42. Excerpt from Anthony Stephens’ Mood Journal

November 5 2003

Morning: 6 out of 10

Afternoon: 4 out of10

Evening: 3 out of 10

What do I think I look like to other people in society?

You really want me to answer that?

Alright. You say it’ll give me some insight into my self-perception and what I think about the world in general. It’s a hard question to answer though.

I used to think I was complicated. I used to think I was too complicated, that I needed things to mellow out my mind. I used to think about things a lot, everything, way too much. Just overthinking the crap out of stuff.

I still do, I guess, but it’s not as uncontrollable.

Before it was like, if something bothered me and it managed to establish itself in my head as “something that’s bothering me,” I couldn’t get away from it. Not without help at least. Weed did it at first. Then that doctor misdiagnosed my mom and let her think she was okay, gave her all that fucking medicine that just made her worse. And when the cancer took her and we got involved in that lawsuit—I just started popping a few pills whenever things got too intense. Whatever I could get my hands on. And with the people I chilled with, there was a lot I could get my hands on too: Xany, syrup, a little E, dropped some tabs once or twice (not a good experience). Then I added alcohol to the mix and things got a little too crazy too quickly for a while.

I guess everything just sort of led up to that night on US1, which I admit was retarded on my part, no matter what the hell I was going through. The head-on collision I told everybody was an accident but was really just me being an idiot.

I don’t think I was fooling anybody anyways. They knew. I was trying to kill myself that night.

But they—you—probably all think it’s because I was depressed or something.

And yeah I was depressed, I admit that. But that’s not why I did it.

I tried to kill myself because I was tired.

I don’t mean some like ethereal shit either, like when people start talking about how their souls are tired of being torn into pieces and all that sappy All My Children crap.

I mean, I was physically tired. Like, exhausted, from all the shit I had taken that night.

And I also knew that it didn’t really matter if I was tired or not, I wasn’t going to stop. I was addicted, to anything that’d make me numb, and if I didn’t do something about it right then I knew I was going to get up the next day and do it all over again because I had to, I was compelled to.

But I was just so fucking tired and I just wanted to go to bed. I just wanted to fucking sleep. You mix that type of exhaustion with pills, a forty of O.E. and an ounce of chronic and see how easy it is for you to just let go of the steering wheel.

The way I felt that night, I planned on pressing the gas until something forced me to get out of the car.

When I woke up in the hospital and asked about the driver of the other car, an SUV, the doctors told me he came out with a couple of bruises, nothing serious. Scraped elbow and a black eye from the airbag.

In a great show of justice, I received the bulk of injuries: two cracked ribs, shattered knee, dislocated shoulder, whiplash. Two separate surgeries, weeks in bed, another couple of months of rehab on my knee and a seriously embarrassing court proceeding.

The guy I hit was a UM student and he had daddy’s endless bank account and full coverage car insurance so he didn’t push too hard in court. I got off clean really, if you consider how much junk they found in my system that night. Six months’ probation, skyrocketed car insurance, mandatory drug and mental counseling and now I’m here, in the living room of my mom’s house, sans my mom, writing in a journal and trying to “sort myself out.” according to Doc Silver, recommended by Dr. Stewart, my rehab coach.

I guess she saw something in me, something besides my knee that needed therapy. I can’t say she was wrong. I can’t say anything.

Doc Silver wants me to answer that question—what I look like to the world—knowing everything I know about myself, knowing all the stupid shit I’ve done, knowing how many people I looked in the face when they tried to tell me about my “potential” and responded with—literally, so many times—“fuck you.”

I’ll tell you what I think I look like to people.

A joke.

That’s what I look like. A fucking joke. And I can’t blame them for thinking that, really. If I saw me in public, I’d think the same damn thing. Laugh and keep walking.

And it’s hard to get rid of that image once it’s there, let me tell you. Really, really hard.

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