damn thing.

Except for the physical pain. The burn. And it does nothing.

I take a deep breath and glance down the hallway. There may be shadows that move and watch me, and I may recognize them. My ears ring with their silence.

What can I do? How can I leave a place I don't want to leave — a place that is filled with bad memories of mean children who caused me a different kind of pain. It was the start of everything... that I could recall, that is.

I finally stand as my sneakers squeak on the freshly polished floor — from the last time it would ever be cleaned before time left it in the dark.

I open a classroom door and the same smell of crayons, markers, and stale cleaner blankets my senses like a comforting depression. I am reminded of panic attacks, illness, and lying on the carpet while the teacher read stories.

Even as a child, I could not understand why entering this building made me sick to my stomach, caused my cheeks to turn hot and red, and made my body shake as if I were freezing. I couldn't breathe. I had no self control like most children do not. I often cried out in the middle of a lesson, no longer able to stand the explosions beneath my skin.

Something was wrong. Something was dangerous. Dread hung over me like a dark shadow figure with large and knowing red eyes that held hidden fears my young mind did not comprehend.

I begged to go home, and I sat in the office day after day on edge and hypervigilant for an invisible threat. If mom came, she threatened that dad would be angry, and I didn't want that.

But my fear was more powerful than the fear of my parents' anger, and I was forbidden to do anything but lie in bed and watch TV when I arrived home. I was grounded, or punished, sometimes. At others, there was understanding. I never knew what to expect.

I began to stay up all night, depriving myself of sleep so I was too exhausted to go to school the next day. The bright light of the small tube TV on my night stand became my comfort, and midnight reruns of The Munsters, I Love Lucy, and Space Ghost became my distraction from the darkness around me.

I was a child full of fear. I was a child heckled, laughed at, beat up, and shunned by other children. I was the quiet, shy freak in the corner with a notebook and pen, and too many fantastical ideas. I was the child who ate up teenage horror novels like they were my lifeline. I only wanted to exist in what I feared. The unknown. I was a masochist.

I shake my head of the memories, once again staring across the darkened classroom. A large stand that seemed so much bigger many years ago rests on a carpet. Atop it is an old tube TV, and below a VCR.

Beneath the large windows where the dying sun seeps through, I spot shelves with loose papers and baskets of crayons and markers. Upon approaching, I gather some printed pictures of children made of alphabet letters, and I find the letter A — a girl scribbled over with a waxy red crayon.

Mom and dad didn't like that. That was bad. I hadn't been sure why I'd done it. Another child tempted me, I think. It was rebellious and wild, and not what was supposed to be done. I felt the shame the letter F would bring as it was flicked across the paper by a teacher's angry red pen.

I fold the scribbled drawing and place it in my hoodie pocket, and then carry the stack and a basket of crayons to a short, long table. My knees rise up as I squeeze into a small plastic chair. I no longer have the stature to fit in this space, but I begin to color anyway.

A home away from home. I'll color it right this time.

©2022 Shane Blackheart