Page 72 of Power of the Mind

Pacing.

The air pressure in the room increased.

I gave him another few minutes before deciding to intercept. I had a hunch we’d be there all night otherwise.

When I blocked his path, Diem stopped moving. Our gazes clashed and held. Deep pools of torment stared back at me.

Diem’s eyes reminded me of the ocean. Not the coastal, tropical parts that shimmered blue or turquoise, but the deepest, darkest depths in the middle. The part you might be lucky enough to see from an airplane on an international flight or observed from the deck of a transcontinental cruise ship. Like the ocean, Diem’s eyes held mysteries, dangers, and secrets. Like the ocean, there were parts of Diem that were inaccessible and unknowable to everyone.

“Why don’t we sit?” I suggested.

But Diem didn’t want to sit. His nostrils flared a few times before he jumped off a cliff, launching into a spiel like I’d never heard before. A damn burst. A volcano erupted. And little old me stood at ground zero. I got hit with the full effect of Diem’s innermost turmoil.

It was the most words I’d heard him speak in a row since we met. I didn’t interrupt, drowning in his sorrow. Some people spoke because they had something important to say. Others spoke because they desperately needed someone to listen. I didn’t know which this was, but if Diem was going to bare his heart, I would be there.

Every caustic word bled from deep within his soul.

“I got in my first fight when I was twelve years old. Until then, I’d gone my whole life being a punching bag, enduring someone else’s violent rages, too afraid to fight back or defend myself. But that year, a mouthy piece of shit named Bobby O’Connell decided to have something to say about my face and my fucking ear.”

Diem subconsciously reached for his mangled ear but didn’t touch it. “I initially ignored him. He wasn’t the first kid to tease me about my scars. I was used to it. But he egged me on and on and on. He kept pushing my fucking buttons until I snapped.”

Diem worked his jaw, audibly breathing a few times before continuing. “I don’t remember the fight. I saw red, and the nextI knew, I was in the principal’s office with Bobby’s blood all over me and a broken nose because the fucker must have gotten a lucky hit in. I didn’t give a shit about getting in trouble. The school could give me detention until the end of time for all I cared. No big deal. But there I was, sitting on the bench with an ice pack pressed to my nose when my dad walked in.”

He was no longer in the present. Diem’s gaze was far away, locked in the past. “I knew whatever pain Bobby was in, whatever I’d done to him, was going to be returned to me a thousand times worse when I got home. Got suspended. I didn’t count on that, but it was good for Dad because the school never saw what he did to me. I was all healed up before I returned.

“In ninth grade, I was expelled for breaking a kid’s face against a brick wall. Knocked six of his teeth out. Broke his nose and fractured his cheekbone. All because he called me a sissy fucking faggot. I’d never felt more exposed in my life. No one was supposed to learn my secret. Again, I don’t remember the fight. It was like my brain shut off, and some fucked-up survival instinct took over. I turned into a machine. Punching. Kicking. Smashing the kid to a fucking pulp. I was told someone had to pull me off. Might have killed him otherwise. They expelled me for that.”

Diem swiped a hand over his mouth. It trembled. “I missed an entire school year and started somewhere new the following year. I was a grade behind. Didn’t know anyone. Made no fucking difference. That fight had awoken something inside me. A sense of power. Destruction. I was no longer the punching bag. I became an atomic weapon of war, ready to explode on a hair-trigger. Ready to destroy anyone who got in my way.”

He banged a fist against his chest. “I had so much anger inside me, I couldn’t contain it or control it. All I knew how to do was fight. All I wanted was to make other people hurt and bleed. Between tenth grade and my eventual graduation, I was in somany fistfights I lost count. I got nicknamed the D-Bomb, and I was out of fucking control.”

Spittle flew from his mouth when he spoke. About five and a half feet separated us. Part of me wanted to reach out and comfort him, but I knew better than to touch him at that moment. Diem was lost in memory. His soul was flayed open. I didn’t forget his mention of PTSD, nor did I forget that time months ago when he’d almost decked me because I’d touched him unexpectedly during a flashback.

Diem’s knuckles popped as he clenched his fist. Every word came from behind a clenched jaw, and his nostrils flared as he took a few deep breaths. He wasn’t finished. I could envision him counting backward from ten inside his head to calm himself.

