ou can't see the forest for the trees, that is what my mother said to me when she came to visit this afternoon. She said, "Sheila, you can't see the forest for the trees." Whatever the fuck that means. I pretty much just ignored her anyway, I just stared out of the window at all of the people down below, and pretended that I was one of them, that I was free. But, I can't see the forest for the trees, and the bitch wonders why I slit my wrists? Which really itch, deep down inside the cut, where the thin membranes are slowly webbing themselves back together again, and I really wish I didn't have a goddamned IV sticking out of my hand, it just really depresses me to look at the ugly thing. I also think that I am getting sick, all of the fucking white is driving me nuts, the whole room is white, everywhere I look, white. I can't stand it, it makes me nauseous, I tried telling my mother this, that the room is making me ill. She just looked at me and sighed then said I should be lucky that that was the least of my worries. So I told her to fuck off and so she finally got upset enough to leave. At least the idiot didn't start crying, this time. So now I am all alone again, but I'm also really complacent in a depressing sort of way. I just keep staring out of the window, because it has started to rain and I really like the rain. I try to remember the words to this one song that my friend Marc likes, it's by this really creepy European band, but I can't even remember the band's name and this really upsets me because I really miss Marc. I don't even miss my boyfriend Toby, as much as I miss Marc. Well the only reason that I'm even with Toby is because he totally looks like Marc, same dark hair, same pale completion, same dull blue eyes, that always look sad. The only difference between the two is that Marc doesn't really like girls and Toby does so we fuck each other a lot. I want out of this goddamned hospital. I think though that'll be getting out really soon, and thankfully I won't be committed, but I will have to go and see a shrink, plus go to group therapy like four times a week or something which I don't really mind that much, since it's something to do at least.

 

he next day they take the IV out of me since I started eating again. So the first thing I do is go and have a cigarette and I'm surprised they actually let me go outside and have one, but they send someone out with me just to make sure I don't try and run off or hurt myself again. What do they care if I hurt myself? I mean I'm wearing these pink flannel pajamas how much more harm can be done? At least they're telling me I'll be home by the end of the week, maybe, hopefully. I smoke the cigarette too quickly and get a massive head rush, so I just sit and watch TV the rest of the day. Pictures flash by and I don't really pay attention, it's more like electronic wall paper. I am so disinterested in everything, seriously. However, this guy on some soap opera or something looks a lot like Toby, so I sit and watch that for a while. The volume is off, so I sit and think about the last time I saw Toby, before I tried to kill myself and it makes me happy because the last thing he said to me was 'I love you.' But, I'm really troubled by the fact that he hasn't come to visit me. I have though, only been in here for I think three days now, so I don't know if it's too soon to start panicking. But I do anyway just because there really isn't anything else to do around here, except watch TV and panic over that fact that your boyfriend hasn't come to visit you. The guy on the TV though, the one that looks like Toby, takes off his shirt and I laugh because he totally doesn't look a thing like Toby anymore. The guy on TV has like these big nasty pecs and Toby doesn't, Toby doesn't have much of a chest at all. Which is fine by me because personally I think it's wrong to date a guy that has bigger boobs than you. I guess I am crazy, but I totally do not find those lumpy, hard, muscular men attractive, I like soft skinny boys.

The next day my fears are like assuaged because Toby comes to visit. He acts like he's really upset and asks me why I tried to kill myself and I honestly can't answer him so we end up having sex. We do it really fast in like ten minutes because we don't want to get caught. It kinda hurts because I'm not wet enough and afterwards I am totally raw, but I don't mind, it was nice to have him inside me. After we get dressed we don't really say much to each other, but I want to say I'm sorry but I don't because that would just be too pathetic, so I stare out the window instead.

