When I come to, I am screaming.
I look around and I don't recognize anything. I feel all sorts of aches and pains in my body that I never noticed before. There's a ringing in my ears that wasn't there before. Everything's a blur and the sun feels like it's punching me in my face. Sweat drips from my brow down my cheeks. I'm hyperventilating. I've curled up in my sheets and I'm screaming into my comforter because I don't know where I am. I don't know who I am. There's a pounding at the door for a few minutes, and then it stops. Everything slowly comes into focus. I stop feeling my heartbeat in my ears. The lock on the door clicks open, and a tall lanky figure with grey hair and a ballcap rushes in. "Dude." he states, looking at me and the mess of my room, littered with empty boxes of cough medicine and empty bottles of cough syrup, the contests of my dresser spread across my room, blood stains on my shirt, my lip split open. There's a foamy red mass dripping over the contents of my trash can I can only assume is my vomit.
"You went too hard again last night, didn't you? I keep telling you, you gotta slow down. You're burning the metaphorical candle at both ends. You know I've done it." I recognize him, my roommate, Ellis. Everything still feels off, but it's starting to make sense again. This is my room. This is my bed. This is my blood.
"I was so close, Ellis. I was so close this time." I sit up and take a sip from the almost empty bottle of red on my bedside table. my weed jar is next to it and open. Lucky I didn't knock it over in the chaos of last night, or this morning, whatever it was. It's just past 4 and I'm waking up, and I can't remember what time it all started. Oh well, at least I have my priorities in order. Number one: Drugs. Number two: breathing. Right. "You trying to smoke?" I ask bluntly.
"Well, it is almost appointment time, might as well." He pulls an already packed bowl out of his coat pocket and passes it to me while I fumble for a lighter in my pockets. Smoking always helps, I tell myself. It helps me remember what's still real. I've done this before. I do this every night. I take a pull and pass the bowl to Ellis. He pauses before striking the lighter, and looks at me. "You make any progress with finding a job?" I shrug my shoulders, with a faint "Eh" under my breath. He takes his hit and sits down besides me on my bed. "You can't stay here for free forever, you know? I can't afford to pay for your weed and wine and dex, dude. You spend more on dex in a week than I do on food for a month." He passes the bowl back to me, I smoke. "I could go back to lifting it if you want." He sighs.
"I don't want you going back to that, man. Isn't that how you ended up out here in the first place? You got caught and your parents couldn't put up with your shit anymore? I'm not your parent dude. Don't expect me to treat you like my kid. My patience is starting to run out. You can kill that bowl." I nod in understanding. "Clean up your room, and clean up yourself. This is still my house"
I finish smoking. I piece together the last four years in my mind. Dex. Oh sweet, tasty, uplifting, repulsive, plague-ridden, cancerous dex. It saved my life, I tell myself. It almost ended it too, from what I recall. I remember the hospitals, the psych wards. I remember the names and faces of all the people I'd met there. I remember the false hope for me that I'd filled them with. I wondered how they'd react if I'd died. I wondered if they'ed even know. I remember one year of college which I had miraculously fucked-up. I don't think I even went to a class after the end of September. I remember it all making me feel so stupid and that if I wanted it I'd have to try and I just didn't want to try.
And Jessica. I remembered Jessica.
When I got around to checking my phone finally I saw the missed call and voicemail. It was her. Fuck. What the fuck was I thinking. Did I try and talk to her last night? When I was... like that? God. The one person I wanted to love me in the whole world, and yet I had quite a way of doing just the opposite in the eight years we'd known each other. It's a miracle she still even acknowledges my existence, sometimes.
I frantically check my call history and texts. No, nothing from last night. I breathe a sigh of relief for the first time all day. I press play and listen to the recording.
"Hey, it' s Jessie, uh, Jess. I always forget that people don't know me as Jessie back home. I figured it would just go to voicemail but I thought I'd call and see how you're doing. Um... yeah. We haven't talked in a really long time and I just wanted to make sure you're doing okay and all that. I always see your facebook statuses and stuff and see you're doing... as well as you can. Better than expected I guess. Oh, that sounds awful, but you-you know what I mean. You know. Anyway, yeah. You don't have to call me back or anything, I just wanted to let you know I was thinking about you and hope you're doing okay, okay? Alright... Bye."
Fuck. That voice. I could never forget the sound of that voice. I knew it had been so long since I'd last heard it, and an even longer time since i'd heard it be, well, nice. But I couldn't shake the familiarity of it for some reason. I had no goo reason to give why it didn't feel as foreign as it should. I remember the first time I OD'd. I remember telling her after that it was her voice that kept me alive. She said it was the doctors, but I still maintained it was her voice.
I could write songs, sing of how its smoothness contrasted the raspiness of mine. I could write poems on the slight inflections it made when she'd pause to take a breath. I could write books on how I could never, ever forget her voice.
I'm almost glad she thinks I'm doing okay. Like she said, better than expected. But as I look around my room and at myself in the mirror above my dresser, my unshaven face and busted lip. Unexplained bruises and scars on my body. Unkempt hair sticking out at all angles. If this was better than expected, I could only wonder what she was expecting. I'm sickly thin, nothing remained of the baby fat and muscle definition that my body almost had the last time she'd seen me. I'm glad she thinks I'm doing okay, because I would hate for her to see me like this. I'm glad I didn't call her first, or that I didn't answer when she called, because I know she would have heard it in my voice. I wasn't lying to her though.
**
Eight years ago I was a different person. I was smart, funny, I was with the girl of my dreams. I was happy. It was the last time I was happy. I was on top of the world, and the thing about being on top of the world is that there's no place to go but down. God, did I go down. In a way, I really broke my own heart. I guess I won the "I love you more" game. Too competitive, I suppose. Usually winning felt better than this.
I remembered. I remembered everything. And I did something I did from time to time, though I'd never admit it. I got down on my knees and I prayed. I begged God for his mercy. I begged him to give me that feeling back. I begged him for her back. And finally, after the tears had settled, after I'd begged, and begged, I reached for a bottle in the drawer in the table beside my bed, and used my thumb to punch a hole in the tin foil cover, and removed the cotton swab revealing the pills underneath. And I reached for the second bottle and did it again. two-hundred pills. Two-hundred of anything has to be enough, I thought. And as the wine washed the pills down my throat and into my empty stomach, I was still on my knees, and I was still praying. I was still begging.
Please, Lord. Forgive me. Forgive me for I have sinned. Please Lord, grant me safe passage. I beg you, please. Don't make me do this longer. I am so sorry.
