The Hole Within

CHAPTER 24

A year passed and I do not remember my home life during that time, if there even was one. The snapshots that stand out are of me overdosing on pills and alcohol. Mom must have been lost as to how to help me. I attended a sexual abuse group and one night we were going to have an all-night session. I prepared by taking two Xanax and buying a fifth of rum which I drank quickly in the car on my way there. I had consumed three quarters of the bottle by the time I arrived. I was feeling good. I was feeling fine. I stashed the rest of the bottle in the bathroom, taking the lid off the tank and tucking my bottle safely in the water. I sat on the floor waiting for group to begin when I suddenly had to pee. I got up and took one step before the floor raced up to my face. It was the strangest sensation. I did not feel like I was falling, I felt like the floor was rising up to meet me. Though I must have fallen flat on my face I felt nothing as I passed out. 

The next thing I knew my mom was there and she was helping me up the stairs. There was someone on the other side of me as they helped me out the door, my feet dragging then stumbling to keep pace. Then I started vomiting. I remember lying in the backseat, vomiting into a box, while mom drove me home – or maybe we went straight to the hospital from there. Either way mom was livid with me. She was so tired of not knowing what I would do next. That she would receive a phone call telling her that her daughter was dead. Not if. When. It had gotten that bad.

My dance with pills was no less harrowing. I had talked Dr. Bevins into prescribing me a large amount of Darvon for the chronic headaches I had. He also gave me Phenergan to cope with the nausea they sometimes caused. So, I had a constant supply of narcotics, sedatives and sleeping pills. It was a careful dance to manage them all. I always had a pill bottle in my purse full of narcotics, sedatives and antiemetics. I would take a combination of Xanax and Darvon in the morning to get high. I would then take pills throughout the day to maintain the high. Sometimes I would lose count, sometimes I would forget if I had just taken one or two so I would take another. I would often make myself sick trying to balance the combination. That was what the Phenergan were for. I took pills to get high and then take pills to counteract the sickening side effect of taking too many narcotics. The trouble came when I mixed in alcohol. I would often end up in the bathroom vomiting violently as the poison ran through my system. Then mom would have to cart me off to the emergency room because I would become incoherent then non-responsive. I was totally out of control with my addiction. We both bided time as I worked on killing myself. I write:

Up!

Stop! Drink!

Put on that plastic

Mask

Run!

Go! Let them see that

Smile

Smile and talk, talk

Laugh

(Isn't she doing wonderful?)

Smile

Laugh, function

(We're glad to have her old self back!)

Up – Higher

Hit that High!

Collapse, withdraw

Think, sit, stare

Run and purge,

Cut and burn

Then lie awake for hours

Ready to be

Up!