The Hole Within

CHAPTER 5

I had become insecure and had very poor self-esteem, due in large part to the fact that I could never be perfect enough. At fourteen, I was five feet seven, a hundred and twenty-five pounds, I had an athletic build and played basketball for our middle school team. In the locker room one day, my three friends were talking. Allison, who was five feet two and fat was saying how she only weighed one hundred and six pounds and fit into a size two. I was horrified. I knew she was fat so what must I be at a hundred and twenty-five pounds? The other girls also boasted low weights and sizes. I knew that I did not want to be fat and I was ashamed at how much I weighed. I decided to go on a diet.

I found a new freedom by controlling what I ate. I felt so out of control in all areas of my life, but found it was a satisfying way to punish myself for any number of transgressions I felt guilty of. I could deny myself meals. My journey down the road of anorexia (read: my Friend) began. I write:

I give to my Friend

My body

My control

My weakness

My strength

My pain

My life

My death..

My god.

I started high school with the same three friends; Allison the fat girl with a bad complexion, Brenda a homely girl with braces and Amy A, a tall lanky girl with mousy brown hair. We had lunch together, hung out at school and occasionally met up after school to cause mischief. I am not sure what prompted what happened next. I do not remember any kind of falling out. One fall day we met to go off campus for lunch. On the way, we stopped at the bathroom. I entered the stall and did my business with no inkling of anything being wrong. When I emerged, no one was in the bathroom. I was alone. Curious, I went searching for my friends. Across the campus I saw them, running away through the field on the way to lunch. I called out desperately and Allison and Brenda turned, laughed and resumed running away. I was bewildered, ashamed, hurt and lost. I turned back and went to the cafeteria and ate by myself, stinging tears in my eyes. It was the last time I was part of their group. As an adult, I know it is a fairly common childhood cruelty, but this event had a profound effect on me and changed the course of my life for years to come. My deepest fear of abandonment was compounded. Already ostracized by my classmates, I had just been summarily rejected by my only friends. Gravely unhappy at home I was now companionless. Solitary and remote, I was very susceptible.

One day, a blonde but slightly pretty girl with an unsavory reputation named Amy B approached me. She offered me companionship and over the next few days I confided in her the betrayal of my friends. She was easy to talk to, gently calling forth the details when I became hesitant. We discussed their treachery fervently and I begin to see her as an ally in my pain. Perhaps her tarnished reputation was not warranted, I did not know. She was kind to me. We begin to meet for lunch and in between classes. Gently, she proposed that I need not suffer. By now my anxiety was enormous and all consuming. Here was someone offering me relief. It was food to the starving. Water to the parched. I was intrigued.

That day, we met for lunch and she told me we would be going off campus. I did not argue. We met a boy much older than our fourteen years off campus at the back of some desolate parking lot. Adam greeted her in a friendly manner and showed me a small brown block wrapped in Saran Wrap. He called it hash. He explained that it was a free sample. Freedom wrapped in chains. Dropping the square in a bowl of an odd glass pipe, he showed me how to inhale the acrid smoke. We stood taking turns puffing on the glass stem. A gentle calm filled me but made me drowsy. Amy B watched me carefully, judging my reaction. It was pleasant except for the sleepiness which plagued me in the rest of the afternoon in class.

The following day Amy B asked me what I thought, if I wanted more. I did not, really. I liked the smoothing out of the edges the feeling gave me but hated the fatigue. Several days passed before Amy B told me she had a surprise for me. She pulled a pink oblong pill out of her pocket and prompted me to swallow it. "Don't worry," she assured, "you'll like it." And I did. A lot. The warm sense of peace that enveloped me was amazing. I did not feel sleepy. On the contrary, I felt energized. I became overly animated. Talkative. Totally unlike the withdrawn girl I had become.

I soon hungered for those pink tablets of tranquility. Amy B carefully doled them out to me over the next few weeks. Some days she had them some days not. She tutored me on how to get them and those like them. Told me the various names of the good ones I should look for on the brown prescription bottles in my parent's cabinet. Naturally, the deal was that I would share them with her. Although, I allotted only a few to her here and there, and kept the lion's share for myself. All too soon the supply ran dry. We recruited other kids to steal pills for us but it was never enough. We began to recruit friends to steal alcohol for us. The alcohol high was not the same but it was better than nothing. Amy B and I remained friends/drug until I left the state.

I would say something like 'from then on Amy B became my friend and drug buddy until...' however long you were.