Whenever you are trying to have a mental breakdown, make sure your nails are grown out. Blunt and short nails will do nothing. They won’t grab. Or pull. Or reddened the flesh. You have to have lengthy claws that can scrape the base of your skull. Sting and bleed. Pull at your hairs and scream. Clench your teeth. No harder. Hard enough that little whimpers escape because you feel your teeth will shatter. Dig your nails into your palm (this is where the elongated nails will help). Blink the tears out because they are a sign of weakness. Breathe twice and exhale once. Again. Make sure you never let your breathing out of sync. Don’t lose that rhythmic pattern because once you become erratic than surely that indicates panic. Push your nails into your wrist and dig into your skin. Feel your pulse speed with the pain. It feels good doesn’t it? Feels good to control something, doesn’t it?  Can’t control your breathing. Can’t control your tears. Can’t control the way that words are hurtling towards you. Can’t control your own will but this. Yes, pain. This you can control, how much it hurts. You can feel. You aren’t numb. You are bone and flesh, yes. But are you heartbeats? Are you a steady pulse? Stop digging your nails into your arm. The pain will be too much now. Ironic how that works. The idea that meager fingernails can create such an intolerance for pain, but everyday you can continue living with words being pelted at you like a knife show.  With a few vowels your heart is a shriveled up organ, left for dead.With a few sentences, you have bile rising up in your throat. Grab your thigh and pull upwards. Feel the little red lines record milestones on your legs. Three little ticks for a little less of your sanity. Ten long lines for your stability. “Help me. Help me. Help me.” Scream it to the walls. Chant it to the windows.  Sob it into the empty chasms that are your floorboards. Cage your bedroom and tie vines to your wrists. Let thorns prick your veins. Erupted vessels of life flowing down to your elbows, down to the ground you are to bury yourself in. Open up your coffin and bolt your corpse inside. Six feet under, bang the wooden roof. Where is your savior? Where is the merciful all knowing entity when you were sitting here, suffocating? Call to Him now. Scream his name, go ahead. All you’ll hear is the words of a funeral prayer ,”Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name...”