Blueberry Was Too Much For Me

I was unconscious for four days. It seems like I'd go to sleep and I'd wake up but I would never really leave the same headspace. I had this bedraggled fogginess to me that only I seemed to notice, and I barely ever looked in the mirror. One minute I was in the car and the next I was in my bed, I was in a park late at night, I was in someone's house that I'd only seen on Facebook. It all made sense in the way that it didn't make sense. I thought maybe I'd left my past so hastily and quickly that it began to miss me, and all of my childhood friends were flying back to Texas and the unrequited crushes I had in middle school were asking for my number all at the same time, but I was so strung out that none of it really mattered. I didn't know what mattered now.

The first afternoon I spent sober was in my bed trying to write. I thought maybe getting medication wasn't a great idea anymore because even though it was tormentful and inconvenient for me to change moods every few hours, it seemed necessary. I could get high on my own and the only substance I needed was myself. Looking back it's incredibly immature and perhaps it mocks and romanticizes everything people struggle with, but my pattern is that I'm only happy when I have something horrible in my life. I'm only happy when I can muse about a boy that doesn't want me, I'm only happy when I'm alone and drunk for an entire weekend, I'm only happy when I've got bruises and lashes that I can feel but no one else knows about. It's funny now because I don't complain about it anymore either. But the point is, I can never get better because if I did, the entire idea of me would evaporate completely.

My best friend from my freshman year of high school was sitting on my ottoman couch. I hadn't seen her in four years. She was wiping rubbing alcohol on her leg because my dog licked this cut she had near her ankle. She had lupus, so she was supposed to be really careful about things like that. I thought that if I had lupus, I'd try to die all the time, and I wouldn't care about anything. It was hard for me to keep myself well-nourished and healthy while there was nothing wrong with me in the first place. I just assume I'll be fine all the time and never worry.

Her boyfriend looked at me too long and too intensely every time he said something to me and it was unnerving. His eyes were icy blue and seemed like they would always be that alert-looking. They'd probably be wide-open and staring when he was ninety and dead, and my best friend would look at them and still think they were beautiful. He was the type of person to yell at you for being in the street when there were no cars coming. I couldn't imagine waking up next to someone like that, I'd probably sleep on the couch. I knew there was a reason I liked dark eyes.

I was too old for our plans to change this often and this quickly. I could tell by her face that nothing in her had matured since I was fourteen, and so I promised to see her again before Tuesday even though it was the weakest promise I had ever made. Have you ever faked a smile for five hours? I have, but the only interesting thing about it is that I still do it even after I broke something in my jaw. 

Nothing could breach my thoughts anymore unless it was something unhealthy or someone regurgitating my own curiousness or god himself. I was ninety percent sure I was over my childhood, and the ten percent of uncertainty was really only there because of one person, and I didn't even know if I could bring myself to speak to him. I wasn't positive enough. Everyone tells me things like "he's getting older" and "maybe he's calmer now" but if I know anything about the universe it's that I've changed and he hasn't.  

Maybe my greatest work of art won't be something I think up when I'm broken and twenty-five with a boyfriend that doesn't care about me anymore. Maybe my greatest work of art was pushing my bed against the door so he couldn't come in after I saw him throw something at her. Maybe my greatest work of art was that goddamn alleyway at the side of my house, and the times I sat there hiding to cry, and the times I sat there hiding to get high. Maybe my greatest work of art was when I didn't leave the living room and gritted my teeth so hard and didn't say a word and stood there and stared him down with all the intensity I could think of, and he got so close to my face barking like some rabid animal that she stepped in the way with the phone pre-dialed to January 9, 2010. I thought he was going to hit me, his own self. 

I'm not depressed, I never was. My soul is volatile and fragile and I needed to rest it for a few years, but I was never depressed. I used up so much energy in the eighth grade that it took me five years to restore myself, and now that I'm finally present, the only reason I can't leave Round Rock is the same reason I couldn't leave Round Rock when I was thirteen. It never happened the way I thought it was going to and it seems like now, that's the only thing I care about.