Sunday, May 20, 2012

old habits die hard.



Needless to say, I am somewhat a creature of habit.

I got in the habit of Imogene.  I grew accustomed to her.  I had fastened her to my vital organs, bound her to each one of my thoughts.  And then she was gone.

So I got in the habit of being consciously devoid of her.  I grew accustomed to really feeling that lack of her, to really giving it life. I let the emptiness she left become its own monster.

When I was delivered unfortunately at redemption’s door, I got in the habit of feeling sorry for myself.  I grew accustomed to everyone tip-toeing through my door, afraid to upset the feeble, shaking frame of bones and bruises held together with misery.  Voices were rarely louder than a whisper.  If ever I were touched (which was unusual and infrequent) it was barely more than a brush, a graze. 

Change came bustling into my room today wearing Minnie Mouse scrubs and a ponytail.  And I don’t mean bustling so much as charging, with all the whispering tip-toe of a fucking freight train.

Her name was Dot.  Literally. 

Not Dottie, not Dorothy.  Dot.

Everything she did made a horrible, nerve-wracking noise.  When she washed her hands she turned the faucet to full tilt, letting the water crash like a roomful of fine china. She seemed to rip the paper towels as savagely as she possibly could.  And the rickety folding chair she lugged across the room to be right next to me… I thought I was going into grand mal seizure.  A short 30 seconds of her presence had managed to foster an annoyance akin to anger reminiscent of hatred.  It bubbled hotly under my skin, and all I could do was sit there and project it.  A shabby, shrunken skeleton propped up on too many pillows, scowling. I must’ve looked like a dollar store Halloween decoration.  On clearance.  The day before Easter.

Clearly Dot had the same idea because she laughed as she looked at me, a full-bodied sound that bounced off the tile floors and bare walls.  Imogene had a tinkling bell for a laugh, a gentle breathy sigh.  I missed it.  But Dot laughed with her diaphragm, snapping surgical gloves on with all the gusto of the mad scientist in a B-grade movie.  It only made me scowl harder. 

She grabbed my arm from my lap and extended it towards her while reciting the standard explanation of blood draw.  It shocked me to be handled, her grip was more than I’d felt in forever.  After tying the tourniquet too tight, she let one hand circle my wrist firmly while the other roamed my skin with experience and confidence.

“Actually,” I spat nastily, since my glare was having no effect, “I really prefer the latex-free equipment.”

She never removed the intent of her focus from scanning my arm. “You’re actually not allergic to latex.” Nonetheless, her hand swiftly rose to her mouth and she caught the tip of the index between her teeth, freeing herself from the Glove of Great Offense.  She kept searching until she found what she sought.

Now that her bare skin was on mine, the contact stirred me.  It reminded me of something I couldn’t put my finger on, and the simple feeling of warm and living brought a rush of tears to my eyes.  Almost like fire, almost like something I had felt before but couldn’t specifically recall…

Dot was already drawing at this point, two deft hands unknowingly encouraged more tears and her face peered quizzically at mine.  Very plain, I made a point of noting.  She seemed to be taking mental notes on me too while she filled the little red-topped blue-topped green-topped tubes.

“Why are you crying!” She exclaimed.  “God, with all the shit listed on your chart this should be nothing for you.”

There’s a particular way people ask “why are you crying” that’s less an inquiry as to the origin of tears and more “stop fucking crying”.  Dot asked in exactly that particular way.

“Well it hurts!” I sniffed like a wounded animal and turned my head with all the righteous indignation of a three year old. The way the fresh, red blood hit the culture liquid ballooned and curled, a cool smoky swirl of crimson clouding the muted yellow, looked just like adding cream to coffee, but on a different color scheme.

“Like I said.” She tape-and-gauzed me brusquely and I thanked the powers that be she was on the last step of her process.  “I’ve seen your chart.  You’ve clearly worked pretty hard to destroy your body, I would’ve thought you were used to pain.”

Who says that? My stone scowl crumbled to let my mouth gape open. I’m sure I looked like some sort of dying, flabbergasted fish.  “Has anyone ever told you your bedside manner leaves something to be desired?”

