The girl twisted and fell, bubbling like boiled water as her arms thrashed uncontrollably. Her tongue unfurled with jaw-opened lips and choked gasps. The crowd dispersed for her on the rocking train and the conductor got the call of the fall. She was one stop away from her destination. The train has never felt so quiet before, as some older women knelt to her aid and loosely carried her out. Her legs were sprawled up the stairs, while her head lay on a stolen shirt at the Chestnut Hill Station. It took a while for her eyes to open. Her sister was crying on top of her, holding her, as the girl cried limplessly. That girl, who unruly seized on her way home, is me.
You can imagine how my parents would react to this. Immense panic, constant worry, and guilty ferocity for how foolish I am. For this came as a complete shock to them, their fifteen year old daughter - a drug user. My father let his tongue only slip of anger when he found me strapped to the stretcher, while a cop followed me like a dog. However, he later cried openly, fully vulnerable to his fear of how I am, after knowing why I lost my control. That didn’t scare me enough. Maybe I liked kissing death, and forgetting everything my mind and body has faced. Anne Sexton describes it best, “Now they ask why?/ WHY!/ Don’t they know I promised to die!/ To kill myself in small amounts” (“The Addict”). That was not my only cry for help, nor do I think it will be my last.
My father and mother begged why? I did want to die. It was the previous day, I said. Each word let out a tear from my eyes, as the aching truth came out. This is why they held me so tight, my parents knew this was going to happen. He was a ‘friend’ to me who always wanted me. I was touched, while asleep, and awoke to him. I never opened my eyes, but the shaking of his leg against me spoke for itself. Frozen, my body no longer belongs to me. I should have gone home. I do not dream often, and I knew these were not nightmares. After, I had breakfast and went to cross country with him. I was later kicked off the team for attendance issues. Not the first time, and hopefully the last I will ever feel stripped of my skin. At the loss of my identity, power, and own self will. I want to die, I think, staring at my desperate pleading parents.
I once had to fill out a questionnaire with the counselor at school, and I decided to be brutally honest. My mistake. It was shocking. A question stood out to me, asking if you ever lied to someone about the use of substance or extent of behavior? A lot of people, and moments quickly popped into my head. My parents for obvious reasons, my friends with how much I consume, and my current therapist, so she wouldn’t call the hospital on me again. Just a simple ‘yes’ to this question, psychologically, means I am an addict. Which is not a surprise to me either, more just a sad realization that I need to face my expected-life-struggle of staying in complete control. This is difficult because drugs and alcohol never seem to fail me. I may have seized many times, and thrown up plenty, but it’s the one relationship I’ve kept without fail for the past four years. My best friend if you will, even after destroying all viable relationships.
Drugs and alcohol were my grandparent’s friend too, and there’s - you see the point. I am currently imitating his behavior. When I asked my mother how addiction has affected her relationships with her family members, and she asked with you or my dad, my heart dropped. A spitball dried and suffocated me, and I sputtered my quick distant response.
My mother also belatedly told me of my grandfather’s drinking troubles, and her real mother, who I didn’t know existed, had hard drug issues. What a disaster, I quickly learned, my life could be. Of constantly tasting something sweet, and never being able to let go. Which is prevalent in almost every aspect of my life including: eating, people, drugs, alcohol, history, music, and the list continues. Addiction affects everything I do. It’s watching over my shoulder, telling me to consume more. And a continuing reminder to use my obsessed objections.
After seeing my devastated body draped along the stained stairs, my sister declared to me that she would not be anything like me. Nothing like me. Referring to that, she won’t drink or smoke. She will stay clean, she said. Death did not scare her either. Just months later, when she entered high school the same familiar fate fell upon her, our mutual friend. With a faster crushing burden than I could have mustered. To the point that my therapist asked me to tell my parents of my sister’s behavior. A necessary betrayal I chose to do. A choice I still will not admit to her to this day. No action was taken. No change in her abuse. Crying to her about my fears did not scare her either.
I was at a down-beat party, spending most of my time cradling a stranger’s dog. A call interrupts my boredom, panicked, whimpering from my mother’s gasps. Only demanding that I am needed at home, no details, but pleas of fear. Slowly, and unknowingly I usher my boyfriend and friends out of the party and take them home. To hear, in the car, the truth. My sister was left alone, on the street, and my mother did not know what she had ingested. A sickness seized her, my mother said. Arriving home was a poor scene. No one was inside. Suddenly my father enters the kitchen, avoids my eyes, like he is guilty of something. Dragging the dog along with him, he locked him in the garage, and the grind of his tires indicated his immediate departure. My father left me, the house empty, where was my mother and sister? Outside, I find my mother sitting while my sister paces next to the busy road. What could she be on, the way she mutters and speaks. Yelling to run somewhere, we try to hold her down, with great difficulty. I could not understand her. I could not even console and hold her. My mom looks defeated with her hands covering her face, reflecting like ‘the Old Man in Sorrow’ by Van Gogh's hands. It was almost helpless.
I fought playfully with my sister before, but this was violent - the way she attacked me. I was not her protector any longer, when she jammed her fingers into my eyes, trying to escape my embrace. Come home, I plead, just come home Allie. Her feet are covered in sores, from kicking against the rubble. My mother and I are trying to manipulate her for politics, she mutters, as she walks to our neighbor’s door. I do not know what would have happened, if the old lady did not interrupt us. She was the only one to stop my sister from running away. She never allows anyone to show her affection, but the old lady’s hug broke my sister’s mumbles into sobs. We walked home, and she slept off the drugs. I learned later why my father left, and why there was a smashed window.
Trust is easily lost each time my parents know we lied about quitting, similar to how we lie to ourselves about being in control. When my sister arrived home drugged, my father lost it. He slapped her with stupidity. My mother did not stand for it, and the long fight of how to handle their fucked children exploded. She choked him. He smashed her against the window. My mother understands how addiction is a defeating battle, yet my father still thinks it’s “a moral problem: the inability to control desire, and thus to direct the course of one’s own life.” He thinks traditionionally. It is a weakness, an embarrassment. Our fault if we die. My fault Allie abuses drugs and alcohol at fourteen. I will be the reason she fails. I am the reason, my father said, for this whole mess. Tears drenched my sheets, more than a boy could wet the bed. I wrote this while snot drizzled:
“Chain in my lungs
Can’t help explain
The burning weight
That rests each day
I hesitate my abide to
The sticky ache
The glinting horrors
Of the flame glimmering,
Picking each inhale
And each detail pertained”
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