“Not long after I graduated, before I went to the academy, I was drinking too much, doing drugs, and I got in a dozen bar fights a week.” His eyes narrowed, and I knew he was seeing one in particular. “I almost killed a man. Put him in the hospital. He didn’t… He didn’t press charges. I don’t know why. He should have. Maybe he was afraid. Maybe he realized too late that he’d instigated the whole mess and…” Diem shook his head like he was shaking away the past.

He looked me square in the eye. “I knew then that if I didn’t do something to help myself, I was going to end up behind bars or dead. I was so full of rage I didn’t know what to do with myself. It was eating me alive from the inside out. I wanted to hurt everyone and destroy everything. I really was a bomb, seconds from going off, but even I didn’t know how to stop it. So I reached out to the only person I trusted…”

Sorrow crossed his face. A different pain filled his eyes. “Nana got me into rehab and helped me find a therapist. She paid for all of it.” He huffed derisively. “Still does. She’s never let me help with the bill. It’s probably guilt.” He waved the possibility off and continued. “My doctor assured me multiple times thatI don’t have an antisocial personality disorder, but I do tick a lot of the boxes. I’m impulsive and reckless. I have ongoing substance abuse problems, anger issues, and a distinct inability to communicate my thoughts and feelings, which can come across as lacking in empathy.”

Again, Diem paused as he seemed to gather himself. I read the caution in his next words. They came out quiet, almost whispered. “I don’t hit people anymore, even if I want to sometimes. I haven’t hit anyone since I was twenty-one, but the urge has never gone away. I punch a bag daily at the gym, but sometimes, it’s not enough. Sometimes, in moments of frustration, I hit walls or throw things. I yell when I’m angry. I’m a borderline alcoholic. I may have quit smoking, but I always feel like I’m one bad day away from starting again.”

He balled a fist and banged his chest again. “The anger lives inside me, Tallus. Right here. It doesn’t go away. Somedays, I have a better handle on it than others, but I willalwaysbe a ticking time bomb. I willalwaysbe unpredictable.”

Diem trembled, not with rage, I didn’t think, but from containing his emotions through his speech. I saw it in the way his skin strained at the corners of his eyes. In the firm set of his mouth between the long, heartfelt sentences. He had probably never spoken those truths to anyone before. Never exposed himself so thoroughly.

But the real blow was yet to come, and it had nothing to do with Diem’s brutal past and everything to do with the present and future. Only then did I realize his story was meant as a warning against my recent advances. Against my not-so-subtle suggestions of us taking things further.

He met my gaze and spoke definitively. “Thisis why you should have nothing to do with me. I’m a bad person, Tallus. A stain on society. I’m not safe. I’m unstable and violent. I don’t know the first thing about romance and intimacy. I can’t giveyou what I don’t have. And besides,” he huffed, “I’m not worthy of a person like you. It takes all my strength to get from one day to the next. I’ve been in therapy for overten years. Believe me, there willneverbe a day when I will be better. If it was possible, it would have happened by now. And there will never be a day when I’ll be good enough to have someone like you in my life. The sooner you understand that, the better… for both of us.”

He swiped a hand over his mouth again. It shook uncontrollably. In fact, Diem’s entire body vibrated. Beads of sweat speckled his forehead. I’d never seen him so undone. So raw.

He dropped the hand heavily by his side and glanced into the other room. The oceans of his eyes reflected profound sadness. Deep, unfathomable sorrow emanated from a place where no human could go. His torment was something he’d been handling solo for his whole life, and it slayed me. At least when the shit in my life had hit the fan, I’d had my mother by my side. She was my warrior. My savior. My one-woman army when I stood up to my homophobic father at fourteen.

But Diem had fought his war alone. Maybe he’d had his grandmother or grandfather, but there seemed to be a piece of the puzzle missing in that regard. I didn’t ask. It wasn’t the time.

I’d seen Diem in many moods—brooding, frustrated, angry, apprehensive, worried, distracted, pensive, and on and on—but not sad. Never sad.Sadand its counterpart,happy, were extremes Diem hid from me—perhaps from everyone. But the grief and remorse swirling in the dark gray waters of his eyes was unmistakable.

---