Ashes to Ashes

Missy was out at class and I was home alone. I was reading the newspaper and listening to a new radio station that advertised itself as “a classic mix of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and today”. Why not just say, “we couldn’t settle on a format, so we’ll play whatever we can get our hands on”? Elvis led to the White Stripes, which led awkwardly to Luther Vandross, and then to The Doors.

The opening chords of “Riders on the Storm” caught my attention, with the synthesized raindrops in the background. I always loved Jim Morrison. All my life I felt like his lyrics were so powerful, as though they spoke to me through time and disatance. It probably had something to do with our shared depression and tendency towards self-medication with alcohol and street drugs. He was only 27 when he died in Paris. I always wondered if I would make it that long. Looking back now, I felt so happy to know that I had kicked those bad habits. Ok, I had transferred my addictions and need for medication from street drugs to prescriptions, which were only slightly safer, but at least I knew what to expect from them. I could probably go on like this forever. The question was whether I wanted to. I lacked highs and lows. Even when I laughed I felt like I only experienced the laughter superficially, not deep in my soul like I once did. I wanted to overcome that. I didn’t want to be the morose, brooding poet type. I made a decision to fight that tendency as much as possible.

The next song was Erasure, “Oh l’Amour”. I hopped up off the couch and tried to dance around in some 80s-inspired reverie, but it just didn’t work. There were dead Palestinians staring at me from the newspaper, fears of terrorist plots, international crises about AIDS and other incurable diseases. It just didn’t feel right to be dancing and enjoying myself when there were so many problems in the world. I slumped back to the couch. I hated this feeling.

I went to the kitchen where Missy had set up a small desk with paper, pens, pencils, markers… anything that you might need to be creative at a moment’s notice. I started to write.

I was never the kind to keep a journal, but the psychologist, who I don’t trust at all, suggested that this might be a good idea to help me face and get in touch with my thoughts. She said it nearly two years ago, so I don’t know why on earth I’m even considering trying it now. Yet here I am, willing to give it a try.

I’m feeling dark today. I should be in a fabulous mood because I had a great date with Nick last night, but I’m not. I came home singing, and Missy thought that I was so happy. I guess I sounded like it. It’s strange. It’s like my body still struggles to be happy even when my soul doesn’t want to cooperate and feel the joy. Do other people feel this way?

I’ve stopped cutting my fingertips with the knife. Mostly it’s because I live here now, and I’m deathly afraid of getting blood on the white carpets. Whatever it takes, I suppose. But the knife has been in the drawer since I moved in. I've stopped wearing bandages on nearly every fingertip.

I think I was 14 when I first thought about killing myself. I wonder if everyone thinks about that at 14, about what the world would be like without them. Would I be missed? Would anyone even notice if I was gone? I spent amazing amounts of time plotting how I would do it, when and where. What was better, carbon monoxide or slitting my wrists? Should I poison myself with arsenic or take a bottle of pills? Do I get a gun, or walk in front of a bus? I think that I was saved in the end by the dizzying array of choices and my inability to make a decision. That’s the irony of a good severe depression. You lack the energy to follow through on any of your disturbing, morbid thoughts. Or maybe, deep beneath it all, I just wanted to see what would happen next, like an overstimulated child who's crying on the outside, but hates the thought of falling asleep and missing something.

I stopped the street drugs, all but alcohol, when my shrink put me on the cocktail of meds. Prozac, Luvox, Lithium… I’m not entirely sure that half of my problems today aren’t caused by interactions of the meds. Each is scary in its own right. Put them together, and you have to wonder if you’re really the person you think you are. I feel like some kind of a robot controlled by pharmaceutical companies; my brain is not my own. I want to be free, but I’m more afraid than you could imagine. Cutting myself off could cause more problems than I’m prepared to deal with. I would need to have a strong support system to pull this off, and with the half-lives of these drugs, it could take as much as two weeks to be clean enough to not have to fear withdrawal symptoms. Damn. I’m really afraid of this.

I don’t know if anything will come of this thing with Nick. I like him. God knows I like him a lot. Clinically speaking, he knows what he’s getting into more than any guy I’ve ever met. He knows what to expect. He knows that I’m unstable. He knows about the baby. He knows that I have a crappy minimum-wage job and no college degree. But he also knows that I want more out of life, and that has to count for something, right? Besides, I’m still 24. I’m entitled to still be sort of fucked up about stuff. If I was 30 and still a mess, that would be different.

God, what if I’m still like this at 30? I need to really start thinking about the future. The baby taught me that much, and for that I am forever grateful. I want to be a good mother someday. Before that, though, I need to kick the meds and learn to stand on my own two feet. And it would also help to know the father. God, that’s embarrassing. I can’t believe that I got pregnant from a nameless one-night-stand. If there was ever a situation that gave you a shot in the ass to get your life on track, this would have to be a pretty dramatic example of it.

I wanted to cry for that baby, a baby that wasn’t conceived in love and didn’t find a suitable host to carry it to term. How much worse of a situation can you envision? Someday I will do better, and I will do it to honor the memory of the child that I lost. Yes, I know that I would have aborted it if I hadn’t miscarried, but I had already lost it to the prescription drugs. I believe that’s why it didn’t make it; the toxins in my body were too much for it to handle.

I have to accept that this is my life. It’s not a dress rehearsal for opening night’s performance. I’m not a teenager anymore, and it’s time that I came to accept the fact that I can’t spend my life waiting for something to happen. This is it. Think about that for a second. I have to start living in the moment, looking for the good things, and trying to make something of myself. It’s not going to be easy; nothing worthwhile ever is. But it’s worth fighting for. It's the most important thing I've never done.

I’ve always hesitated to get involved with people. Friends, lovers, family… they’ve all been kept at arm’s length while I tried to live my life on my own. My relationships have always been so poor, and I never wanted to admit to myself that it mattered. I never wanted to face the fact that I was with the wrong person. It’s easier to be alone by choice than to be lonely in the arms of a lover.

It’s 3:15pm. It’s time. It’s time to take my life into my own hands. It’s time to be strong, to be my own empowered woman, to be myself. What does that mean? I have no idea, but I’m going to do my best to figure it out. It’s a little early for a new year’s resolution, but I’m going to give it a shot. Make a plan and stick to it. School starts on January 24. I have a little more than a month to pull myself together. Breathe deeply. Think about what you want. You’re standing at the cliff. You can either walk back down the way you came, or you can take a flying leap into the unknown. What’s it going to be?

I looked at the pages of scribbled notes, half-illegible with my terrible handwriting. I ripped them from the legal pad, folded them in half, and thought for a moment. I needed a symbol of change. What could I do to make this real?

I went to the kitchen to put the notebook and pencil away, and found my idea. I took a candle from the kitchen table and placed it in the sink. Then, as though I were in a Catholic church, I made a wish and lit the candle. I took the five pages of yellow legal paper, covered in my scrawled writing, and set the corner on fire. I watched the flames engulf the words. I dropped the last piece into the sink just before it singed my hand. The embers glowed brightly around the edges, still alive with fire and heat. I watched until the last one stopped glowing. I extinguished the candle, moved it back to its place on the kitchen table and whispered “ashes to ashes”. My words had been sent to the universe in wispy curls of smoke. I was committed to making a change. I would take two days to plan my attack. My new life would commence on Wednesday.

Breathe deeply. Feel the air. Stars exploded, the universe expanded and through some miracle, here we all were today. I felt a glimmer of hope deep inside me, as though the stardust was trying to break through to the surface.