She laughed loudly again and let my barb sail over her shoulder, not even flinching from the razor sharp edge that I will have you know very nearly could have nicked her carotid artery and left her discourteous, insensitive ass bleeding to death at the foot of my bed.  Bemused and unaffected, she asked, “Has anyone ever told you that addiction is stupid and pathetic?”

After a quick glance into my empty bag of tricks and realizing I wore no sleeves in which to hide some, I knew I was out of nasty retorts.

“Look, you obviously had a death wish of some sort,” Little Miss Pleasant-pants continued as she finished gathering her supplies, “If I were her, I would’ve left you there. Jussayin’.”

My hackles were up as she tread dangerously close to the sacred ground that held Imogene’s shrine.  “If you were who?” I carefully prompted her to elaborate.

She was almost out the door at this point but she stopped and turned.  Her nondescript eyes narrowed, squinted at my moronic façade as though she couldn’t tell if I were serious or not. “The girl who brought you in to be treated,” she spoke to me like I was the three year old I behaved as.

“You know,” she said. “Imogene.”  She spun back around and disappeared into the busy world outside my room, leaving the static air inside it thick with pure shock.  I watched her ponytail swing wildly behind her as she bustled away from the chaos and destruction that lay around me in her wake.

And she was gone.

Dot.

What.

The.

FUCK.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

drugs are too obvious... and so are you. 


In the time that I’ve been here, where ever “here” might be, I’ve slowly started coming back from the dead. All the work I had put into destroying myself is being reversed. My ribs looked less like the skeletal bars on either side of my bed, “to keep the patient from falling out” I was told.  They were more prison bars to me.  The hollows in my cheeks began to fill out, my eyes became less and less sunken everyday.  I had forgotten what I looked like with blood in my face.

I don’t even recognize myself anymore.

Imogene used to be my drug of choice, my fix, my score, my Betty, my skag. My beginning.  My end. My morphine drip.  Now they’re pushing actual morphine into me on the constant.  It blandly acts as a substitute, shushing my aching need for her, rolling over my desire and love like a thick, heavy fog.  I felt like a fucking traitor. They were slowly and systematically removing all the physical manifestations of my complete and utter heartbreak, and I was powerless to stop it. I hate knowing that soon, she’ll be gone completely. Every single trace of her eradicated. No matter how hard I try, no matter how desperate I am to protect her, they manage to take her from me bit by beautiful bit. 

I missed her more than anything.  She even stopped crawling through my skin, ceased scraping my bones.  I felt nothing.  I missed the scent of her on me. I missed the warmth of her eyes and the way my stomach leapt at the sight of her.  Imogene was so beautiful it was like she made everything exciting and magical.  Now that she’s gone, I find myself blindsided by the normalcy of life. I hate not having much to look forward to everyday.  I used to be so overcome with her, the need of her, the thought of her, thetouchthetastethesmell of her... I used to be so taken with her that I knew nothing else.  I was simply living and breathing Imogene and she was beautiful and I was beautiful and everything was just fucking beautiful. But now… now… now I had to feel everything I had forgotten about. I hate feeling everything to it’s fullest extent, undiluted, unfiltered by my obsession with her.  I hate having anything that's not her affect me.

If only she would just come back.  If I could see her, just see her one more time…  I know it’s gonna hurt like hell when she leaves again. But I gotta see her.  I have to.  I need to. Maybe to remind myself that she was real, that I had the loveliest thing in the world once.  And I had her, I really did. She followed my lead and mirrored my want; she was so forceful in loving me back, in needing me too, so ready to die by my word. And stupidly, for whatever stupid reason my stupid disintegrating brain invented, I left.  I started this tragic chain of events by taking the first step, and by taking that step right out the door.  I’ve never felt power of control like that in my life and I abused the hell out of it.  Because now… I don’t have her.  Now I have nothing.

I want to turn all the regret I harbor in my heart into a stone cold killer. I want to dispatch it through my body like an assassin.  I want to let it kill off my blood cells by the gazillions and snipe my organs out one by one, pick them off two by two, until there’s nothing left of me but a few gnawed bones and really, really great hair.

