Pretty Little Brain by Noah Bracale

Pretty Little Brain

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Noah Bracale

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Sertraline, Melatonin, Magnesium supplements, amphetamine-dextroamphetamine, Priadel, aripiprazole, Buspirone, Bupropion, Hydroxyzine pamoate, Escitalopram, Mirtazapine, Venlafaxine, Fluoxetine, Paroxetine, Lorazepam, Trazodone 

My bedsheets smell like tequila, and I’m wrapped around myself. Wallet, phone, keys, cigarettes, lighter shoved under my pillow. There’s blood too—on my bedsheets. Blotted in the same pattern that is carved across my back.

I’ve been given this pretty little brain, and I am determined to live through it.  

Psycho-therapy, Al-anon meetings, EMDR, TRE, DBT, CBT, Puppets? At one point? Sandboxes, 72 hour mandatory stay. It costs $50,000 to go to a ranch and pet a horse, and I wish I had the money to go to it and fix me. I’m not sure it even would.  

I was eight years old when I first remember hurting myself. Truly hurting myself.  

I tried to break my own hand. I took one of my father’s ten pound weights and slammed it over my left hand over 400 times. I only know this number because I counted. I was punishing myself for something, the same thing I still punish myself now for—and it is completely elusive to me.  

Vodka, Tequila, Green apple Tennessee Whiskey, Weed, Molly, Mushrooms, LSD, Xanax, Cocaine (once on my gums), Adderall crushed and snorted in a hotel bathroom, Black Marlboro shorts (Cowboy killers,) All of them—mixed together.  

I came up with shorthands, comical ones: ones that let my buddies know that something was going wrong. I’d bray like a donkey when my brain began to get loud—when I couldn’t find the words to say “I’m seeing that memory again.” “My hands have gone numb.” “I’m stuck in a loop—I can’t find my way out.”  

They all reacted different. Aidan was the first to hear it. Diego knew my pride—how to distract me, to ground me, to ease me back to earth without doubling my shame. Dom would ask before he held me, and then he’d hold me. Alaska knew instinctively to check what was wrong.  

Diego, Aidan, Dom, Alaska. 

There’s this story I tell sometimes, almost like an apology—or some kind of explanation to my friends and lovers who had stayed up with me through all of the nights I cannot sleep. 

Awoken from nightmares, tortured by thought. The nights that my safety plan deems a babysitter necessary. They’d sit with me, and I’d tell them: 

“Sometimes, I think, before I came here, I had a conversation with God. And he told me that he’d make a deal with me. He told me that I would come back, and I was going to suffer, really suffer. But all of that suffering was going to be worth it because I would get ‘this’ in return.”  

I’m sure I said to them, “Maybe it’s you. He told me that there would be rape, and torture, and pain. But at the end of it, there would be you. You are God's apology to me.”  

General Anxiety Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Panic Disorder, Agoraphobia, Complex 

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, 

Substance Abuse Disorder, Bipolar Depressive, Borderline Personality Disorder  

Treatment Resistant.  

I was told that, 

‘Whatever you have—it may be time to consider that it is treatment resistant.’ That maybe there would be no stop to it.  

I was given choices no kid should have ever had to make. I was given memories that will never find their way into an essay. I was given the role of a sacrificial lamb who is now being asked to reply to two of my classmates’ discussion board posts. I was given a pretty little brain.   

And he is kind, lord. And he is empathetic, and patient. He is merciful. He is gentle, and he tries because he knows it is important. And he was given a pretty little brain.  ƒ

He was given a pretty little brain with no cure.