Julissa's Favorite Shirt

I vaguely recall waking up in the helicopter with a crazed look painted onto the face of the trauma paramedic that stood above me. “CLEARRRRR” she was halfway down with the paddles before she realized my eyes were open. It was an awkward moment, to say the least. Her face settled as we stared into the eyes of each other. I wonder if she knew I had desperately hoped to slip away this time.. especially upon realizing I was in a helicopter. Fun fact did you know that the cost of being airlifted averages around $40,000 and I didn't have health insurance. Anyways, I was almost there, across that home stretch. I hadn't seen the light people tell you to go into, what I saw was much more intense.

The first time I got high off of Oxycontin was three weeks after my sister passed. My best friend was gone and I had never felt this type of loss before. I crawled into her at-home hospital bed, where we spent the most time in those last few months and tried my best not to lose it. It’s crazy how powerful of an agent a particular scent can be for transporting you back to a specific time or date. Or even a person. It was fading but there was still enough to bring back the good times. I rolled over and in my direct line of vision was Julissa’s prescription bottle. I remember one of our last sleepovers there. She was wearing her favorite shirt. The oversized blue tye-dye one with the white owl in the center. After she started her treatment and shaved her head, she'd joke around saying the owl on the shirt was her twin. She'd make her eyes extra big, and twist her head all the way around like those barn owls do. That night, she asked me to grab her a glass of water and two of her pain pills. I helped her get them down and it was shortly after, as we lay in her bed, faces inches apart that I saw her lips turn up into a sweet smile. Our eyes met. And just for a second, it felt like things might be okay. It had been so long since Julissa had smiled. It wasn't that she wasn't a good sport, or a positive person, or the greatest human being to have ever existed on this planet honestly, she was all of those things. But cancer ate away at her. Every part of her, till eventually all that was left, were the parts of her desperately fighting and clinging. I’ll stop lingering here for your sake and my own. I don’t know why I did it. Decided to reach out and try one. Pain pills or any other mind-altering substances had never interested me before. I guess in the pits of my despair thinking back to her smile I thought it could help bring back some part of me that left when she did.

Addiction isn’t some flamboyant thing I’ll have you all know. It isn’t dressed in drag, sign twirling, announcing its arrival. It’s subtle. Sneak up on you wearing the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter subtle. So subtle in fact, that even if your family and friends happen to notice something is off about you, you think they’re the ones who are doing the gaslighting. Not that mine did. My parents were so swallowed up in grief that they barely noticed each other or the deteriorating condition of the house or the bills piling up in the kitchen. I couldn't blame them. At least they were sober. As for my friends well, inauthenticity seemed to be a trend amongst my peers and me. It's not that we didn't want to be genuine with one another we just didn't seem to know-how. Our language of affection was spoken through emojis and our means to deepening connection amongst each other was sending memes and tik toks back and forth. And so unbeknownst to my parents, friends, or even myself I spiraled.

I’ll intercept here to say to my credit that I was going to stop. Once I ran through my sister's pills I wasn't about to go around the shady parts of town, asking for spare pain pills. However, as fate would have it I skipped a step or 3 the week after I took her last pill. Imagine my surprise when the nurse at the hospital prescribed me opiates the same strength as my sisters were for a lightly fractured ankle. My ankle healed, my addiction worsened, and low and behold I did find myself in the shady parts of town, using a combination of saved lunch and Christmas money to buy Oxycontin.

After a while, this funny thing happens, where the pain(physical and emotional) isn't the only thing that gets dulled down, everything else does too. Which was fine. Numb was better than that rip your heart out grief. that didn't seem to budge after loss. A small price to pay in my opinion. The strange thing I am referring to here though isn't that. It is that there seemed to be this part of me that so desperately wanted me to feel alive. My conscious maybe? I was sitting in the back of class wondering why I was learning about angles. Why weren't they teaching us about credit, or stocks, or what to do when your favorite human being takes their last breath. I just had to excuse myself. I really was planning on just going to the bathroom crushing up a few oxys and then sulking back to class. But once the high settled in I found myself wandering down the corridor, out the front doors, and once I hopped on my bike I found myself peddling till reaching this empty field right outside of town.

