Dosed

Do people still say 'strung out'?

I was strung out. Coming off a rough fifteen hours of basically everything and I had made the mistake of asking for help at one point. I regretted it more than tearing apart the seven or eight paintings that were on my wall and now all over my floor in scraps. It was late August and I had lost my job and license somewhere and the night was closing in again. I was half under my bed, naked and picking at the leg of the bedframe, thinking "It's ending. It's ending," over and over. I had been horrified at one point and called a girl I had been seeing and drunkenly broken up with, loud and full of rage, a few nights back because at that moment she was the only person I felt any closeness to and she would know what to do. She came and sat with me and I cried to her in broken sentences and gasps that I was sorry I had been horrible to her and that I am not a person. She stayed with me for a while and when she knew I was safe she kissed me and left and we didn't speak much after that.

I only knew my guilt. I could see it in the air. My twisting and constricting weaknesses covering me, killing me, and I thought that was actually what had happened to me and I thought I had killed myself all along. Slow and from the inside. Not some grand gesture, no, that wasn't me. Not all at once, no, I do things slow and over long periods of time, and now here I was, chewing the insides of my cheeks and thinking I was dying and I was dying. In my own way.

Rotting room. House. Unemployed, drunk, tripping face crying and in my thirties. Alone. Under my bed, and alone. Afraid to be near people. Afraid to go outside sober. Afraid to wake. Afraid to sleep, and I did neither. Then I wasn't sleeping and even if I thought I could, I'd pound a pot of coffee and get twenty minutes and wake back up I could only see ghosts in the dark. Real or not, I stopped wondering.

What a fucking joke.

I woke earlier that day in Springer, on Paul and Zeph's couch. I had been out with Zeph the night before. Played an open mic. Wandered Springer. Killed a box of wine in an hour and shot the shit in a friends apartment across town. People came and went and when we switched to whiskey more people came. A girl with a little acne and a lot of hair came to me and kissed me and when she did she put something in my mouth. I smiled and she kissed me again and said “You'll be okay.”

The only words I wanted to hear.

An hour went by and she said “follow me” and she knew I would be okay, so I did.

“Hows the molly?”

“Is that what it was?”

“You can't tell?”

I was a box of wine and a half bottle of whiskey in. I couldn't tell if I was standing.

“Open your mouth,” she said.

I did.

She stuck her fingers under my tongue and she said I'd be okay, so I'd be okay.

The molly held me safe and content until it wore off and then the acid got at me. The problem with acid is it reacts to you, sort of. Where your head is. How you feel. My mind is a fucking shipwreck and I only put myself through the grinder.

I dropped around three or four in the morning and the whiskey knocked me out around six. I was awake again at eight and too drowsy to understand I was just still tripping. I woke up on Zeph's couch, wandered the apartment for what seemed a panicked age looking for the door, found it and left. Shoes on. Start the car. Drive home.

I lived about a half hour out and it wasn't until I hit the interstate, driving behind a road crew truck with angrily flashing orange lights that I realized how fucked I was.

Keep driving?

Pull over?

How long?

Unsure of at what point in the whole mess I was I decided to keep going. Maybe it was almost over, I reasoned. Focused. Not letting the crashing orange lights fill my car, my eyes. My head.

“CRASH YOUR CAR,” my head said.

“Okay,” I thought and swerved and hit the rumble strips and yelled “What are you doing? No one will know you mean it! They'll just think you were fucked up! Don't kill yourself on drugs!”

“YOU HAVE TO,” my head said. “LOOK AT YOU. TRASH. SHE DOESN'T LOVE YOU. NO ONE REALLY COULD. WEAK. LAZY. SCARED. FUTURELESS. SELF OBSESSED. KILL YOURSELF. DO IT. YOU HAVE TO. DO IT. DO IT. NOW.”

I hit the rumble strips again and cried and I did it again and cried more and I screamed in the car.

“WEAK.”

I kept screaming. I thought I could scream it all right out of me but it stayed. Whispering and I thought I just had to make it home.

By the time I pulled into the driveway my eyes were burning and in the mirror puffed and red and it looked like I had the shit kicked out of me.

I turned the car off, breathed deep and watched the light bounce off the hood and into the air where it waved and rose and dissipated and in front of everything a nearly invisible tangle of thick strands, intangible but there, and I thought that must be all that really matters but I didn't know what that meant.

I went inside, went to my bedroom, took off all of my clothes and cried.

“WEAK. ALONE. TRASH. USELESS. WASTE. LAZY. TALENTLESS. DISAPPOINTMENT. SELFISH. DRUNK.”

I curled into a ball and sank into the mattress.

“DO IT. DO IT. DO IT. DO IT. DO IT.”

“I can't,” I said into the blanket.

“COWARD.”

“I know.”

The intangible strands had followed me into the bedroom, swaying, tangling, growing. The room was hot and I realized I was drenched in sweat. With all of my effort I pushed the blanket off of me and it was a shed chrysalis, used and useless. I reached for the A.C..

“Some goddamned air.”

I was drenched in sweat and my eyes burned in tears and the A.C. came on and I begged the intangible strands to let the white noise put me to sleep.

“Please please please please please...” I said and repeated and repeated and repeated.

My skin cooled and the white noise was nice but it wasn't enough. The destroyed hole in my ceiling. One of the reasons Marie had left. The cowardice to get it fixed. Another reason. The anxiety to make a phone call. Another reason.

“GARBAGE. COWARD.”

I screamed into the air and the intangible strands reacted, spreading quick to the corners of the room and then coming back together.

“DO IT. DO IT. GO TO THE KITCHEN AND GET THE KNIFE. RIGHT NOW. RIGHT IN YOUR COWARD FUCKING THROAT. DO IT. DO IT.”

I watched it happen. I saw me roll off of the bed, crash to the floor. I watched me stand, bent and jagged and open the bedroom door. I followed as I left the room and into the kitchen. Open the drawer. Take the bread knife. I watched me press the teeth of it into my skin and I felt nothing as I pulled it hard and sawed across my throat and I watched me gurgle and choke and wheeze and fall and die and I felt nothing but I thought the floor would never come clean.

Then I was still on the floor of my room. Freezing.

“COWARD. DRUNK.”

“I know,” I said and crawled under my bed.