All I can think about is laying eyes on her again.  At the rate they’re going not only will I get out of here someday, and but I'll be as strong as an ox, too.  Restored to factory settings if you will, smacking of vitality and functionality.  Of "wholeness".  Of "wellness".  And all for not.  With a so much time spent awake and immobile, Imogene-free, I’ve nothing to do but think.  And what I think is I’m going to use all of the ridiculous goddamn good health they’re forcing on me to find this “Good Samaritan” and throttle the life out of him.  I’m going to hunt him down like the dog that he is for interrupting my plans to rot away.  For relegating me to a long, full life without the only thing I could live for.  And then I’m going to find that happy place in the dirt again and settle back in, continue on nothing but the want of her.  And that’ll be “all she wrote”. I swore I would die without her, and yet here I am, all the fuck alone and… eating Jell-O.

No, no, I have a plan.  I have every intention of keeping my promise, so when the vulture comes in and rasps “Who is Imogene” I clamp my lips shut and look out the window.  I’ve never felt so fiercely protective of anything.  Even hearing her name roll off the withered tongue of some ignorant wench makes me violent and vicious and thirsty for blood.  But I guarded her diligently, not a word betraying Imogene’s beauty by escaping my mouth and attempting the impossible task of doing her justice.  “WHO…” the acid-and-gravel persists, “is Imogene.” Everything a statement, nothing a question.  I don’t know if it’s because Bitchface thinks she already knows the answer or if she doesn’t really care what that may be or if she’s just hoping the mention of her will draw my concealed darling out in the open to be preyed upon.  But I’ll be damned before I let some scrounging hag damage and disrespect what is obviously utter perfection, or worse, greedily snatch her up and fly away with her forever .  Imogene never crawled through my skin anymore because I had hid her so deep in this diseased, malfunctioning heart.  Anything that would alert the people around me to her mere existence was locked up and away from prying words, from probing eyes, .  From the vulture's little minions.  From thieves.  From those that mean her harm.  It's like I'm driven to keep her safe, to protect her.  I'm keeping her all to my slowly mending self, and hopefully there will be something left of her when I finally climb back down into whatever ditch or gutter I was fished out of.

God almighty I missed her. She’s consumed my thoughts.  She hungrily swallowed every last ounce of love I had and moved on to devour my spirit. Now that she’s left me with nothing but empty, I want her to devour my body as well.

Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning.  My end.

I’m counting down the days until I can feed myself to my secrets.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

leeches were once considered an effective form of treatment for most maladies.



A tall, gaunt woman with an unforgiving air and an unforgivable nose came shuffling into my room today. She was harsh and frightening, an unspoken threat.  Like a whirlwind she whipped about, returning the room to it’s pristine move-in condition.  The bear was tucked away into a dresser drawer, vases and vases of bloomed flowers with handwritten sentiments were pitched, notes and glass and posies and all, every sign of life removed and distilled until there was nothing left but electrical plugs and white.  She opened the blinds too far and the starkness of the room jarred my senses, shocking me into high alert.  The remnants of Imogene that lazed about in my skin prickled under my dressings.

She moved too quickly, causing my eyelids and heart to flutter with nerves.  Every step she took had a horrible scrape-and-thud to it.  Already of a more than respectable height, I suppose she didn’t need the help of an extra inch or two but these beige-colored, government-issue heels were of no help of any kind to anybody.  Maybe orthopedic, but I didn’t look that close.  If I did I’m sure I would’ve found careful, exact stitching: “Property of One Special Agent Dana Scully”.  They were the type of very practical professional female shoe that was built to deliver a good, menacing “clack” but she moved too quickly and awkwardly, she sort of dragged her foot in a fashion that made some horrible scraping noise instead, and a thud with the stabilizing of her step. She finally stilled for a moment, veiny, claw-like hands grasped together at her chest as she rotated, cold shrew’s eyes making sure her work was to her own satisfaction.  Finally she took the edge of Imogene’s rickety folding chair and drew it over the floor producing an awful screech and squeal, all the way from the wall to my bedside.  She perched lightly and crossed her legs at the ankles and to the right, keeping the knobs of her knees pressed together like they had a nickel between them.  She rested her hands on the heavily starched oxford cloth of her sensibly long skirt and sort of just cocked her head at me.  Like an inquisitive bird. 

Imogene went from prickling to hissing, bucking wildly against that which contained her.

I looked back, equally curious.

