I’m tired, cold, and standing outside my car, hand behind my back on the driver’s side handle where he can’t see it. It’s the end of October but it’s still somehow warm enough out for there to be a mosquito buzzing around here somewhere. He (Mason, friend since freshman year) had followed me out to my car to say goodbye. This was not strange. What was strange was that Logan had not also come.
We’ve been making awkward conversation for a bit now. There’s a gap, delicious silence and I’m about to take the shot and say my final goodbye and he just-
“Is it weird that I kind of like you?”
.
.
.
yes
I laugh - YIKES NOT THE TIME - and explain. I’m into girls. Sorry, you’re a great friend but. I’m into girls.
He stares.
Fuck fuck fuck he doesn’t believe me. He doesn’t fucking believe me.
We keep talking as though he does. It’s so blurry cause my brain was specifically not working on remembering this all for later it was working on getting the fuck out of there and home where I could scream and cry and tell Dominic about yet another friend that I had fucked everything up with.
I ran a red light on the way home. I knew it was safe - no one else was out this late at night - but I went 20 something over the speed limit just in case.
3: #accfb4
I’m 12 years old and at my dad’s house, in the poker room. The smoke from his cigarette in the Dixie ashtray between us is going right in my face but he laughed at me when I asked him to move it before, so I just have to deal with it. It’s my first time really drinking - according to dad wine coolers don’t count - and I really didn’t like the taste of the other one he made me try but Labatt’s better, a lot less bitter. It’s my second one and I can feel how red my face is and how loud and laughy I’m being.
“You don’t drink enough!” dad says, taking another drag off his Camel’s, Unfiltered, “look how drunk you are already!”
4: #860033I love having FISH MAN yelled at me in the halls, and Halloween is the one day a year that can happen. At least without me getting yelled at by administration, that is. And it’s pretty much the greatest.
After school I get to go to Taylor’s house. It’s a whole bunch of people I haven’t talked to since like 8th grade, but we have a good time. Mario-Kart, Paranoia, and Game of Things. A good laugh and a lot of dick jokes. I get kicked out at 10.
yo evan where r u i got nothin to do
I’m with danielle at central
dope im on my way
And just like that - new plans with my cousin. I’m a god.
A long drive and a little game I like to call Follow-The-Bitmoji later and I was with him. And his girlfriend. That’s ok, I can third-wheel for a bit.
That lasts about five minutes and then I fuck off and find some people to smoke with. It’s not very good shit (can’t blame them, I wouldn’t want to waste it on a party either) so I find something to drink.
While I’m sitting against a wall, some dude comes up. Not bad, but blue eyes. Introduces himself with a name I never even bothered to put into short-term memory and asks what I’m doing. Just chillin, just chillin. I get up to get another drink and wow maybe the first 4 were enough what the fuck was in this? I look back and he’s getting up to go with me. No, I definitely need another.
Eventually he gets the hint and drops off. A bit later while trying to find a comfortable seat that isn’t claimed I pretty much fall on top of this girl. Kinda cute.
I introduce myself and “you are? Besides extraordinarily pretty, of course.”
I can’t really tell if that really worked or if she’s just as drunk as I am - or both - but her cheeks are pretty red and she seems happy so I’m gonna call it a win. And she’s… dressed up? Or is she just goth? I ask her and she laughs.
“I would hope that if I was regularly doing this kind of makeup, I’d be better at it.”
Her name starts with an S and she takes me back to her dorm. She goes to the bathroom and while I’m waiting for her I pass out in her bed before we’ve even done anything and yeah the morning after a one night stand is generally pretty awkward but just based on this experience I’d say it’s worse when you didn’t actually do anything.
On the way home I have to pull over to throw up, and nothing comes up but bile. I’m never getting that drunk again. Fuck. Mason and Logan’s birthday party is today at one. It’s almost noon. Fuck. Well. The best hangover cure it is.
