Pretending

I was prescribed an antipsychotic and an antidepressant and I wasn't allowed to know why. I could never get a straight answer out of any psychiatrist. Having a label meant your future was ruined, but the way I saw it, that didn't really matter. If anything, it would help me to know. 

I hadn't taken either of my medications in weeks. I always think I'm getting better - I always think I know more than my doctor and it's okay for me to f**k with my brain chemicals any way I like. I don't ever feel like anything changes, so I think, what's the big deal? I had this little adrenaline-junkie tendency to not care about what happened to me, mostly concerning whether I woke up or not the next morning. 

"My life ended when I was thirteen you know. And I was born on Friday the thirteenth." My eyes widened and his frowned.

"That's probably not related. I mean who knows, it could be," he said.

I hated when people thought I was stupid. I wasn't stupid. I was trying hard to find some kind of reason to live, some meaning in the benign, greasy days of young adulthood. 

I got so turned off by feeling inferior. I hated being made to feel superior too, but being made to feel inferior was something that boiled me so red I immediately knew the answer was no. And you could always tell when he thinks you can't think for yourself, because he makes comments about your makeup or the shorts you're wearing, and he says, "you look like you want to kiss me right now." and he leans in before you can respond and then suddenly you're going to his house for drinks, because you can't say no to other people and you've got no ride home, again. He's twenty-three and you're eighteen and he has one more car than you and one more house than you and one more job than you- and you're at zero.

I thought about that even eight months later because it took me ages to get over grudges. I could be very cold and unforgiving, but I would lie to myself and other people and tell them I trusted them anyway, that it was okay, that I didn't mind. I've never had a cement idea of who I was and I still didn't now.

My type doesn't have a soulmate.

My type has star-crossed best friends that die young when you haven't talked to them in two years even though you used to fall asleep in the same bed watching That 70's Show in a pile of Oreo's and different eyeshadow pallets. 

In October I had a warning. I saw my scalp bleeding through my hair in my sleep. Ever intrigued, I found through my research six months later that a head injury in a dream could be a warning sign of severe mental illness. 

I thought of all the bathroom stalls and their peach tile walls. The nights I was wired, euphoric, my skin crawling and fifty hours of having been awake. I remembered truly being victim to the lack of chemical in my body. I was a slave to muttering phrases and hiding under the covers for twenty hours a day because it was the only way I could protect myself from them. I needed to drink a bottle of cough syrup and couldn't tell anyone about it since I was an adult now - and I couldn't handle having my self-destructive liberties found out and taken away from me. 

I remembered the Christmas lights all burning out on my side of the room and watching the spots move on my dark ceiling.

I always tell everyone I'm going to write a book. They ask me what it's going to be about and I tell them I'm going to write a classic- that I just need more practice and life experience. I don't know if I will ever go back to university, since apparently all you need is one year. At least she did.

Crying alone is the second worst type of crying. Crying when you wake up from a nap is the worst. After about two weeks I finally sat down sober and burst into tears. I was saving all of the pictures I had of us smiling and remembering that we were both anorexic, that we both had a crush on the same boy, and the faucets just burst open. It was torrential. It was worse when I was drinking. 

At first I quit eating again. I stopped talking to my best friend as much. I was stupid and bad all the time and everyone hated me and I was fat. I listened to everything people told me. I cried myself to sleep with friends that were sobbing right beside me, our bottle of Sky rolling around the floor. 

Suddenly I couldn't f*****g drive anymore, and my mom knew it too. Flying over the asphalt at seventy on a skinny highway in a part of Texas I'd never seen at night before. I had to turn off the high beams whenever a car came hurtling by on the other side of the double yellow lines. It was a solid thirty seconds every two minutes of gripping the steering wheel so tightly my arms hurt for two days afterward. There wasn't a day that passed June sixteenth that I didn't vividly imagine metal and blood and being smashed up like some accordion with my entire family any time I was behind the wheel. 

She was way too tiny for that to have been real.

People are dying and they tell me pretending isn't important.

Reviews

[Leo Allen]

You are one of the best writers I've ever been honored to witness. The way you can pour your experiences into words with such ease, it's as if I was living it. What a tragic thing, that genius is hardly recognized - overshadowed by "mental illnesses."

[scarlynn]

This is probably the nicest compliment I've ever received. Thank you so much, you seriously made my entire week. :)