“So. What brings you in.” It was a statement, not a question, and her voice sounded like acid and gravel.

“A good Samaritan.” I replied.

Her beady bird eyes narrowed behind a nose that crowed for attention.  “You’re quite ill,” she stated obviously.  “You very nearly succeeded in killing yourself.”

I know this woman.  I know everything about her. We meet people like this all our lives.  Despite her aviary characteristics, light and flighty and seemingly frail, she was no sparrow.  Her eyes were too fierce, too black, they darted all over my face and rarely blinked. Thin lips either set in disapproval or spilled the rigid articulation of such, her chin jutted out with a pride that becomes very great ignorance.  Her body may have been slight in it’s build but it was efficient, tense and teeming with anticipation. It looked too thin, but in reality it was just wildly lean. The way she sat on the edge of the chair, elbows bent and hands resting atop each other it was as though she were ready to take flight at any moment, ready to soar up and come screaming down at me, streamlined and practiced, to dive straight into my mouth and down my throat and burst through my body, cruel wings flapping and dripping with entrails and victory.

She was nothing but a vulture.

“I suppose you’re right,” I answered her, looking to the lake beyond.  There were no fish jumping, no ducks to name. It was like they knew a hunter was near.

She stiffened, nostrils flaring as if she could smell the death on me already.  “So you agree, you tried to kill yourself.” She statement/questioned me without really wanting an answer.  She all but licked her pencil-thin lips as her eyes bore into mine.  I could feel her scavenger’s senses sinking through what I thought was impenetrable gauze, sifting through what she saw as my remains, sniffing out the smell of death in me somewhere. 

I let my head loll to the side as I kept my focus on the lake, willing my fishy friends to the surface.

But she was relentless.  It seemed like hours of rhetorical questions that she for some reason expected answers to, and no matter what those answers were or what varying degrees of truth they contained she received them skeptically, with raised eyebrows and a menacing twitch in her jaw. Imogene’s memory went from angrily rebelling against my skin to quietly shrinking further into my blood vessels. Those eyes, piercing and attentive, searched my person for something claimed by death already. 

Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end. I wanted to throw myself between her and the looming, imminent danger, but there was nothing I could do.  I laid.  I looked. 

This withered old vulture droned on, encouraging me to “release my baggage” and “confront my demons”.  The acid in her voice chided me harshly for my weakness, my addiction, my obvious aching need for that girl. But the gravel… the gravel in her voice was like dry leaves over the pavement.  It whispered to every nook and cranny of myself, every sore, healing cell that I had once devoted to Imogene but now promised to save for her as I waited her return. That gravel from her voice floated gently, if not quite comfortingly, over the empty spaces Imogene had just fled, coaxing her to come out. 

Imogene, my Imogene, I’ll never let them have you.

Ravenous old carrion, she played both good cop and bad cop all at once, she threatened my will while tracking down every last hint of Imogene with a hawk’s accuracy and a bloodhound’s resolve.

Imogene, my Imogene, my want my wish my world my everything MINE.

After what seemed like forever, the yards of oxford and starch straightened out as she stood abruptly.  She towered over my bed, leaning ever so slightly and blocking my view of the lake.  I hadn’t seen fish or fowl during any of the several hours she mindfucked me anyway, so I finally dragged my eyes out of their fixed position and locked them onto hers.  Her neck never bent. She stared haughtily down that monstrous, intimidating nose, challenging me to break our mutual gaze.

“…ba-bump…”

Instantly, her predator’s stare dropped to my chest, her brow furrowing as her sight bore down on me.

“…ba-bump…ba-bump…”

Suddenly and surprisingly, she relented. She practically smirked as she turned on her government-issue heel and shuffled out, pausing in the doorway just long enough to toss a cool “Tomorrow, then” over her thin shoulder.

And as she left as quickly as she'd come.

My chest heaved as I exhaled a breath I felt I’d held for hours.  A fish jumped in the lake outside. 

“…ba-bump…ba-bump…ba-bump…”

Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end. 

I slept soundly for quite some time, while memories of the most toxic, deadly thing I’d ever known rested safely in my failing heart, where I’d hid her.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

I love putting on headphones and listening to all the saved voicemails and scraps of voice memos of her. Anything and everything I have with her tinkling, bell-like voice on it.

