I remem­ber being with John in a moment of intense frus­tra­tion. We were sit­ting in Thompson’s class­room, and it was an over­cast day out­side. His blue blinds were cast aside, and we could hear the stu­dents play­ing out­side through a crack in the win­dow. It was lunchtime and we were eat­ing together, a tra­di­tion that grew out of being mutual lon­ers. I don’t remem­ber what actu­ally hap­pened to cause his frus­tra­tion, but he became so affected by it that he chomped down on his ball­point pen out of spontaneity.

The pen cracked, and flooded his mouth with thick, dark ink. Upon real­iz­ing that his stress relief method would cause him even more anx­i­ety than he thought, he quickly ran to the win­dow and des­per­ately tried to spit out as much ink as he could, the ink over­flow­ing in his mouth and spilling down to his chin.

We tried our best to clean him up before any­one could have found out. After all, high school was hell. I remem­ber secretly hop­ing that the ink would stain his teeth (only for a day, of course) to see the extent of his cre­ativ­ity in explain­ing what looked like super accel­er­ated gin­givi­tis to his father.

Sometimes I feel like burst­ing out from frus­tra­tion in such a “self-destructive” man­ner. Usually, I can never bring myself to act out on such an impulse though. I always see the results of the destruc­tion before I do any­thing, and in the end it never seems worth it.

It leaves me with my emo­tions bot­tled up inside me, and a des­per­ate need to opine. Sometimes I can find relief through this medium. Sometimes it’s not enough.

Sometimes it doesn’t do anything.