That night I can't get to sleep, so I try to masturbate and think about Toby, and Marc, together, but I just can't make myself come and I'm still too sore to really try. Someone down the hall keeps screaming and it's really distracting but finally they stop and I don't want to think about why they stopped. It's too late at night and when people stop screaming this late at night, it's usually because-

 

 

hen I am finally discharged from the hospital it is late afternoon. Everything is tinted orange and I am wearing my mother's sunglasses. While she drives I keep messing with the automatic door lock and I keep pressing the button that rolls and unrolls the window. She doesn't say anything about it, but I know she is like totally harassed. I start to get car sick so I roll the window down all the way and stick my head out and let the wind blast me in the face, but it doesn't really help. So I dig through my mother's purse, which smells like Kleenex, looking for some gum or some mints but my search is in vain. I do however find an old tube of wintergreen flavored chapstick and I take off the small greasy white cap and sniff it, then I bring it to my lips and take a bite out of it. My mother shrieks, "Goddamnit Sheila!" and then we pull into our driveway.

When I get inside I find my brother sitting on the couch watching MTV, he doesn't even look up at me as I come in. My mother goes into the kitchen and starts to make dinner, I go up to my room. From up stairs I can hear my mom yelling at my brother to turn that weird shit off, that she has a headache and doesn't want to see that! I go into my bathroom and look for the bottle of Vicodin that I had hid, in the back of the linen closet. On the floor in the bathroom is the white bloody towel that someone had used to clean up all the blood. It was just sitting there on the floor next to the toilet. A constant reminder that I can never escape this, that I can never escape what I have done. My knees get weak from the sight of the brown splotches on the towel so I find the pills and then leave the bathroom and I make it a point not to go in there anymore.

 

fter dinner is over Marc calls me because someone he knows is having a party tonight and he wants Toby and me to go, so I get the directions from him and then call Toby. While I'm on the phone to Toby I take two more Vicodin, because the two I took earlier, before dinner, are wearing off. Toby doesn't really want to go because he doesn't have any more drugs, but then I tell him that there will probably be drugs at the party. I mean there has to be at least some booze there or something. My optimism over the whole drug situation cheers him up some and so he decides to go. I start to feel numb and sort of out of it from all the pills I've been eating, so I get off the phone with Toby and just stare at the television. An old episode of the Twilight Zone is on, in the episode everyone on earth disappears except for this one guy and I don't think it would be that bad, to be the last person on earth.

When Toby comes to pick me up he is in a really good mood because he just scored a few hits of acid from someone his brother knows. He tells me that it was completely like by serendipity that he got the acid. I don't really know what serendipity means, and I don't think Toby does either, but I'm just glad we got drugs. On the way to the party I smoke one of Toby's cigarettes while I jack him off as he drives. When he comes I wipe my hand off on his jeans and he gets pissy with me for doing that. After he parks the car we each eat a hit of acid and I can hear the first few strains of a Nine Inch Nails song coming from the house. Toby and I walk up to the front door and he's still bitching about me wiping his come on his jeans, and I tell him just to deal with it. Some guy with long blond hair and an Iron Maiden T-shirt opens the door and I don't know the guy, who looks really stoned, but he lets us in anyway.

There are about ten people in the living room passing around a neon green bong and on the TV is a porno flick, but no one seems to really be watching it. I make Toby go find me beer and I wander around the rest of the house looking for Marc.

I find him in one of the back bedrooms. He's wearing a Death in June T-shirt, and smoking a joint with some blonde guy and a chick with vermilion hair. When he notices me standing in the doorway he smiles and waves me into the room. I sit down next to him on the bed and he hands me the joint and I take a hit and then he introduces the blond guy as his boyfriend and I get insanely jealous, but really turned on at the same time. I want to ask Marc if I can watch them together in bed but I don't. Once the joint is extinct, the chick with the red hair leaves the room.

Toby comes in a few moments later with my beer. We all smoke another joint and I start to trip. After I finish my beer I get up and go into the bathroom. I flip on the light and have to squint because it's really bright. I heard somewhere that you like aren't supposed to look at yourself in the mirror while you're on acid, but I can't remember why not. So I decide to look at myself. My eyes seem really huge and black everywhere, my skin is greyish looking and I don't look like myself and I get kind of scared because maybe I'm not me anymore. My wrists start to itch again and I look down at the thin black threads holding the ragged edges of pink puckered skin together and I get really queasy. I look back at myself in the mirror, at the person who may or may not be me anymore and I can hear a girl start to scream from somewhere, but my lips aren't moving.

[END]

© Aaron Nielsen 2002