I'm watching Erik cook heroin in a spoon, just like we're in a movie. It feels surreal, like living someone else's life.
When it's ready, he tourniquets his arm and then he pauses. "Wait, I need music for this," he says.
He puts on the fucking Trainspotting soundtrack and laughs like he's a genius for thinking of it, while I'm sitting here thinking dude, that is the worst possible thing you could play.
I try to make the face for "yay". I feel kind of sick.
Drive boy dive boy
Dirty numb angel boy
In the doorway boy
She was a lipstick boy
She was a beautiful boy
And tears boy
And all in your inner space boy
You had
Hand girls boy
And steel boy
You had chemicals boy
I've grown so close to you
I used to watch MTV AMP back in the 1990s, and "Pearl's Girl" by Underworld does amazing things with my synaesthesia, especially when high. Erik is the first person to take me clubbing and I danced with him to "Born Slippy" in a club before. Now, sitting across from him in his cluttered living room, watching him pump the heroin into the syringe from the spoon, I think about when we went clubbing and danced to this song and the mental image slows down in my head, like reality warping itself. The lights dim.
I feel really ambivalent about watching him shoot up. Like I shouldn't just be sitting here watching, like I should stage some kind of "drugs are bad, mkay?" intervention. But I don't want to get into an argument with him about it, and I know that's what will happen. I tell myself he's an adult, he knows what he's doing, this is just a sometimes thing.
At least he didn't put on Nirvana. That would be worse, probably.
I can tell when it kicks in because his mouth opens and his eyes glaze over and he half-smiles and then he lets out a long, drawn-out "wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww."
"Good?" I ask.
He nods and makes a gargling noise. "Nothing hurts." He's in chronic pain, like I am. Both of us have had doctors tell us we're too young to be in this kind of pain. I won't hear the name "Ehlers-Danlos" until I'm in my forties.
He pats the seat next to him and I join him on the couch and he leans on me and puts "Born Slippy" on repeat, just sitting there looking like he's having a religious experience. I watch him - in part to keep an eye on him, and in part because it's... fascinating, in a scientific way, and also kind of horrific in a trainwreck way.
I glance at the spoon and the syringe on the table. I wonder what it's like. I would like everything to stop hurting, myself, inside and out.
I'm too fucking afraid to try. I close my eyes and think of Kurt, and how I had to stay home from school after a week when he died. I don't want to end up like him, strung out and falling deeper and deeper down the spiral, until the only choice is to end it.
And yet, I feel like I'm headed there anyway, with or without heroin.
I look at the spoon again and I make myself look away. I stroke Erik's hair and kiss the top of his head, and hope he can enjoy this moment of peace without ugly consequences later.
I'm not optimistic about it. I don't know what to do. The baggie on the table calls to me like a siren. No, I tell myself. Just say no, my mind repeats, like the DARE class I had to take as a kid that taught me marijuana was exactly as bad as heroin and I love weed, it's fucking great. Surely this can't be so bad.
When Erik passes out, I put on Nirvana, and I sit in the dark, so I don't have to look at the paraphernalia. I'm worried about him, but I'm also worried for myself.
I am a tough motherfucker. I'm not a drug addict, like my father. I never will be.
It's been two weeks since my suicide attempt and I'm still in the hospital. I'm not responding to the medication the way they'd like, and my treatment team is trying to decide what to do next.
I wake up to my female roommate unbuttoning my pajama top and putting her hand on my tit and playing with my nipple. I scream bloody fucking murder. I scream and scream and scream.
I don't know how to articulate that I'm not just completely creeped out and fucked up by my hospital roommate fucking goddamn molesting me first thing in the morning, but how it reminds me of when my mother fucking raped me. I go mute. This is a thing I do when I panic, I don't know how to talk.
They give me a new medication, called Klonopin.
They put me in my own room and the patient advocate starts working on getting me transferred to another unit altogether, a less restrictive one, and more importantly, where I'm not in danger from Ms. Molester. I lay there with my headphones on, staring at the ceiling, zoning out.
She said come over come over
She smiled at you boy.
Let your feelings slip boy
But never your mask boy
I can feel my face doing this open-mouthed half-smile the same way Erik did when he shot up for the first time. "Wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww," I say to myself. All the tension rolls out of my body.
