I am on top of the world, but I don’t feel so well. I need a solution. I order it like I am ordering fries or a soda in a drive-thru. I can’t go back to bed like this. I know I have to work at 7, but each second one by one feels like the only second that will ever exist. I sit on the floor, stand up, sit back down, stand up. I play “Another Brick in the Wall” on my record player nonstop and watch the vinyl spin around and around dutifully. I’m not doing so well. Friend is already texting me PAGES about what a wonderful time he had, which pairs part and parcel with what a wonderful person I must be. I read them, and I am so enamored I close my eyes to the ceiling to relive the session on the couch. Then I open my eyes, and there is the ceiling. Needle-prick emptiness all around me.

I can’t sleep on the coke. I could take the Valium again, but then I might go cold and not wake up for work. So I must entertain this ceiling with my staring match until I hear the 4am morning birds chirping while the world is still dark. Time being broken apart into days is the only way we can comprehend it. Otherwise, we would see it as the eternity it is and lose drown in our helplessness. This has happened to me. It is 5:30am, and the daylight has long since taken the day in Wisconsin’s height of summer.

I need to shower for work, brush my hair, eat breakfast, and start this day. Where I used to spring out of bed to run in the park, cook a healthy meal, and catch an episode of Golden Girls before work I can’t even move. When I do, it is the bare minimum. I could sleep forever. I am already skipping the entire day so that the highlight of it becomes laying like this on the floor again beside my record player and overdosing on sleep medication. But until I sort that out better, my snoozed phone alarm has gone off again and has made it clear this day still has to happen. I get up, almost collapse as I feel my blood pressure drop, and then amble my way towards my colorful tin box where I have chained my destiny.

Drugs, to sleep, drugs to wake up, drugs to feel, drugs to take feeling away, drugs to eat, drugs to think. I am a biological piece of software that is fed a code to make it perform a designated action. There is no room left in my body for my little being to run free. I remember vividly what that was like, and I remember being happy and motivated. The difference between then and now is so eerily obvious, but I am disconnected from it. My mind tricks me into believing that person was an outdated version of myself that can no longer be relevant. It goes as far as to convince me that person was never the real me, and that I should be grateful to be who I am now.

Grateful…? Well, shouldn’t I try to be? Is my life not a product of my own decisions? Can’t I wake up from one of my induced sleeps any time I want and decide I am switching it up and going back?

One Aderall should get me started. I am excited for the energy that will take hold by the time I step out of the shower. I take my phone with me and dare to open my messages. Friend has texted me again; I don’t know how I would have handled it if he hadn’t.

So I am still a wonderful person. This means only one thing: that Friend is all I have right now, and maybe all I need. It is easier to give up on the world when you can take a souvenir of it where you are going.

Friend wants me to have a great day, followed by a classic :p. It is perfect. I hang on to it during my shower. By the time I step out I feel beautiful, confident, and ready for work. It may be over the top, but I don’t care if it means I am happy. Finally, I reply to this little message that made me drop the shame of needing yet another pill- because Friend thinks I am wonderful. Not true, but that’s the thing. In time, it will be.

You are not so bad yourself. Have a great day too, Andre.