cCX
I quickly woke up from my childhood bed.
— drip, drip, drip.
What is that noise? I rise from my bed and listen again.
— drip, drip, drip.
Why is it so quiet in here? Where is my mom? Where is Nora Ray? I slowly walk from my bedroom. The bathroom light is on across our small hall. The noise is coming from in there.
I hesitate for a moment but head towards the bathroom door. The mirror is foggy, and this room is muggy and eerie—drip, drip, drip. The bathtub curtain is shut. I pull back the damp curtain. My heart sends a jolt through my chest. I can feel the hairs on my arms stand on end.
Before my eyes, I see my mother, clothed underwater.
Her eyes and mouth are closed. She looks to be in a peaceful dream.
Her gorgeous curls float above her, forming an enclosed maze around her face.
There is a syringe with a liquid substance circling the tub’s wall.
I go to grab her and pull her to the surface.
As soon as I reach for her shoulders, her eyes fly open, and so does her mouth.
She is screaming underwater. I use all my strength to pull her above.
It’s as if someone invisibly hovers over top of her, keeping her from coming up for air.
I’m not strong enough to fight the force that keeps her held under.
I can see life leaving her eyes. Burning tears pour from my eyes.
Now I can’t breathe. My lungs are closing.
I can feel her pain deep inside me. No, Mom, no!
My eyes fly open, and I gasp for air. My body, clothes, and mattress are drenched with sweat. I can feel every inch of my worn body trembling. I quickly look down and can almost physically see my heart pounding from my chest.
Fresh, salty tears slowly caress my cheeks. I frantically look around, still feeling confused. I’m at my apartment, in my room. Lottie is lying across my right arm, facing me. She tilts her head and gazes at me.
She’s seen me waking up in a frenzy so many times.
I can see the concern in her little, beady brown eyes.
It wasn’t real. This was another bad fucking dream.
They haunt me more than I’d like to admit.
I sigh out of frustration and reach for my phone to check the time.
It is 6:30 in the morning. Still no response from that jackass.
I feel so gross, covered in sticky sweat. I take a deep breath and drag myself from my bed to the bathroom to wash off. Hopefully, scalding my body will motivate me to confront Danielle. Once I’m out of the shower, I peek at myself in the bathroom mirror.
I feel rested even after having night terrors last night.
But there’s something about my eyes, a sadness trapped behind them.
I try to imagine myself as someone else looking at me.
Can others see my internal screams? Do they see the demons lingering, bearing weight on my shoulders?
Or do I look pleasantly happy and content?
When I stare back at myself, I can see all my inner flaws manifesting in my deteriorating body. Past and present wounds mark every part of me. I try so hard to run from my fractured soul, but the faster I try to run, the more it consumes me entirely.
Most days, I desperately reach for distractions, like an addict chases a high.
Studies show that if you have a relative or parent in addiction, it’s most likely imprinted in your blood.
So I’ve concluded that I’m an addict, but not in the way you think.
Drugs have never really been my thing. Probably because I resent what they did to my mother.
I was jealous of drugs in a way. How could something equivalent to a stranger pop up out of nowhere and steal our mom from us?
So yes, I resent them wholeheartedly. But I won’t lie and say I’ve never dabbled. Believe me, I have multiple occasions. In my head, I wanted to know what was so special about them. I needed to know how something could be more important than flesh and blood.
I may or may not have gotten around a bad crowd during my teenage years.
Danielle had graduated two years before me.
I had to talk myself out of not dropping out and being done.
My mental health took a turn around tenth grade.
And with Danielle gone, I felt so alone and miserable.
I didn’t understand the emotions running through my head.
The last thing I was going to do was talk to someone about it and expose my weaknesses because that’s all I’ve felt most of my life: weak with no control.
So, I bottled it all up and looked for distractions instead.
No, I’m not proud of some of my choices in life.
But who was to tell me right from wrong?
I had no guidance aside from Nora Ray trying her damndest to fill shoes that weren’t hers to fill.
