To Live and Die

When I was 16, I drank a lot. I went to bars a lot. I looked older. I tried to find someone to get me out of it all. To ease my pain and loneliness. All that happened was I was used by grown men who should have done better. They never even gave me pleasure, which I thought would at least get me through the night. I had been suicidal since I was nine. I was Catholic, and was told I would burn in hell forever if I killed myself. I was a believer then. I didn't start to become an atheist until I was 11, and began to see the lies and the flaws. So I prayed to god to kill me, because he was doing nothing else to help me, as they told me he would. Later, I would think about jumping in front of a truck, but I didn't want to traumatize the driver. I also didn't want to fail and be mangled and alive. There were no tall buildings to jump from. There were guns, but that never suited me. It suited my brother, when I was 14. He was the only one I loved. He didn't love me. He was just nicer to me than anyone else, and I clung to that scrap of kindness.

I was tired of the men, I was tired of the neglect and abuse and abandonment, I was tired of the violent sickness that followed my attempts to find solace in the bottle. I was most of all tired of the excruciating pain I felt. I usually hitched to the bar, if it was further than walking distance. That night I took a cab, and I tipped really big. It was a goodbye, when I handed him that extra $10, looking into his surprised eyes. The fare was $5. I didn't go to The Bootlegger frequently, but I was known. I had let slip that I was 16 to someone at one point, thinking he would keep my confidence, most likely drunken reasoning. That was the first night I was ever carded. I went nearly every night, to one bar or another, or to the liquor store down the street. I hated Seagram's 7, but I did not know what else to get and it did the job. The first time I got drunk, I was thirteen. My sister had given me vodka. That was the first violent purge I ever had, so I was disinclined toward vodka. She generally drank Seagram's, so I went with that. It was god awful, but it did the job. I just threw it back and tolerated the burning and awful taste for that temporary forgetfulness of what my life was. For what felt like a chance to break out, which I had always dreamed of doing.

Back to the plan. It was quite poetic, laced with the ignorance of youth. Still, it might have worked. It was the time of Karen Ann Quinlan; she was in a coma from an overdose of a mixture of pills and alcohol. I never heard specifically what pills, so I took the prescription bottle from my father's dresser. I thought if it was a prescription, it must be strong. I thought I would mix it with large amounts of alcohol and then lay down in the field opposite the bar. I thought if the booze and pills didn't work, the exposure should finish the job. It wasn't full winter, but it was cold, and the temperature dipped pretty low at night. When I felt numb from the drink and pills, I would take off my jacket and lay down, and be found stiff and dead the next day. No one would have cared. My parents would pretend to, and my father would pretend he hadn't done it to both of us, as he did with my brother, but they would not have cared like humans. They were far from human.

Since they refused to sell me alcohol, that really put a wrench in my plan. It was a major part of the plan, and the liquor store was not close by at all. Also, I wanted to spend my last hours with the people in the bar; I don't know why, it just seemed like a romantic part of the plan. I wanted one last night in the bar, to feel good, and then walk out and never hurt again. I would buy all of my own drinks; I had no interest in the users anymore, I just wanted to be there, to belong for a little while. And to have another goodbye, that they would not know of till I was found. I would take a long look at them, and remember the illusions I once sold myself, contrasted by what I knew them to be. It was the first time I was not served. That night, of all nights. I was heartbroken, spirit broken, and sunken low. I hitchhiked home, to put the bottle back before it was missed. It never was. Someone I knew vaguely from school picked me up. He was nice, but I knew he was far out of his depth. Even so, he only had to ask as he pulled up to my house, and I braced myself to go inside. Anything would have been better. But I was broken and couldn't ask, for many reasons, the extreme shyness and fear of others only part of that. He let me know in such an awkward, uncomfortable way, there was no way for me to respond, so I just sat there for a minute or so, in uncomfortable silence, hoping he would just reach over and touch me, and drive me away from there, but he didn't understand or have the guts, or both. What he said was he really wanted to grab my breast. It was so blunt I didn't know how to respond, and I was so low I couldn't smile at him to give encouragement, not that I even understood social cues then. So I sat there wishing he would touch me and drive me away from that awful home, just for a few hours respite. To put it off as long as possible was my wish. But because I could not say anything and my demeanor, he assumed I was offended or uninterested. How could I explain to him what I had just been through? So there was nothing I could do but get out of the car, and go into the house I had hoped never to see again, and return the pills which were never noticed missing from their place. Nothing was noticed by my parents, working hard as ever to pretend I didn't need help. Or just so self absorbed they never even had to work at not noticing.