This is your brain on...
Feb. 21st, 2013 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pixietasticHistory: 2002
I'm about a quart of black coffee and 5 Ritalin into my Wednesday but I can tell you right now it's not going to be enough. There isn't an enough anymore, enough is an illusion, how roman-tique, how posh, it's late January 2002, and I am yet again flunking out of tenth grade. It should be impossible to flunk out of tenth grade, by all rights and reasons it should simply not be possible, I'm a published writer who's failing tenth grade English, I'm a member of the Math League and I'm failing at consumer math, I won the science fair 3 years running but the biology teacher has asked me "not to come back to class until I get my head on right" whatever that looks like.
I'm sitting at this bus stop watching the traffic go by feeling the ache of the beginnings of frostbite chew away at my cheeks and fingertips, the weather is juxtaposed today, I like that word, the way it spits out of my mouth, angular and awkward. Who's not awkward at 17, even the word awkward looks awkward all spelled out with those W's everywhere making a statement for themselves like the zit on your chin the morning of some cool kids party. Not like I'm getting invited out with the cool kids mind you, but I can surmise from my own zit-hatred that the scenario in question would be especially unwelcome. But back to the weather the sun is glaring down out of the sky like it's really going to melt all of this unpleasantness away, like today is the day it's going to decide to be spring, but the north wind is having none of it blowing the crystallized snow straight at you no matter where you walk, making the eye-make-up an almighty battle, streaking sadness down uncomfortably pale skin. I've got eyeliner so thick I damn near need a paint roller to put it on, long braided hair pull tight off my face, and the permanent expression of exasperation, this is me in tenth grade, again.
And now that the uppers are kicking in I'm buzzing, almost euphoric, fidgeting on the hard snow-packed wood of the bench waiting for the city bus to show up and take me downtown to the University so I can pretend I give a shit about high school. I only missed half of my classes today, could be worse.
When I get to school there will be green tea, and maybe a muffin with peanut butter on it, that's what I eat, one muffin with peanut butter, and as much green tea and coffee as is humanly possible for someone my size to consume. All I want in the world is to disappear, to make the spinning of the gerbil on the wheel in my mind to stop, and the faster I move, the more I get done, the more hours spent awake the less likely it'll be that tonight will be the night it all comes crashing down.
School passes by in this brilliant blur, I'm charismatic and charming, my teachers are thrilled with my answers, the papers I turn in are "wonderful" though they inform me they have to dock them 40% for being turned in so late, and I nod saying I understand, wouldn't want special treatment, I knew what the rules were, etc. The bus home is equally pleasant, I chat with a guy who's a third year chem student at another university, we talk and talk as if the word is expanding with each word uttered, those 15 minutes amaze and astound me, I know everything, every word he says is magical, yes this is what I'm going to do with my life, Chemistry is amazing, everything is amazing, and when the bus ride ends I dart across the street as if the traffic isn't even there, maybe it's not, maybe I can out-run it.
When I walk in the front door of a house that someone's always home in, past a parent who's asleep on the couch, well, the drugs they make her tired ya know, it's not her fault, it's not anyone's fault. Into the kitchen to pilfer another handful of pills and another cup of coffee, dodging my brother who's drugs I'm stealing, he wants to chat, he wants to know why mom's always sleeping, why dad's so sick. I don't have the answers, I just don't, but I fake it, I tell him over and over that it's no big deal, that everyone's family is like ours, and then I offer to cook him something, because I can't remember the last time, we had dinner, or lunch, or any meal for that matter. He's barely out of junior high, and he doesn't know how to work the stove and damn it I should have made dinner yesterday too, god I'm useless.
After he's fed, and mom's checked on, and the assignments are done for class (because I've got to pull my grades up, I've got to be better at juggling everything), it's only 11:30, another cup of coffee and the internet will keep me company. The internet is my best friend. Message-boards and chat-rooms, and LiveJournal, oh thank god for LiveJournal, they "get me" on LiveJournal. I post, and read, and comment until 3 in the morning, count my calories consumed and burned, make lengthy lists of of the pills I've taken, brag to the various communities about my eating disorder, my drug use, my oh so legendary pain, how I can't sleep, I have insomnia, I have migraines, and I wouldn't take so damn many pills if I could just feel better.
Never mind, the uppers, never mind how much there is to do, never mind, the gerbil running laps in his wheel, chasing me through my mind, refusing to slow down. No one asks me about the gerbil, his name is Gerry, I had to name him, after a Gerbil I had for about a month once, one of my boyfriends "set him free" because apparently at the age of 15 I was a terrible Gerbil-mom. I wasn't taking good enough care of Gerry. So the boy freed him into the wild of a Winnipeg summer. Gerry-the-gerbil who now runs in my mind, a constant buzzing, and the more pills I take the faster he runs on his wheel, which is fine, because it distracts me from the bad, from everything I'm doing wrong, and from the boy who held me down by the throat, last month, had his way with me, in my room, in my bed, in a house full of people, and I didn't yell, I couldn't yell. He was someone else I was taking care of, he didn't mean it, it wasn't his fault, he's so screwed up, comes from a bad home, a foster home, his mother doesn't love him, doesn't want him, she's a drug addict, not sick like my mom. The boy, he was my best friend he didn't mean it, he didn't mean to... to... rape me? Is it rape, if all I said was no? If I didn't yell and scream and fight enough? It can't be, because he's my best friend... was my best friend.
Gerry-the-gerbil stops his running, maybe he knows I didn't have any pets after him. Because there was always a buzzing in my mind telling me that I just didn't have time, couldn't keep up with it, don't people know how much there is to do? How quickly you have to move, to run away from yourself?
