Nights

Have you ever had a memory follow you like a spirit? It looms over you, and as much as its presence disturbs you, as much as you try to convince yourself the ghost is a figment of your imagination, you know that it is real. This is how trauma feels, an invisible entity that invades your consciousness and leads a parasitic lifestyle until you will do absolutely anything to drown out the noise.

 

So when I finally reached an age wehn I could drive away from the dark entity that took a toll on my mind, I sped away so fast and found the only stop that felt comfortable to me. Alcohol.  

 

Alcohol sang to me the way birds did in the spring. It allowed me to be free of my inhibitions, and the anxieties that encapsulated my mind would vanish. After a few shots, I was bubbly and flirty, and it allowed me to talk to strangers without the neverending voice screaming in my head that I am invisible and ugly ruining every opportunity of vulnerability. However, my sweet and innocent songbird who drowned out the noise soon became the overwhelming noise itself. The night I realized that everything my songbird had sung to me was a lie was a night I do, unfortunately, remember.  

 

I was standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom. The only thought I had on my mind was Why am I here? repeated over and over and over again. I stared at myself. My eyes were black and red. My gums were bleeding. My face was numb. I did a quick slap to the side of my cheeks to see if I could feel anything. My feet stumbled below me, and before I knew it, I fell backward and hit my head against the wall. My knees buckled as they cracked against the hard tile of the bathroom floor. Somehow through this, the bottle in my left hand did not break. I’m not sure how much I’d sipped from it at that point. All I could see was that about a quarter of it was gone. It wasn’t the good stuff. It was cheap and tasted like hand sanitizer. I didn’t drink it for the taste, though. I drank it for the numb feeling.  

 

I heard a knock at the door.  

 

“Hey. Is anyone in there?”  

 

I didn’t recognize the voice. I wanted them to leave so I made sure to yell back “GO away!” They left.  

 

At this point, the memories came back to me, and I felt the shame. I was furious. No matter what I did to myself, they were always there, intruding on my fun like an uninvited guest, ruining the party for everyone.  

 

“Goddammit,” I screamed.  My friends had not noticed I was gone; they were busy batting their eyes at some stupid twenty-something frat boy. They were living their lives. They had self-control. I didn’t.  

 

I lifted myself up off the floor, and my throat burned. I decided I needed to leave; I needed to go home before everything hit at once. When I opened the bathroom door, so many unfamiliar faces stared at me. They must’ve heard me scream. One of the faces turned to her friend as I walked past and blurted, “Jesus, some girls really do way too much, huh?”  

 

Somehow I stumbled into a car that drove me home. That’s when I had a realization. I’d had a night like that so many times already. I had become exactly whom I never wanted to be.   

 

When I woke up the next morning, I cut off many friends. I cried real tears for the first time in a while. I knew if I continued the way I was going, if I allowed myself to be used, and lied to by just about everyone and everything, I would wither away into nothing. I couldn’t allow myself to do that.

I got the help that I needed. That vulnerability that I strive for is still just out of my reach, but I can’t allow myself to think that addiction will help me capture it. I have to accept that the version of myself that is warm-hearted and free-spirited is there buried below. I have to find her. I am not an object. I am not worthless. I am not shameful. I deserve authentic love, real relationships, and a future. I am working to get there.