He sits in his house. He waits. His leg starts moving, his hands start fiddling. This is not going to be a good day. He sits in his house. He is fidgeting. He forces himself still. He swings his legs like he’s a child. He stops. He sits in his house. This is getting nowhere. His skin feels like it is burning and his bones hurt.

He swings himself off of his chair and into a standing position. He starts to pace. His legs are moving, his arms are moving. His bones still hurt. He starts running. He is running in circles around his house. He’s not even running straight, he’s just running. There’s a bunch of shit on the floor. He can’t tell whether he knocked that shit over or if it was already there.

He stops running. He looks around the room, and there is definitely more shit on the floor now. His hands start to fidget. There is nothing to do. He doesn’t want to go outside, he doesn’t want to stay inside. His brain feels like it’s trying to tear itself apart. He hates himself. He hates himself so much. There are so many things he could be doing, for example, he’s been getting into painting lately.

That sounds like a good idea but he doesn’t want to have to get the canvas out, or the paints. He tries to think of a different thing to do. He wants to paint. He needs to paint. To see the colours go on the surface and see them swirl. It’s a visceral need, and it hurts to not be doing it.

He’s finally found something to do. He walks to the closet so he can get the paints out. While he’s walking, the need to paint just screams at him more. He doesn’t like what that means.

He gets the paint and he walks into the living room. The paint gets tossed to the couch, but of course, he misses. The container opens and throws the bottles of paint everywhere. Paint bottles are covering his floor. Why does he have so much paint? He sees at least three bottles of basically the same colour.

He turns around and goes to the kitchen instead of cleaning that up. Walking away from the living room hurts and he doesn’t want to go to the kitchen. He has a familiar need to just lay on the floor and flail around. He does not. It’s in the back of his mind now though, and he knows that it will stay there for a long time. He forces himself up from the sitting position that he found himself in. He walks into the kitchen.

His head is screaming, and he can’t tell whether or not he has a headache, and his body is so tense. Everything aches. He just wants to lay down and sleep, but he knows that he won’t be able to. He’d just be writhing around on his bed, but at least he would be able to flail and writhe.

He’s in the kitchen. That is a fact. He is not, in fact, in his bed. He goes over to the sink. There are paintbrushes sitting next to it. He wants to paint all the time and this exact problem that he is having right now is a recurring problem. He doesn’t want to paint anymore. There are a lot of things that he has to do to paint. He kind of just wants to smear paint around with his fingers.

He doesn’t. He grabs the paintbrushes and runs to the living room. He has to restrain himself or else there is just going to be a huge mess he has to clean up. As soon as he throws the paintbrushes next to the paint, also scattering them, he has a thought. He has to go back to the kitchen because he was supposed to get a bowl of water. He doesn’t want to, and the thought of it makes the need to scream louder than it was earlier. He has to though because it’ll just make him more frustrated when he gets other colours on the paper when he only wants one.

So he starts the whole process again. But, luckily, this time his memory goes fuzzy when he does it. He can vaguely process the sight of the kitchen getting closer but it doesn’t feel as if it is happening at this very moment. He just kind of blinks and it’s been only a moment, but at the same time, it’s been years.

He’s in the living room now, a bowl of water in hand. He can finally paint. The canvas is laying on the floor and he sits in front of it. He grabs a random bottle of paint and a paintbrush, it doesn’t matter what they are. He shoves the paintbrush in the water and then the bottle of paint. There's water in the paint now and that’s going to be annoying later, but for right now he doesn’t care. He can’t care.

He makes a stroke with his paintbrush and it feels amazing. His body drains of energy and his skin settles. He wants to paint more but he doesn’t know what to paint. The thought of having to figure out what to paint is tiring. It could be an abstract painting where he just slaps paint on the canvas. That’s what he usually does.

He drops the paintbrush in the water. He’s tired. He doesn’t want to paint and the thought of having to makes him want to cry. He goes back to bed. He doesn’t know how long ago he woke up but he goes to bed regardless.

His skin doesn’t crawl and that’s the best he can hope for.