An Excerpt from A Season in Hell----
I had become someone I did not know, a person who felt no connection to what was around me. I had waited a lifetime to fall completely apart, always knowing that it would happen one day, but somehow managing to postpone it with drinks, sexual interludes, trips, work. When finally at 42 years old I no longer had any of these familiar allies to fall back on, I felt my carefully manicured veneer of sanity begin to crack. I knew it was about to shatter, not later, but now. And, as the glass of my life began to break, it was not with a loud crash, but more like a hairline fracture that deepened quickly and soundlessly.
It was mid-day, and the sun’s heat was crushing me in the seat of my car which smelled vaguely of cigarettes and despair. I slunk down in the seat for a moment, took a deep breath and decided to get out of the car. Walking slowly into the hardware store, I saw the smiling faces of the shopkeeper as I looked into the glass case containing knives. They were all shiny and silver with dark handles, mostly for hunting. I selected the largest one in the case and made my purchase. Whatever the shopkeeper said to me never registered in my mind. I only heard the price, paid it, took the knife and walked out. I heard the sound of the bell ringing on the door as I left the shop, and it sounded like the bells of a tiny church whose members would never hear it.
The critical moment had arrived. I wanted and desperately needed the Xanax pills, and I was going to walk into the drugstore at the corner to get them at any cost. My actions were suspended in time and held no thought behind them. It was as if I were being driven to act by a force I did not understand.
I parked the car and walked toward the shop. It was like I was walking across an empty desert landscape of glass as I stepped gingerly through the store. There were people there, but I did not see their faces nor did I recognize any smell or feeling that might accompany such recognition. It felt vaguely as though I were invisible.
My perceived invisibility ended when I approached the counter and showed the knife to the druggist and demanded the Xanax. The expression on his face frightened me more than the act I was in the middle of committing. He was afraid of me, and that was the first time I had ever seen that look directed at me in my entire life. I had been, at least until that moment, a gentle and kind person and had never intentionally frightened anyone, so I went into a kind of shock when I saw the look in his eyes which reminded me of what a frightened animal might look like if he were cornered by a larger and more dangerous animal. I stood my ground, but inside I began to feel and hear the glass breaking.
To purchase the book, visit Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/A-Season-in-Hell-ebook/dp/B0035RPHS0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313417996&sr=1-1
