Paroxysm (Prompt 3b for talking_muses)
I haven’t always been like this. Well, fundamentally, I’m still the same person I’ve always been. I was always a little ungainly and clumsy, that just comes with my size. When I was a teenager I felt like I didn’t fit my own skin, like I was out of proportion with myself. And I’ve always had an unique thought process, but I like my idiosyncratic view of the world, I like knowing trivia; it keeps my mind occupied and I don’t care if other people think its strange or useless, as long as it makes me happy.
However, I haven’t always been this bad. RCMP training is quite rigorous. When I Passed Out from Depot, it was with flying colours. And I didn’t once pass out.
I suppose that I can blame the blow to my head for most of my current problems. It’s the easy way out, its something that other people understand. Its what saved my career, what’s left of it. I’m recovering from the damage done by being knocked out. Still recovering. Because I can recover from physical damage.
No one wants to admit about the mental damage. Officials can’t admit to keeping mentally unstable constables in active employment in law enforcement. It helps that I was this way to begin with, it helps that they can just brush it off and say “oh, that’s Turnbull. He’s quirky.”
It’s not normally noticeable. I can go for weeks, or months even, and I think that I’m better. I don’t see the blood so clearly any longer when I close my eyes, even when I try to. I don’t see the scraps of tissue matter. I don’t feel the fear that rushes cold through my veins leaving a trail of goosebumps pulling tight over my skin. Its not even fear for myself. I survived. Its fear that someone else that I call a friend, someone that I care about, could just stop being, just like that. That I could be right there and be helpless to doing anything about it.
The longer I go on, not feeling that fear, forgetting the gore of life torn away, the more I think that I’ve recovered. I should know better by now.
All it takes is for someone to pull out a gun when I least expect it, and suddenly its like my insides switch, and I plummet into a paroxysm. I can’t control it, I can’t control myself. Everything runs on self-destructive autopilot, and before I know it, I’ve run into a wall and knocked myself out. And once again, I’m unconscious at the very time that I’m most needed.
I don’t think I’ll ever recover. I’ll never be able to leave this desk and do the things I was trained to do. I can’t be relied upon to save anybody, not when it really counts.
I don’t want to fail anybody else.