This is my entry for LJidol exhibit A week five "This is your brain on..."
I'm about a quart of black coffee and 5 Ritalin into my Wednesday but I can tell you right now it's not going to be enough. There isn't an enough anymore, enough is an illusion, how roman-tique, how posh, it's late January 2002, and I am yet again flunking out of tenth grade. It should be impossible to flunk out of tenth grade, by all rights and reasons it should simply not be possible, I'm a published writer who's failing tenth grade English, I'm a member of the Math League and I'm failing at consumer math, I won the science fair 3 years running but the biology teacher has asked me "not to come back to class until I get my head on right" whatever that looks like.
I'm sitting at this bus stop watching the traffic go by feeling the ache of the beginnings of frostbite chew away at my cheeks and fingertips, the weather is juxtaposed today, I like that word, the way it spits out of my mouth, angular and awkward. Who's not awkward at 17, even the word awkward looks awkward all spelled out with those W's everywhere making a statement for themselves like the zit on your chin the morning of some cool kids party. Not like I'm getting invited out with the cool kids mind you, but I can surmise from my own zit-hatred that the scenario in question would be especially unwelcome. But back to the weather the sun is glaring down out of the sky like it's really going to melt all of this unpleasantness away, like today is the day it's going to decide to be spring, but the north wind is having none of it blowing the crystallized snow straight at you no matter where you walk, making the eye-make-up an almighty battle, streaking sadness down uncomfortably pale skin. I've got eyeliner so thick I damn near need a paint roller to put it on, long braided hair pull tight off my face, and the permanent expression of exasperation, this is me in tenth grade, again.
And now that the uppers are kicking in I'm buzzing, almost euphoric, fidgeting on the hard snow-packed wood of the bench waiting for the city bus to show up and take me downtown to the University so I can pretend I give a shit about high school. I only missed half of my classes today, could be worse.
When I get to school there will be green tea, and maybe a muffin with peanut butter on it, that's what I eat, one muffin with peanut butter, and as much green tea and coffee as is humanly possible for someone my size to consume. All I want in the world is to disappear, to make the spinning of the gerbil on the wheel in my mind to stop, and the faster I move, the more I get done, the more hours spent awake the less likely it'll be that tonight will be the night it all comes crashing down.
School passes by in this brilliant blur, I'm charismatic and charming, my teachers are thrilled with my answers, the papers I turn in are "wonderful" though they inform me they have to dock them 40% for being turned in so late, and I nod saying I understand, wouldn't want special treatment, I knew what the rules were, etc. The bus home is equally pleasant, I chat with a guy who's a third year chem student at another university, we talk and talk as if the word is expanding with each word uttered, those 15 minutes amaze and astound me, I know everything, every word he says is magical, yes this is what I'm going to do with my life, Chemistry is amazing, everything is amazing, and when the bus ride ends I dart across the street as if the traffic isn't even there, maybe it's not, maybe I can out-run it.
When I walk in the front door of a house that someone's always home in, past a parent who's asleep on the couch, well, the drugs they make her tired ya know, it's not her fault, it's not anyone's fault. Into the kitchen to pilfer another handful of pills and another cup of coffee, dodging my brother who's drugs I'm stealing, he wants to chat, he wants to know why mom's always sleeping, why dad's so sick. I don't have the answers, I just don't, but I fake it, I tell him over and over that it's no big deal, that everyone's family is like ours, and then I offer to cook him something, because I can't remember the last time, we had dinner, or lunch, or any meal for that matter. He's barely out of junior high, and he doesn't know how to work the stove and damn it I should have made dinner yesterday too, god I'm useless.
After he's fed, and mom's checked on, and the assignments are done for class (because I've got to pull my grades up, I've got to be better at juggling everything), it's only 11:30, another cup of coffee and the internet will keep me company. The internet is my best friend. Message-boards and chat-rooms, and LiveJournal, oh thank god for LiveJournal, they "get me" on LiveJournal. I post, and read, and comment until 3 in the morning, count my calories consumed and burned, make lengthy lists of of the pills I've taken, brag to the various communities about my eating disorder, my drug use, my oh so legendary pain, how I can't sleep, I have insomnia, I have migraines, and I wouldn't take so damn many pills if I could just feel better.
Never mind, the uppers, never mind how much there is to do, never mind, the gerbil running laps in his wheel, chasing me through my mind, refusing to slow down. No one asks me about the gerbil, his name is Gerry, I had to name him, after a Gerbil I had for about a month once, one of my boyfriends "set him free" because apparently at the age of 15 I was a terrible Gerbil-mom. I wasn't taking good enough care of Gerry. So the boy freed him into the wild of a Winnipeg summer. Gerry-the-gerbil who now runs in my mind, a constant buzzing, and the more pills I take the faster he runs on his wheel, which is fine, because it distracts me from the bad, from everything I'm doing wrong, and from the boy who held me down by the throat, last month, had his way with me, in my room, in my bed, in a house full of people, and I didn't yell, I couldn't yell. He was someone else I was taking care of, he didn't mean it, it wasn't his fault, he's so screwed up, comes from a bad home, a foster home, his mother doesn't love him, doesn't want him, she's a drug addict, not sick like my mom. The boy, he was my best friend he didn't mean it, he didn't mean to... to... rape me? Is it rape, if all I said was no? If I didn't yell and scream and fight enough? It can't be, because he's my best friend... was my best friend.
Gerry-the-gerbil stops his running, maybe he knows I didn't have any pets after him. Because there was always a buzzing in my mind telling me that I just didn't have time, couldn't keep up with it, don't people know how much there is to do? How quickly you have to move, to run away from yourself?
This is my entry for LJidol exhibit A week five "This is your brain on..."
