Madness. Is it the cerebral cortex of calamity, the whole cerebrum, or something more? I think about this as I watch the light reflect from the silver point. Maybe it is a part of the brain we have yet to explore. Like the ocean’s depths: so close, and yet, so far. We humans like to explore what is far away but shy away from what is near, like our minds, always with us.  

Maybe we can’t understand? 

Maybe we can’t appreciate what is close. Don’t many of us hate our local towns or cities? 

Familiarity breeds contempt.  

I hold my mind, my madness, in contempt. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. I know what I’ve got, and I want it gone. I want it pulled from my head, ripped from my mind and left to suffocate in the environment. To suffer. For it to feel some of the pain it has inflicted upon me.  

You can’t rip it from your head, but… 

It catches my eye, silver and a little like a pendulum. It swung at first; maybe that’s why I saw it that way. Swaying like the waves of depression that come and go without warning. The anxiety is always with me, and I’d usually be terrified, but today I am not. Apprehension and fear, like a mole on the tip of my nose, always there, never leaving. A stormy mental shadow of fear that sits atop of me come rain or shine.  

Just close your eyes and imagine it being with you all the time.  

It’s enough to bring a tear to your eye. Though not to mine.  

Mine is numbed to the physical. As dead to the pain as I often wished my brain to be. I feel, or at least I think I feel, the point as it is positioned on the duct. A short, sharp tap with the hammer and the orbitoclast slips in easily. It’s a tool designed for the job, and as it moves the five centimetres, I wonder if my prefrontal cortex welcomes it. Watching, I feel nothing; my feelings are as numb as my eye. The pick is pivoted and then returned before being slipped further. Only half as far this time, about two centimetres. A slighter pivot again and a cut or two, and I’m numb all over.  

Blissful, unfeeling, an abyss of feeling. But am I still what I was? Did the emotions that have been purged from me make me human? Do I care? I am free from it all, and I feel dead to the world.