So I said fuck it, most kids turn out like their parents anyway, good or bad. Why not prove the world right? Statistics are always right.
I’ve fiddled around with a few different drugs.
If I was going to try something, why not go all the way in?
Cocaine is how I discovered I had raging anxiety.
At first, the rush it gave me was exhilarating.
It was the perfect combo with alcohol. And damn, did it make me want to party.
I could drink like a fish and felt indestructible.
The music, the dancing, I for once felt so alive and vibrant.
It didn’t take me long, after a few weekends of abusing it, to discover the wearing-off effect.
This is where my heart and my head both teamed up against me.
The pressure in my stomach, the racing heartbeats clawing at my brittle chest. The rambling thoughts crowded my vision.
The short ride was an adventure, but once my Uber ride was up, I was left abandoned, shivering on a dark street with nothing but my gloomy thoughts. Why would anyone want to feel that way?
Heroine is where I feel I stopped at my lowest. I knew who I could communicate with to get my hands on it.
It was obvious who did what in school. So, I wiggled my way into a small group of troubled girls from geometry class.
I was troubled, too, so why not hang out with people I could relate with?
I was tired of being alone, exhausted from faking a smile every day. I contemplated my decision for a while.
My heart was telling me no, but my brain was telling me to do it.
I had already tried an upper, and that didn’t mix well with my overthinking mind.
Maybe a downer would be different for me.
This could be my opportunity to finally understand why people are destroying their lives and families over a stupid, meaningless drug.
The girls brought me to some sketchy condo with guys who looked to be at least ten years older. That place was screaming with red flags, but I would not be a pussy and back out. I’ve seen some pretty horrid shit, so I could handle it.
I remember the dude’s sitting around a weathered coffee table.
The place reeked of cigarette and weed smoke.
There was this dark, tar-like substance on a tray.
Old stained bottle caps lay on and around the table.
It looked like they were mixing it with water and transferring it into syringes.
I watched all three girls individually take a syringe with the substance and remove the needle.
They then proceeded to shoot the substance into their nose. It wouldn’t be too hard for me, right?
It was my turn next, shit. Every human was watching me in that place. You would have thought I was preparing to perform for them. This made my anxiety skyrocket. One thing about me. I dislike all eyes on me; I don’t give a shit where I am.
A dude with acne scars all over his face hands me a syringe. He explained to me what to do like I didn’t just watch the girls simply shoot liquid into their noses. I take the syringe in my shaky hands. On the inside, I am an earthquake ready to destroy all in my path.
But on the outside, my face gives away nothing. I stick the syringe to my nostril, and before talking myself out of it, I inhale the substance through my nose quickly.
Instantly, I feel a heavy rush surge through every vein in my body.
With each second that passed, the voices in my head were muted one by one.
All at the same time, I feel nothing but so much.
The pain that consumed me daily, the racing thoughts, the rage, the sadness, is all gone.
I feel so numb, yet so alive. It is as if the liquid comes in with no remorse.
It knocks my mental door down and kicks out every negative thought from my brain.
Now I sort of understand why depressed people turn to this. I haven’t felt this calm in a long time. Nothing matters. I don’t give a single fuck about anything except for this overwhelming numbness.
It wasn’t until my head spun that my vision went completely black.
I realized the mistake I had made. This is where my memory fights to recollect exactly what happens from this point on.
There are tiny kernels I hold onto. Flashes of people surround me, examining me under a microscope like I am some new lab-discovered species.
I remember feeling like I was floating on a cloud headed into a dark abyss.
Whatever this is, it’s happening at rapid fire.
There is a burning sensation in the pit of my stomach.
It feels as if lava is traveling through my insides.
The last thing I remember is hovering over a toilet, puking my entire insides out.
I had never in my life puked so much. By the time I make it back home, my insides feel like they had been in combat war for years.
Danielle is the only one that I tell, and I make it clear it’s never to be discussed. Fuck that, never again.