Page 114 of Use Me Up

I just get downstairs and I can’t turn the lights on. I panic. I pace through the house, turning on other lights, and they’re all working just fine, and I can’t figure out what the hell is going on, and I feel that awful helpless feeling welling up in me, coming from the bottom of me, taking me over, squeezing itself around my chest like an iron band.

I punch a hole in the wall.

I don’t think. I feel out of control and then boom.

And it doesn’t help anything, that’s the thing. It doesn’t make me feel as if I’ve released my anger or anything. If anything, it makes everything worse. Now, my knuckles are all skinned up. Now, there’s a fucking hole in my drywall. Now, I’m ashamed of myself.

I’m so ashamed of myself that I want to punch another hole in the wall, but I can tell that would be a stupid idea, so I run out of the house, onto my back porch, and I scream out into the neighborhood, probably freaking out all of my neighbors.

At some point, the haze clears.

Sheepishly, I think of circuits, and I go down and find my breaker box, and sure enough, there it is, the tripped breaker. Easy fix. No reason to punch walls. No reason to lose my shit like that.

Belatedly, I think of all of the DBT worksheets I’ve been doing on naming your emotions and observing them, getting really mindful in the moment and noticing where the emotion is in your body, and then, asking yourself if the most effective way to deal with that emotion is to do what feels natural and let the emotion take me over or if I should try to do the opposite of the emotion.

But in the moment I didn’t even feel like I could access this. I was just a big ball of reaction. I wasn’t thinking. I was feeling. And the emotion was, like, in charge.

I spend the rest of the day googling how to be able to think when you’re angry.

I don’t get a lot of good answers, because it’s a bunch of, Count to ten and Stop and observe your surroundings, and these are all good ideas, but I can’t see how I’m ever going to remember to do them if I’m feeling an intense emotion.

So, then I do something impulsive, but then, that is my modus operandi, I guess.

I drive into town and walk into one of the tattoo shops. The guy there says that he can’t tattoo me right now, that I need to make an appointment, at least, unless I want one of these tattoos here, in this book.

They’re all super freaking generic tattoos—roses and butterflies and tribal patterns and then—weirdly—a jar of peanut butter.

I pick that one.

“I want it here,” I say, showing the guy a spot right on the back of my hand, just below my knuckles.

“You want a peanut butter jar there?” the guy says, eyebrows raised. “Right freaking now? Dude, are you aware that these things are permanent?”

“It’s just to remind me to stop and think,” I say. “It doesn’t matter what it is, but I want it somewhere I can always see it, and I want it there forever.” The tattoo is probably overkill. I could have gotten a ring or a bracelet or I could have gotten some henna tattoo, because if I had it there for a few weeks, it’d probably be long enough to make a habit.

But I like the idea of it always being there, and I like that it’s not obvious what the tattoo is. No one has to understand that I need a permanent reminder indelibly written into my flesh to not let my emotions control me. I know that’s what the peanut butter means. But it’s just for me.

Anyway, maybe it works, because later, I’m scrolling through Callie’s Instagram, and I get the urge to just call her up, or no—better—just go and find her. Go to wherever she is, stand out at the edge of everything and wait for her to come running up to me, and then go off with her. It sounds epic and fun and exciting and—

I look down at the peanut butter jar and I don’t act.

I think about it. And think about it.

The urge kind of fizzles out. I don’t go anywhere. Instead I call Hannah, and I tell her I’ve been thinking about going after Callie, but that I haven’t done it, and I sort of want to ask Hannah if she wants to come over and watch a movie, but she doesn’t have to.

She does.

She snickers over my peanut butter tattoo. I don’t tell her what it means. She doesn’t ask. She just says it’s a very Ellis thing to do, get a random tattoo.

Her phone beeps, and she gets it out and smiles widely and starts typing a response. This text conversation goes on throughout the movie, but I don’t ask about it for at least forty minutes.

“It’s Gatlin, obviously,” she informs me when I do.

“Seriously?” I’m happy about that. “Cool. I’m so glad you two are talking.”

“Me too,” she says, picking up my arm and winding it around her shoulders so that she can lie against my chest. “I really like him.”

“Good,” I say. “I was afraid I fucked everything up.”