Such A Beautiful Disaster

Part 15

I couldn't sleep that night. After a long day of groups, at 11:30 I said goodnight to Shauna, pulled the curtain closed, and got in bed. Even though I was exhausted I tossed and turned, unable to get any rest. One minute I was hot, the next minute I was cold, and sweating profusely either way. My nose ran and my eyes watered. My stomach was cramping up and the pain was unbearable. My whole body just ached. The more time that passed, moving around in the bed, unable to lie still, the more agitated I got. Around 1:00 AM I sat up in bed and tried to read a book but I couldn't focus. I found myself reading the same sentence three times in a row and still not comprehending what I just read. I lied back down and moved around fitfully.

Another hour later I got out my journal. I wrote two pages of nonsense that was barely legible. I felt like throwing my journal across the room, then destroying everything else within reach. I gritted my teeth and moaned into my pillow. I lied back down again.

I sang songs in my head. Anything happy that I didn't really know so I had to concentrate on remembering the words. My mind kept wandering and losing focus of what I was doing. Then I would try and remember what song I had just been singing and couldn't. So I would switch to the next song that popped in my head. This cycle continued until I gave up, curled into a fetal position, and started sobbing, covering my face with my pillow. I felt so damn miserable.

My conversation with Jeremy floated around my thoughts. That made me cry even harder. I thought of my mother, watching over me, and how disappointed she would be of what I had become. I thought about how she just left me, how she just gave up, how she could have gotten help for her grief, how I should have told her until I was blue in the face that it wasn't her fault. I thought about my mother and my son, together in whatever lie beyond this life. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that he had died. He was just a baby. He had so much life left to live. It wasn't fair that my mother went right after him, not even caring to push through it and stick around for me.

I cried and cried. I wept for a straight forty-five minutes, grabbing the sheets, balling my hands into fists, flailing my arms, kicking my legs, and moaning into my pillow, unable to contain my grief. I thought about going to whatever staff was on night shift and talking to them, but there was no way I was going to tell them about this. So I stayed in bed until I finally stopped crying. I was absolutely exhausted, barely able to move my body anymore, but I still could not sleep.

I stayed there, basically comatose, watching the sky turn from black, to indigo, to dark blue, to light blue, and then it was morning. I could hear the morning staff coming in and them talking in the office. I heard Jeremy's voice and Lauren's. I figured they were going to start knocking on the doors soon to wake everybody up for breakfast. That's when I decided to break into my stash of pills. I wanted to get them in me before Shauna woke up.

I got out off bed and grabbed my sneaker off the floor beside the nightstand. I pulled a pen out of the drawer, sat down on the carpet, and started to jam it into the undetectable slit I made in the rubber sole. I sat there for a few moments, trying to push it inside. When it finally made it through the thick part I used the pen like a lever to hold down the rubber sole, then shook my sneaker as much as I could without losing my grip on the pen. One pill tumbled out onto the floor, then another one, then two more, then another two more. And that was it.

I scooped the pills up and grabbed a piece of notebook paper, my ID, and my brush from inside the drawer then went into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. I sat down on the floor, with my back up against the door. I ripped a small off a small section of the notebook paper off, folded the bigger piece in half, then placed a pill underneath it. As quietly as I could, I crushed the pill into a powder with the thick part of my brush. It took a few minutes but I eventually had what I needed. I took my ID and used it to break the powder up, then formed it into a line. I picked up the piece of notebook paper I ripped off and rolled it into a tight cylinder. As soon as that was done, I stuck it into my right nostril, pushed the opposite one in, leaned over to the powder and sniffed it up my nose with the paper tube.

I felt it immediately hit the back of my throat, though I couldn't taste the drip. I sat there for a few moments with my head back and my left nostril still closed, inhaling deeply, trying to get the taste of it running down my throat. I kept listening for a knock on the door, or any movement from Shauna. All of a sudden I felt extremely sick. I quickly got on my knees, crawled to the toilet, and threw up. I cursed in my head, for throwing up what I had just ingested and for making so much noise. When I stopped retching, I got up and put my ear to the door. I waited, making sure Shauna hadn't woken up from the sound of me vomiting, before turning on the sink and swallowing some water from the tap.

I popped a pill in my mouth, chewed it, and swallowed it. I never took the pills by mouth but I wanted it in me now, so by the time I crushed up and snorted another pill, this one would already be working it's way into my system. I repeated the whole process of crushing, breaking, and snorting the pill again, except I crushed two pills at once, and sniffed up one huge line just in case I puked again. At least something might stay in me. Before I sat back and relaxed, I popped the last two pills, then wiped away all the evidence.

I leaned against the door, sniffing in and swallowing. My stomach started churning but I didn't feel like I was going to throw up again. Instead, I started to feel dizzy, even though I was sitting down and the room looked blurry. I felt like I couldn't move and my body slid itself down to the floor. I was wondering what was going on, then started to get panicky. I wasn't thinking straight because of the withdrawal and I realized that taking six 80 mg tablets at once was a fucking stupid thing to do. My throat felt like it was closing up and I couldn't breathe good at all. I thought about calling out for help, but I didn't want them to know I had taken the pills. I didn't want to get kicked out and I didn't want to go to jail. Then the room started to go black and everything faded away.