The kitchen clock ticked with a rhythmic, mechanical precision that made Ellen’s skin crawl. It was 2:00 AM, the hour when her thoughts stopped being ideas and started being accusations.
Ellen didn't feel "sad" in the way people described in movies. She felt hollow. It was a cavernous, echoing void where her self-worth used to be. Every mistake she’d made that week—a missed deadline, a misunderstood joke, a sharp tone with a friend—was a stone dropped into that void, hitting the bottom with a dull thud.
She stood by the counter, her hand hovering over a jagged edge of a broken coaster.
Her mind told her she deserved the pain. It told her that if she could just see the hurt on the outside, the chaos on the inside would finally make sense. It was a craving for a physical anchor in an emotional storm.
She pressed down. The sharp edge bit into her palm.
For three seconds, she felt in control. For three seconds, the "Bad Ellen" was being punished, and the "Good Ellen" was the one in charge of the discipline. It was a dark, twisted symmetry.
But then, the blood bloomed—a bright, inconvenient reminder of her own fragility.
The "control" evaporated instantly. In its place came the frantic scramble for bandages, the stinging of the antiseptic, and the crushing realization that she was still standing in the same kitchen, with the same problems, only now she was bleeding. The void hadn't been filled; it had just been distracted.
She sat at the kitchen table, her hand wrapped in a clumsy layer of gauze. She looked at the clock. It had only been five minutes.
Ellen pulled a notebook from the junk drawer. Her therapist had told her to write down the "Urge" vs. the "Aftermath."
The Urge: Total control, instant silence, justice.
The Aftermath: Sticky bandages, lying to my mom tomorrow, feeling smaller than I did before.
The math didn't add up. It never did.
She picked up a pen—not as a weapon, but as a tool. She didn't write a masterpiece. She just drew messy, dark circles on the page, over and over, until the ink ran thick and the urge finally started to retreat, like a tide going out.
She was still tired, and she was still hurt, but she was still there.