I love when I cover my ears with all that pleasant and it's like both teeny tiny speakers projectile vomit her angel noises until they clash at some point in the middle of my head. Injectible memories, but with volume control and a pause option and a beveled tip that never gets dull.

I love getting lost in the sound of her.

I love feeling like she's there but my eyes are closed.

I love remembering her.

I love how it always leads to dreaming about her, which at present, is the best I can hope for.

"Love, me"

When I woke today there was a plush, lavender-scented stuffed bear under my IV-heavy arm. And tied around its little bear wrist with a little pink ribbon was a note, "Love, me".

I love burying my face as deep into the polyester as I can get it, I love breathing in that floral hypnotic.

I love how hooked I have her, a barbed needle lodged in her skin just like she's stuck in mine.

I'm not sure what happened next, exactly per se. "Cardiac arrest", they call it. "Clinically dead", they call it.

When I came to again, the bear had been taken from my weak, sickly grasp just like she was. It stares at me sadly from a small bulk purchased dresser against the wall next to the bed. Just out of my reach. Just like her. I've abandoned the lake and its blissfully ignorant inhabitants in favor of my new bunk mate, its shining button eyes pathetically pleading with me to heed its only given instructions; "Love, me". I wish its furry little bear ears weren't deaf to me when I swore that Imogene is, in fact, the only thing I've ever loved. The only thing I ever will.

That sweet silly child's toy is the only tangible evidence I have of her existence, save the hot pink scars marching and healing all up and down my person, and they're disappearing. My heart's faint "ba-bump" slows and shushes just thinking about her, thrilled by the idea she had returned yet again, maybe even cooled my skin with her hand while I dreamt of her.

"Love, me"

Big sigh.

The very thing that rendered me too ill to sustain myself, while somehow managing to be the one thing that keeps this dilapidated body from giving out entirely.

"Love, me"

Oh I love you alright.

I love you to death.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Monday, May 7, 2012

 Intravenous drugs can cause heart problems.


So, something interesting actually happened today.

My heart stopped.

“Cardiac arrest” they call it.  My heart stopped beating long enough for my blood to stop circulating long enough for my brain to stop working. “Clinically dead” they call it. For 57 seconds. 

What a failure.  I couldn’t even make it to a full minute.  I can’t do anything right.

One second I was naming the stupid ducks in the stupid lake and next thing I know, the familiar smell of lavender and… quite frankly, heaven, flooded my head. But instead of the rush I’m used to, it burned. Like the very first drag you ever took, some pilfered Newport100 that your older friends gave you. Cool, dry fingers untangled my hair from my eyelashes and when I finally forced the lids up, there she was. 

Imogene.

My Imogene. 

My… something… my what?

She was in a rickety folding chair, little knees pressed against the side of my bed and her sweet little hands on my face, cooling the skin just by touching it.  I stared at her for a second, blinking hot, blood-tinged tears away as fast as I could to keep her from getting too blurry.  But it was her.  She was there.  She was near me again, touching me again, lighting the room and setting fire to every sense I never knew I had. 

And then I guess it happened.

When I finally came to, she was gone.  Again.  I guess it was decided I wasn’t well enough for all that excitement and she must’ve been excused from the room.  I can’t really breathe so well on my own.  My heart beats weakly, sending the machine it’s hooked up to into hysterics every twenty minutes or so because it decides to stop and take a rest.  The only thing I find myself really doing on my own is blinking.  But no matter how many times I do I can’t blink away enough of the wet sticky drops to fix the sight of what’s in front of me.

And it's just a chair.

But it's an empty, rickety, folding chair.

Imogene, my Imogene, come back.

I’m sorry.

I try to look out the window at the lake but I can’t bring myself to do it.  I don’t want to see sunsets or birds or ripples or fish.  I want to see her.  I want my lungs to hurt from that goddamn motherfucking smell, not from the exhaustion of just… working.

Life is being pushed into me on the constant, air is forced into my body and bags and bags of life, of blood, and electrolytes and antibiotics and whatever, magic for all I know, drip-drip-dripping into my superior vena cava the way my wounds and slashes used to drip-drip-drip with her.  I can read the people around me.  They’re convinced I’ve got both feet in the grave and they’re just waiting for me to go ahead and lay down.  But Jesus God I haven’t felt this alive in a long time.  Since we were together.  Since she was mine. 

