[ CW ] Show a character suffering from a mental disorder without naming it .

56 days to his birthday. Jerry counted them down on his calendar, scratching each day as it ended. Counting the days, one by one. Tallying them on paper with black pen. The big 20. Finally out of those damned teenage years, you're a real man now Jerry, what do you want for your birthday? 
 
 Jerry never answered that question. He knew how people will react. 
 
 The snow outside is thick enough, hard enough, for sledding. Jerry spent the hours between breakfast and lunch staring at a Netflix loading bar, glancing at the many suggestions it made. Then he put on a coat that let the wind in and kept it close to his chest, shoes with holes on the sides, and took a sled. Walking through the snow, it seeped into his socks, made them mushy cold. Jerry was shivering, chattering his teeth hard enough to creak. 
 
 The hill was empty, snow still falling in clumpy bouts. Pines trees smothered in white. Dead oaks and elms and scraggly bushes and tall creeper vines all baring skeletons to the world. Jerry sledded down the hill. He went again and again, packing a smooth trail into the hill. Until the ramp at the end launched him into the road. Jerry landed on his elbow, turned his arm into a tingling clay lump. He stayed face down in the eye burning whiteness until a horn honked. 
 
 At home, he took off his coat and found that he had scraped skin from his arm. It was raw and sticky, filmy skin shreds around grit speckled red. He sprayed disinfectant on it, breathed in deep through the fire. Sprayed it again. Sat there, on the toilet, breathing in the burning and tasting imagined blood on his tongue. Then he patched it up. 
 
 He stared at the Netflix logo until dinner. Ate through the old, familiar pasty feeling in his stomach. What do you want for your birthday, he was asked, parents leaning over their potatoes and steak. He twisted his lips until it was a smile and waited for them to start eating again. 
 
 Netflix logo until it was night. The snow was crunchy, frozen into spiky little crystals. His coat was sticky where he had bled on it. Toes turning to dead clay on his feet. Jerry made a snowball in his bare hands and held it there, until his nerves were jumping from wrist to elbow, throbbing on the patched cut. Closed his eyes, breathed in the cold burning of his fingers. The snowmelt dripped through his fingers. When it was all melted, Jerry rolled up his coat, undid the gauze, and picked at the fresh scab until it bled again. Stared at the red on his fingers, made silver by the moon. 
 
 In his bed, Jerry watched the clock go to midnight and scratched the calendar. 55 days left. His arm bones ached and his fingers trembled in the heat. The dark of his room is cut by sharp red numbers, counting from 1 to 2 to 3. 
 
 In the dark, before exhaustion finally knocked him out, Jerry mouthed his birthday wish to the ceiling. He wanted to stop.