Nothing hurts.
Two years later, the Klonopin isn't working anymore at maximum dose, and they switch me to Ativan.
Two years after that, the Ativan isn't working anymore and they switch me to Xanax.
I start sleeping all the time, at least twelve to fourteen hours a day. I move to California to be with this guy I met off the Internet and things go bad within days and I'm stuck there and it gives me the excuse I need to just fucking sleep all the time. Sleep and sleep and sleep. But this makes my mood even worse when I'm awake, knowing I'm sleeping my life away, and I've become this zombie who's taking shitloads of Xanax just to survive.
Everything hurts.
Finally after the first month of me being out there, my boyfriend tells me to stop taking my meds. While I know the Xanax is a problem, it doesn't fix the fact that I sleep to escape his insults and the way he still flirts with his ex-girlfriend in front of me.
But here he is, telling me, "It's a crutch. You need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps."
Like an idiot, I just stop taking it, without consulting a doctor, and without doing some research on Google about how to go off benzos.
I feel like I'm going to jump out of my skin. Every single noise is on an amplifier. Everything startles me. Everything annoys me. The sun is too bright. Light in the apartment is too bright. I'm not sleeping well. I can't think clearly.
Then I start shaking. I'm prone to sprains and dislocations and I shake so hard I dislocate my shoulder. My teeth chatter. My boyfriend yells at me about the tooth chattering noise like I'm doing this on purpose.
I sweat so bad that I soak through the sheets over and over again and he yells at me about this too.
Then the stomach cramps start, and the shits. I shit the bed in agony. I projectile vomit at least twice, one of those times being when he drags me along to the post office. He screams at me in the car all the way home while my head pounds, being in the car feels like I'm on a rollercoaster ride, it's too bright out, my stomach is roiling.
That night I sleep and have night terrors. I wake up and THERE ARE SPIDERS ALL OVER MY FUCKING CEILING. Every inch of my skin itches and burns. THERE ARE SPIDERS CRAWLING ALL OVER ME.
I try to take some deep breaths and to practice one of the guided meditations I learned in therapy, and my brain decides now's a great time for a "Born Slippy" earworm.
And remembering nothing boy
You like my tear hole boy
It gets wet like an angel
Derailed
I lay there staring at SPIDERS GODDAMN EVERYWHERE and I can't stop shaking and my stomach is cramping up and I itch and I'm sweating, sweating, sweating.
I think of the bag of heroin on Erik's coffee table, five years ago, and I wish I could reach back in time and snort the whole-ass bag.
Mega mega white thing
Mega mega white thing
Mega mega white thing
"STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT!" I scream at no one in particular. It finally makes the spiders go away, like a magical incantation.
When my boyfriend comes home the police are there because one of our neighbors called them, hearing me scream. "Everything's fine," he assures them.
He steps in the bedroom and looks like he's going to kill me. I'm laying in my own shit and vomit and sweat, teeth chattering, stomach in agony. "Please make it stop," I beg. "Please give me a Xanax."
He flushes them down the toilet. "You're weak," he scoffs at me. "You're an addict. You're disgusting."
I sob into the pillow, trying carefully to avoid the vomit. Eventually I cry myself to sleep and I dream I'm in Valinor and I sit there staring at the Trees with that half-smile and the "wowwwwwwwww", entranced by the light, and then the gigantic spider comes and devours the Trees and I wake up screaming.
How am I at having fun
I know why you're on your way
To a new tension
Headache
A month later, things are almost back to normal, but I still feel exhausted, like the way I've gotten after bad bouts of flu.
I feel tired all the way into my soul.
It isn't until years later when I'm back in New England that I find out I should have never been prescribed benzodiazepines for four fucking years and that was irresponsible of my doctors. I'm more mad at myself for them, hearing my ex-boyfriend's you're weak, you're an addict, you're disgusting echo in my head even though I know he was a complete fucking asshole during my withdrawal.
I try to tell a friend about how bad the benzo withdrawal was and they say, "Wow, you're lucky to be alive."
I make the same pained face I probably made when Erik shot up for the first time.