She was here. 

She smoothed my hair back from my forehead and she wept for me.  I felt it. I saw it. Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end.  I love you so very much, from every corner and empty room of my heart that’s waiting to be filled with you.  With every weak, insufficient beat.  With every failing, flopping valve.  Faintly pulsing, “ba-bump…ba-bump…ba-bump…ba…bump…ba…” (Nothing.)

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP, ad nauseum.

Sometimes my heart remembers itself and resumes, “ba-bump…ba-bump”. Sometimes they need to lovingly -read: shockingly- remind it.

Wherever she went, and I like to think it was to the cafeteria so she could fret over black coffee, I know she hears it.

“ba-bump…ba-bump…ba-bump…”

Sip. Fret. Sip. Mourn.

“my-want…my-wish…my-world…”

Sip. Fret. Sip. Mourn.

“come-back… come-back… come-back…”

She’ll come back.  She always does. I think that’s what wakes my heart up when it falls asleep with my eyes, just knowing I did that to her.

For everything I could say about Imogene, and Lord knows I could go on, Imogene could wax poetic about me.

It was these eyes, heavy lidded liars that they are.  It was this heart, this weak, poisoned, ineffective quitter.  We’ve got her.  We always will.

I died today, even if only for a minute.

Thank God it happened too, because I was beginning to worry I was never really alive to begin with.

The Lake Effect: Cognitive Therapy for the Recovering Addict 


Turns out, I’ve been rescued.

One second I’m contentedly bleeding on the side of the road, the next thing I know I’m propped up on crisp, white pillows looking out a window over a lake.  It’s really beautiful, too, littered with huge majestic cranes and little multi-colored ducks.  Fish occasionally jump around happily, albeit dangerously what with the cranes and all. The sunset turns the ripples every shade of orange I never knew existed, my limited world before was nothing but black and gray and red. It makes me sick.  I wanna drown myself in that stupid fucking lake so I don’t have to see it anymore.

Some “Good Samaritan” plucked me from my happy place in the dirt and took me to be taken care of.  I was too weak to protest, I suppose.  I mean, I couldn’t have even been conscious because I definitely would’ve put up a fuss. All of that devotion, my loving, pain-staking devotion to her. All those wounds, all the punctures and gashes, some haphazardly, half-heartedly stitched, some left ripe and raw, the marks and reminders I worked so hard to keep alive and bleeding so I’d have a little Imogene every now and again, everything perfectly bandaged and Neosporin’ed.  They were… healing, for Christ‘ sake. They were gauzed and taped so tight I couldn’t even root around for scabs to pick at. If ever I find this person, this, this “do-gooder”, I’m gonna fucking destroy them.

Imogene, my Imogene… why have you forsaken me?

I don’t know… maybe I left her.  Maybe I let this happen.

I’ll go hours without so much as thinking about her.  Just propped up eating Jell-O, watching the lake.  Thinking about stupid things like painting that sunset, or how maybe strawberry might be yummier than lime, or sometimes thinking nothing at all.  Just looking, watching.  Blinking.  Breathing. 

But sometimes, she’ll rip me from my sleep.  After the sun sets and the lake has gone dark and the shades have long been drawn I’ll wake up sweating and screaming, clawing at the tape-and-gauze armor that securely hides me from myself.  She’s in there.  She’s under there, trapped.  She’s in my skin, my skin is crawling.  It’s like she wants me to hate her.  That lascivious little pink tongue of hers that I used to write sonnets about lapping and dragging through my skin, driving me crazy.  I used to want to send her back down, through my flesh back into my bones so she could settle into my marrow and release into my blood and be free to possess me. But lately all I want is to get her out. It doesn’t hurt, it’s worse.  It’s such an absence of hurt, such a void of anything I can’t stand it.  It feels like nothing.  It makes me wanna tear the damn skin off and burn it, leave everything raw and exposed, open and waiting for her.

But she's gone. She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone.

And I don’t know how to get her back. 

Every time I start to scheme up ways I might have a little tiny reminder of Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end, I wind up watching fish jump in the lake.


I'm not even sure where I am, but I gotta get out of here.