This was where Julissa and I used to hang out. Every week before she got sick. I didn't bother with the kickstand, letting the bike fall as I walked to the middle of the field and let my body, which felt so heavy fall into the tall soft tufts of grass below me. This was my first time being back at this place since the death of my sister. I could feel her here and no amount of pain killers could stop the soul-crushing wave of anguish that hit me. Tears flowed down my cheeks freely as I let out the guttural cries that had been lurking underneath the empty highs for so long. Too long. My whole body shook uncontrollably and in this moment I thought I might explode. 'Spontaneous combustion by grief' is what my Obituary would've read. This moment was particularly peculiar because I hadn't felt, well anything besides slight amusement or flashes of intense bitterness in months. This primal feeling, agony of my entire being after so long of being numb was in a way intriguing. To that part of me mentioned earlier this felt like a Win. I didn't realize it at that moment though. At that moment it was unbearable. And so vaguely, moving to the back of my mind the number of opiates that were already in my bloodstream I swallowed three more.

After a while everything turned hazy, my vision alternated from focused to unfocused as I spoke to Julissa out loud for the first time since the last time. I said all the cliche things, you know the whole “how could you leave me, I can't do this, I’ve been a mess since you left” schpiel. At this point, my body felt awfully fuzzy. Awfully far away so much so, that it didn't even feel like I was the one who took that last pill out of my shirt pocket and swallowed it. “I just want to be with you” I mumbled weakly grasping handfuls of grass around me. I looked up now, endless clear blue skies above me, I had never felt like this before. I had made half-assed attempts of overdosing in the past but in truth, I was always too scared to fully send it. This time I was in the middle of nowhere, no one would find me here. The last thing that I saw before my eyes fluttered shut was a white owl. Circling circling circling before gracefully, swiftly descending, landing just a few inches in front of my face.

Do you remember how earlier I mentioned that I didn't have the typical walking into the light experience? Well, I wasn't going to disclose this part of my NDE but I’ve already told you guys everything else so I might as well. Something about the fact that you've made it this far into my memoir makes me feel seen. Makes this feel like a safe space. Anywho, as I drifted away from the land of the living in that field and took what I was hoping would be my last few breaths, I was startled to find myself staring at Julissa. “What the (obscenity) do you think youre doing?” She howled. I almost didn't remember her like this. She wasn't meek or corpse-ish she was wildly alive. I wanted to ask her if we were in heaven or.. the other one but I couldn't speak, so she continued “I mean honestly who do you think you are Whitney Houston? Basquiat? GET IT TOGETHER. I was fighting for my life for years and you're over here trying to give it all up.” She was pacing, looking down at the ground hands flailing around and when she looked up at me she stopped. Her face softened, she approached me and examined me. Honestly, I thought for a second she might slap me but instead, she scooped me up into a bear hug.

To call what transpired between us 'a hug' is honestly a disservice. I take back what I said earlier, about what we should have been learning in class, instead of angles. If one thing should be taught in school, it is that one day, the people who mean the most to you in life will be gone. And so while you have them it is of utmost importance to make the most out of every time you get to hug them.. So often I thought about what I would do, just to be able to give my sister one more hug. Not one of the absent-minded, touch and go, pitiful hugs. A real, totally present almost uncomfortably long, story-telling without uttering a word, hug. I squeezed her back fiercely. “I miss you too. I miss mom and dad, I miss being alive. That's why I need you to live it up extra. For the both of us okay? Really really live it up.” She quipped, one of her tears rolling off her cheek and onto my shoulder. So much I wanted to say but I could not speak, so instead, I held on for dear life(no pun intended). It was an other-worldly moment and then BOOM. Helicopter paramedic shocking me back into this dimension (insert shrugging emoji).

Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe it was my subconscious’ way of communicating with me. Maybe it was a mystical experience orchestrated by my genius sister and whatever higher-dimensional beings she was no doubt making friends with where she was. I often picture them eating popcorn watching my life half horrified and bemused for the most part. Regardless it felt more real than any moment I’d previously lived and was enough to change the quickly plummeting trajectory of my life. For what it's worth we found out later, that the only reason I’m alive, is because a lovely Mr. Rick Jansken spontaneously decided on his way home from a fishing trip, to pullover on the outskirts of town to do some birdwatching. He told the paramedics that he was following a beautiful owl through his binoculars and low and behold it seemed to lead his line of sight right to me.

Three months later my mother dropped me off at my very first AA meeting. (there's a sentence I thought I’d never say) I walked in wiping my palms on my slacks, bottom lip quivering trying to figure out if the other people here pulled off that disenfranchised look so well because they were regulars or if they were still using. I picked a chair in the back, shimmied into my sweater, and took a deep breath. “Hey, love the shirt” I looked up towards where the friendly voice came from. The girl sitting in front of me was turned around in her chair, eyeing me with a kind smile which I returned.

“Thanks, it was my sisters.”