December 10th, 2017

Usually, a night for a high schooler is a variety of continuous patterns we would do every night. Go inside, tell your parents you are home, then go to your room. Spend about an hour looking at your phone and thinking whether you will finish that assignment due tomorrow or if you'll end up leaving it being rushed through in the morning at the last minute. It all depends on the person you are and your typical pattern. By the end of the night, for the safe teenagers, that is. It leads to either sleep or mental preparation for the morning ahead of you. Ah, what a regular old high-school Netflix movie.

As for me, yes, the procrastination card and myself were often played out. But the nights went a bit different—especially this night.

December 10th, 2017, I had just gotten in from my nightly ride around with my favorite Motley Crue members, just like every other teenager in our town did. The jams were over. There were no longer any friends next to me. All alone in the house, my mother upstairs in her room.

My phone was flashing with messages from my drugatic lover. I hit the ignore button for the fifth time for the night. Love was not where my heart was at the time. I wanted to love, but I also feared love. And my mind was too distracted.

It was three days exactly. Three days until my amazing and heroic father was home, coming back here on his badass motorcycle. The motorcycle that he bought instead of paying off his debt. But just so that you know, it is different for women. We can't have that stuff. We are stupid, spoiled princesses if we do that. According to him, we were at least.

So, as you can see, I was not exactly looking forward to the week ahead of me. The negative emotions filled my brain and blocked off the path to my heart. Having to go back to school, roll into class three hours late, my head out of it and still plastered from the nights before. Pretend I was listening and taking them all seriously, hearing the debates about how amazing our pathetic racist, sexist, homophobic rapist president was in my classes, overpopulated by northern rednecks station.

Now you tell me, would you be looking forward to doing that? Just add the list of annoying teen complaints I have filled your pages with and see if it makes any sense. Or, at the least, please roll your eyes at me and send me a letter telling me to calm my drama ass down. I am begging you.

To keep the story going, I walked into my room. All these thoughts ran through my mind. But there was only one way to cover them up. Get myself to think of something else. Have brighter colors fill my mind and bring my heart back to life.

So I went to my desk drawer. I opened it up. Each of the bottles stared back at me. The answers to my problems, or so I thought then.

But which one was I feeling? Just smoke up some good old greens and get some good sleep? God no, my dread for tomorrow furrowed back in my mind. I would rather stay awake. Xans? Ativan? Oxys? Why not? Pills always helped.

I dumped them all in a pile. Not looking, I reached in and popped one in my mouth. You have got to love surprises. I lacked patience then and was often known to keep taking things in until I started to feel the full effect. So they kept going.

I started feeling it set in. I closed the drawer, walked downstairs, turned on the TV, and watched it. The Fresh Prince theme song was playing through the speakers. I watched it, but it wasn't simultaneously like my head was in two places. Possibly even three.

Minutes go by, passing through the episodes.

My mind starts panicking.

I do not want to see him! I do not want to see them! I can not see anyone! People think I'm crazy! He says I'm crazy! I look like a wreck! I am a wreck! He makes me think I'm stupid! I am stupid!

I stop. Take a few breaths. "It's okay," I tell myself. "Tomorrow is a new day." Breathe in. Breathe out.

I spot something from the corner of my eye on my pillow.

HOLY SHIT, AN SPIDER! A BIG-ASS SPIDER!

I chuck the pillow across the room and run to the light. I turn it on, eliminating the room.

Where did it go?

I get down on my knees and look around the floor cautiously, but the spider is nowhere. I stand back up, and they are everywhere.

Spiders cover the walls. They cover everything in my line of vision. My eyes feel like a TV screen, the spiders crawling all over them, like the chocolate riverboat ride in Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory.

I quickly sit down, close my eyes, and reopen them. All the spiders are still there.

FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

I need to tell someone. But I can't tell my mother that I had drugs. What do I do? Do I call 911? Do I call my mom? What is my dad going to do when he figures this out? What is my family going to think of me now?

Fuck it.

I pick up my phone and dial my mom's number. It rings a few times. She picks up.

"Hello?" She grumbles into the phone, proof of exhaustion exasperated through her tone.

I sniffle. Tears fall from my eyes.

"Mom?" I cry into the phone. "I don't think I feel so well. I am downstairs."

"I'll come down." She says, hanging up the phone.

She comes down. I continued to cry, my face hovering over a trashcan I held in my arms. She helps me up. She brings me to her room. She continues to ask me what is wrong. I continue to tell her it is just my stomach. I vomit, she rubs my back, pukes more, and cry.

I blackout.

I come back, too.

I hear my mother screaming into the phone.

"My daughter just had a seizure! She's vomiting up pills! I can't tell what they are!"

I blacked out again.

I come back.

I am being carried down the stairs on a stretcher.

I'm suddenly in the back of an ambulance. The EMTs stick my arms with needles, filling my body with uneasy liquids.

"I like your tattoo." I hear one of the CNAs say.

I look at them and follow his hand, pointing to my tattoo.

PEACE WILL WIN. FEAR WILL LOSE.

"If you listen to those words enough that you're brave enough to get them inked into your skin, then you don't deserve to die like this. Don't worry. You will be safe."

I blackout.

I come back.

I am in a hospital bed. Nurses surround me. They peel at my clothes to check my body for any more damage. My heart starts racing, my mind freaks out, and my arms fly up.

"Don't worry, girl. We've got you. You'll be okay. You can trust us." A man beside me says, dressed in the same green uniform as the rest.

Wait? Was that the Morgan guy from The Mindy Project?

I blackout.

I come back.

They are all surrounding me still. A doctor in a white coat directing them all. He notices I'm awake. He gets in my face.

"Why were you on drugs? What were you doing? Did you want this to happen?" He spits in my face.

My heart and mind become officially overloaded.

My eyes overflow with tears, one after the other. My breath is rapid and unsteady.

They stuck my arm with more medicine.

I blackout.

I come back.

And everything changes.