Thank god they only live like 10 houses down. I got Secret Hitler and Dead of Winter, wrapped up as neatly as I could manage, and a bag of extra gamecube controllers so we can set up 8-player smash. It’s not altogether that heavy, but I’m still not feeling too great so I’m glad when the walk is over.
Yes, Julia and Christine are on the couch. I immediately lay across it, my legs on top of both of them. They bitch a bit, but they’re way too used to my obsession with physical contact to really care. Logan offers me a water bottle.
(It’s a good thing I’m not sober because) There’s a couple people here I don’t know.
Almost all of us end up crammed on the one three person couch. That’s like 10 of us. Sitting at the far right end of the couch, my right arm is fine, but I’m forced to very awkwardly fold my left arm into my chest and it’s borderline painful. Eventually I give up and put it up and around the back of the couch and Paul. If it was someone else sitting next to me it probably wouldn’t have taken me so long to move my arm, but I don’t know him and some people are weird about touching. He doesn’t seem to mind. Scratch that, he’s shifting, leaning more against me? and letting my arm fall to his waist.
Seventeen and a half hours later, Logan and Mason’s mom has food ready. None of it’s vegetarian except this kinda shitty salad that only has bell peppers and tomatoes in it, neither of which I like. I smile and say thanks and eat it anyway. Then Ms. Mueller busts out the snacks, including these weird whole grain chips that actually aren’t bad. I think I’m supposed to dip them in guac but whatever. Sitting on the back of the couch now, I eat the small bowl that she puts out and then I steal some from Mason. He gets annoyed quickly so I stop. Paul’s next to him though and he offers up his. Fuck. He’s gotta stop being so nice to me.
I hear Julia and Logan having an animated discussion from the dinner table. She wants to make him a Tinder profile. Holy shit. That’d be hilarious. He finally gives in and she downloads Tinder on his phone. And proceeds to fuck up and put the wrong year in (her birth year, not his) and get his phone number banned from Tinder for the next 10 years. That’s ok, she says. There’s always her phone because he’s never really going to use Tinder anyway. Except she puts in the wrong year again. Immediately she’s screaming for Mason. She could still make a Tinder for him. He’s just as insistent with the NOs as she is with the asking. She gives up.
I laugh and call Mason a killjoy for not letting her find him the love of his life. He glowers and “yeah, just wait until your birthday. We’ll force you to make a Tinder and find a boyfriend.” And he fucking laughs at that.
And they all laugh. I told you Mason. I told you two fucking days ago that I was into girls. What the fuck was that joke?
Whatever. Not gonna start a fight, not at his birthday party.
David wants to play Paranoia. He had a great time with it yesterday and says he wants to learn more “hidden truths”, especially about the people that weren’t there. I think he only likes the game so much because Taylor said she’d have a threesome with him and someone of his choice. But whatever. I’m down, worst question I’ve ever got was “whose toes would you suck”. Mason doesn’t want to. Really doesn’t want to. David keeps pushing, calling him and everyone else who’s even slightly hesitant wimps. I tell him off. No Paranoia, not today. He keeps fucking pushing. No, David. I’m all for forcing people to play stupid party games, but not at their birthday parties, ok?
We play Secret Hitler instead. It’s mostly just me screaming that everyone but me is a fascist and everyone proceeding to turn on me and call me Hitler even though I was a liberal all three games.
Alex catches sight of Trouble in the corner of the living room and suddenly he has to play it. Ultimately, five of us want to play and me and Paul are designated a team. We get absolutely fucked. We can’t roll ones for shit and even once we manage to get a guy out on the board inevitably he will be landed on and sent back home. After Alex has two in his end safety zone and both the other players have one there too, while our four are still all stuck at start, Paul declares that he is done. Mason jumps in. Says he wants to take Paul’s spot. Well that explains why he’s been hovering for a bit. I tell him that he can go for it, that I’m done too. Sick of being fucked in the ass by luck. I throw myself back across the empty half of the couch, and my head cracks against the wooden armrest. Everyone’s asking if I’m ok, but I’m laughing too hard to respond properly and I’m looking straight at Paul again, and I hate myself. No no no no no no absolutely not. He’s not even good-looking. He’s too skinny, and acne ridden. His teeth are all fucked up; it’s obvious he never had braces but he really needed them.
We all chill for a bit and the party’s wrapping up. Paul’s one of the first few to leave and he hugs me goodbye and I very much did not feel any which way about it.
6: #39118d
Imagine me: lonely and stressed out, sitting at my dining room table. It’s nearly 2 am, and I’m just trying to read The Great Gatsby. I’ve gotten maybe ten hours of sleep in the last three days, including the naps I took during my lunch, in the school library. I have a few completed assignments next to me, and a stack of untouched ones on the other side. That’s fine - I left the easy assignments for last. I got home from work late because someone decided to order a delivery barely 15 minutes before closing time. That’s fine - customers are allowed to order whenever. I’ve worked for the last five days and am scheduled to work the next four. That’s fine - my coworker’s car breaking down wasn’t on purpose, there was nothing that could be done.
There’s so much going on and it’s not going to end anytime soon. I’m just trying to read The Great Gatsby. The words keep blurring, why do the words keep blurring? Why won’t they just stop? Why can’t they let me work? Here comes the mental breakdown, absolute emotional collapsation. Sobbing, overwhelmed and exhausted, alone at my dining room table at two in the morning.
Winter Break! (for the college students)
I still have to finish this week of school, but I’ve already missed the majority of my classes and there’s not much more I can do in terms of attendance. The classes I have managed to make it to I haven’t been able to really pay attention to anyways, too hungover, high, or drunk. I’m not worried about it.
I’m at the club. The one in my brother’s city cause I’d rather sleep in my car in the cold before driving home in the morning than go to the one lameass one we have in my hometown.
I’m dancing, and not doing a very good job of it. I’ve talked to a couple girls so far but they both seemed to get very bored very fast and not like the smell of vodka on my breath so I’m just dancing. Quite badly.
A guy bought me a drink. I like his ear piercings but not his blue eyes. But I can ignore it. I can ignore anything. Just close my eyes and get taken care of. Or whatever. We dance and he doesn’t care that I do it badly. He dances with me and buys me more drinks and more drinks and I am drunk and he buys me more drinks and more drinks and I am falling over and he asks if I want to get out of here and I say yes but we only go out to his car and he starts to touch me and I don’t want it but he says he paid so much for me tonight and I’ve gotten him so worked up and I don’t want it but he says he needs to get off
NO you can’t leave.
Look at me. Look at how hard I am. You did this. You can’t leave before it’s taken care of.
I don’t wanna I don’t wanna I don’t wanna I don’t wanna I don’t wanna I don’t wanna please don’t
and you know, it could’ve been worse. He could’ve made me do something.
He just held onto my wrist and locked the car doors and didn’t let me leave.
8: #f8006a
I’m 14 years old and I have school tomorrow. I was going to go to bed but my brother and my dad are outside my bedroom and they’re talking. I can tell it’s not going well. So I’m just waiting, sitting on the stairs where they can’t see me.
Rob’s drunk. I can tell by the way his voice keeps creeping louder and louder. I can hear what they’re saying and he’s upset. Blaming Dad. Blaming Mom. Blaming his teachers. The police. Everyone. Everyone his entire life has done nothing but fuck him over and then force him to deal with it. They couldn’t even just let him kill himself, just fucking end it and call it a day and forget all about him. YOU COULDN’T EVEN DO THAT FOR ME.
And that’s it I’m up the stairs and by them. Rob’s shoving dad and trying to get through him. He’s also yelling for a gun. That he doesn’t care anymore and he’s just going to end it. Mom’s yelling at dad, asking where the key to the safe is so she can lock up the guns they have under their bed. Dad’s trying to answer but he’s also trying to wrangle Rob so I jump in.
I grab Rob and pull him as hard as I can back into his room. He starts hitting me, trying to get me off, but I don’t let go until he gets me right in the joint between my shoulder and my neck.
But dad’s gone, grabbing all the guns and trying to get them downstairs to the safe. No one’s here to stop Rob from running out to get one. I get up as fast as I can and grab Rob just as he’s about to leave the room again. This time he can throw me off and my back slams against his dresser. I get up and grab him again.
This is the game we play for seventeen and a half hours. I stop him, he throws me off. Dad comes back eventually and tells him it’s over. He called an ambulance and locked up the guns and Rob is going away because he is very much not ok. Thank you, Captain Obvious.
I can go to bed now.
And nobody will ask what happened at school tomorrow because nobody will know.
9: #ff7c2b
My brother pulls me into the women’s restroom and I would’ve expected it to be quieter, or at least less neon, but it kinda seems like the rave followed us in.
“Look what I got!” He sounds excited. He holds up a little bag and there are capsules in it. Each one looks like it’s got crystals inside. He pauses, and I think he can see that I don’t understand. “It’s ecstasy.”
I ask if that’s what ecstasy usually looks like, cause in TV shows and movies you always see the colorful pills with like, the hearts stamped on them.
“Good shit, yeah. Those pills are always cut with something.”
Good to know. Oh, he’s offering me some. I don’t know why I’m surprised. He asks if I want to take a pill or snort it. The high from snorting is much more intense, he says with a grin. Ok then. Let’s do that.
After he spends an exceptionally short period of time crushing the crystals on the counter, he offers it to me first.
OH GOD THAT FUCKING HURTS. I am not a baby. I won’t cry. Except I can’t not because my whole olfactory system is just freaking the fuck out. At least it’s just the right eye that's running so I can blame my body not my inability to handle this shit.
The roof of my mouth feels weird for the rest of the night, but god was all of that worth it.
If asked, I’d say the only thing ecstasy does is make it so you can’t not have a good time. It’s probably a good thing no one will ever ask me.
The first time I got high with heroin wasn’t that night, but it was pretty indistinguishable.
Taken away from the main event, but never really left it, and was offered something I couldn’t really have said no to, even if I had wanted to.
And the rest of the night was fan-fucking-tastic.
Not the morning after though. Apparently the comedown from that shit is just depression.
10: #cbf800
When I was told I had anxiety, I was also almost told I had OCD. I could see, I could hear Pallas’ mouth making the words, but I screamed to interrupt it.
One is enough, one diagnosis. I don’t need more, not today and I could hear my voice cracking and I hated myself.
He didn’t say anything but I could hear his stupid fucking rational fucking doctor voice in my head just like the devil on my shoulder.
You were brought here because you have people worried about you. It’s not normal, your behavior, not healthy:
But Pallas doesn’t actually say any of that and while I’d like to read his notes I am 100% sure that he wouldn’t let me.
He’s told me, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t heard it before, that all of the stuff I said isn’t normal, and was a sign I needed to be helped, but I don’t want to hear it. I know I’m fucked up, but I want to think I’m a normal sort of fucked up, because then I can pretend to move along and pretend it’s all ok and know that I have it all sorted and I’ll survive just fine just like everyone else before me. I’d much rather think that the human mind is naturally much more fucked up than it really is than acknowledge that my own brain would rather kill me than be me half the time.
One time I was at Logan and Mason’s, and we had to be 15 years old, but somehow we got on the topic of smoking. I laughed and laughed and talked about how much I loved it. How great it was, how calming. Mason looked uncomfortable with my enthusiasm (ironic, because my first joint was lit by his childhood best friend (Carlos, douchebag extraordinaire and the first person to ever call me fish bitch)).
No, Mason didn’t like it at all. I remember him saying, “yeah, I just feel bad for people who feel like they can’t cope on their own, who feel like they have to use drugs to handle everything” and I got really quiet and sad because what he didn’t know was that I was high as fuck because I couldn’t - can’t - not be.
I know I’m fucked up.
I know I’m fucked up, but not because of all of the shit I pull, all the “unhealthy coping mechanisms” and “harmful behavior patterns”. Not because of everything listed so neatly above.
I know I’m fucked up because my psychiatrist looked at me, my family’s history of drug abuse and addiction, my personal admissions of extreme self-medication, and all of my issues, and he said.
“Yeah. Xanax.”
11: #154c74
I like writing. Like, a lot. I like what you can do with words and how even just one purposely misspelled word changes the whole meaning of a piece.
I’ve never told my English teachers this. They’re all under the impression that I hate everything to do with English class, and well - they’re not wrong. I hate writing, reading because I was told to. I want to because I want to, not because you expect me to give a shit about Holden Caulfield and his ridiculous assertions about others. He doesn’t even understand himself, how can he claim to know what other people feel, or what they’re motivated by?
Just kidding. I know that was the point of the book. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though.
I’m good at English class too. I’m good at reading between the lines, seeing why people wrote stuff a certain way even if they didn’t mean to. A lot of writing’s subconscious, I think. Afterall, novelists can’t exactly spend an hour contemplating every single individual word in their new book before publishing it, else we’d have nothing to read. (Except poems. Ew.)
I’ve never told any of my English teachers that I actually like reading. Or writing. Or sometimes, even poems.
It made my ninth grade teacher very sad. She said she could see a lot in me, that I had so many ideas. That it was a waste.
Not the first time I’ve heard that.
I almost told her how sometimes when it’s late and I’m alone and high on sativa or caffeine or adderall or cough syrup or even just sleep deprivation and I have all the lights and lamps in my house’s basement on because even just a shadow glancing in the corner makes me jump, I dream while I’m awake, and I write. But I’ve never told any of my English teachers.
12: #dbbb8b
My floor’s pretty comfortable, the carpet’s nice and plush. I should lay down here more often. I’m so comfortable, and so sleepy; I’m trying to hold my hand above my head, but it keeps falling down and hitting my face. I throw my arm out to the side instead and knock over the fifth of vodka that was next to me.
Damn it damn it DAMN IT
There was still a good half of that left, but I take so long to get vertical and fix the bottle that it all runs out and my room stinks like rubbing alcohol.
I fall back onto the floor.
.
You know what would be fun? Dancing. I’m gonna do it, and I’m going to do it badly and I’m going to have a great time.
And I do, until I catch sight of myself in the mirror on my closed door. I stare and stare and stare. For seventeen and a half years. Or maybe it was days. Or hours. Or seconds. I look into my own eyes, blurry and dazed, and I hate myself. And I have my keys in my hand. And I have a fuck ton of oxy stashed away in the drawer of my desk that locks. And I am drunk enough where I would die if I downed it all right here, right now.
.
I’m not looking in the mirror anymore, but I can’t get my own stupid face out of my head.
I’m unlocking the draw- unlock- unlocking th- un- unlockin- unlocking the dr-
fucking hell
I’m focusing so hard, but everytime I get close to that stupid keyhole my hand shakes extra and jerks away and I lose all my progress.
i give up
And instead of killing myself that night, I slept on the floor with a dirty hoodie as a pillow. When I woke up later to my five am alarm, I almost didn’t remember what I didn’t do, but looking for my keys, finding them halfway falling into the vent by my desk, and seeing the gouges I had left in the wood by the keyhole, and I couldn’t forget.
And I hated myself, but I didn’t know why. Because I tried or because I failed?
13: #f49505
I can feel my heart beating. In my chest at first, but it moves to whatever part of my body I’m focusing on currently. When my eyes fix on something it seems like they can’t move.
It’s funny how just a couple grams of caffeine can feel so similar to meth.
I just took a dozen or so caffeine pills so I could write this stupid essay for English, but my brain took the focus I forced upon it and said, fuck you, we’re gonna focus on some useless shit instead. So now I’m writing this.
My chest hurts and I’m starting to feel sick. How nice would it be to have a heart attack? Then I would never have to write this stupid essay for English.
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