Lie to Me (standalone)

You know, it’s always gotten on my fucking nerves whenever I hear people calling depression a “disease”. It just makes me think of sickness, it makes me think of getting to stay home from school because we don’t want to infect the other kids. A “disease” is something that causes you to throw up and feel sick and want to lie down and sleep and not have to do anything. It’s disgusting and looked down upon and no one wants to talk to you or be near you when you’re ill.

And shit, I guess that makes calling it a disease true.

But I, I don’t want to be considered sick; it twists my gut thinking about it. The feeling of having a disease puts me away from everyone else, it isolates every part of me from society for the fear of “infecting” them and bringing them down and that just adds to every degrading thought to run through my brain.

They’ve always told me that it’s a chemical imbalance in the brain, something that could be fixed with some pills and some encouragement and some sitting down on a fucking couch and spilling your heart out to this bitch that treats you like you’re insane. I have never liked resorting to those as my treatment. It’s someone else telling me what I have to do like I’m their fucking child, like I’m a slave to society that if I don’t obey their words then they might as well shove me to the ground and kick their foot into my stomach; the pain shooting up my gut and spine and smearing into bruises for days to come.

Fuck your therapy and your pep talks and your antidepressants; the only thing that has yet to not work for me is self-medication. The only thing that kept me from pulling the trigger has been my own people to talk to, my own pills, my own decisions, and a nice fucking bottle of jack to top it all off.

Though to be honest, looking back at my self-medicating stages, I almost feel more disgusted remembering what I did than thinking
of myself as disease-infested.

Everyone has their own ways to deal with their problems, I guess. Alex, Rian, Zack, and I, however, managed to find our own, kind of disturbing, way to deal with those bad, bad fucking chemicals in our brains. We were delusional, probably a bit mental, and definitely clinically depressed in high school, and that led us to our own forms of self-medication.

It was every other Saturday, sitting in Rian’s basement that we played this sort of, well I guess you could call it a game. Alex would bring the booze, Zack would bring the weed, and we all would bring the pills. And we’d down all five fucking bottles split between the four of us, some would get high off their asses on
pot, and the pills…

Well, the pills were used for something completely different.

Rian would have already had a deck of cards in his pocket, this was the tradition of our “meetings”. It was all a game to us, one fucked up and twisted game that makes me sick to my stomach remembering that we did this. It’s so disturbing, it’s insane, and it’s downright sickening, but we would play poker and gamble with pills.

We would all pitch in and bring our own, new pills every time and the winners from before would bring in the pills they’d won from the last time we played and we would sit in a fucking circle and bet on our own goddamn suicide, with words of “I managed to smuggle some of my mom’s anti-anxiety meds” and “I’m raising the bet, I stole some of my brother’s Adderall”.

Alex was the best at poker, he would win most of the time. And every time, after we’d cleaned up the cards and put them away, we’d look at the pile of pills, big and small and multi colored just like life itself, we’d look down and just stare. We were already stoned and drunk and past the point of delusion, but the 50 pills lying in the middle still managed to tempt us, begging us to take them.

“Do you think there’s enough for all four of us to die?”

I don’t remember who said it or why they said it, but I know that it shook all of us to the core, because it was a way that it was running through all of our brains, dancing in the shadows so we never really registered it was there, but someone said it out loud and we realized what it meant to each of us, because then the thought was permanently planted into our minds.

And I don’t know what I was doing, I’d had half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and my brain wasn’t working properly, but my hand was reaching downward and picking up a handful of pills and I just stared at them sitting in the palm of my hand. 3 blue, 1 red, 7 white. 4 white round ones, 3 white skinny ones, the red was small, and the blue were nearly too big to swallow, and they were all sitting in my hand.

I heard Alex croak out a “Jack…?” but it was the kind of hearing where you know he’s sort of saying it but it never registers in your mind that you heard it, you just did and you instantly forget about it. And maybe his breathing of my name was a warning of some sort, a questioning of what I was doing, a pleading of not to do what I wanted.

Because holy shit, all I could think about was tipping my head back and swallowing all of them whole. All I could think was if there was enough to really kill me. It was suddenly so apparent to me, more apparent than anything had ever been in my delusional state of mind, that all I really wanted to do was die and never wake up again.

And I took two of them, the little red one and a skinny white.
Finally, Alex’s cries of protest had registered in my mind as he dived into me, a hell of a lot less gracefully than usual, and knocked the rest of the pills out of my hand. And I watched them fall to the ground, Zack sitting up from his hazy stupor to see what was going on, Rian already passed out on the ground feet away.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he had slurred, and I remember being surprised that he could even recognize the fact that I was considering killing myself right then and there. I stumbled backward and hit my head on the ground, trying to get Alex off of me. Apparently Zack had decided that this wasn’t interesting enough and he rolled back over again, presumably falling asleep.

“’Lex, it’s okay,” I assured him, barely able to get the words out of my mouth and clapping him on the shoulder comfortingly. “I’m not taking enough to kill me, you don’t have to take enough to kill you, jus tt try it.”

And Alex had stared me down for a second, an agonizingly long second, before turning back to the pile. And he reached down and picked up another one of those small, round red ones and rolled it around in his fingers. He looked up at me questioningly, and I nodded back to him in reassurance before he took it and swallowed it whole.

I smiled to myself as Alex took a second, this one a blue one, and reached down again to help myself to another as well. This one was one of the orange pills that Zack had smuggled from his brother, and I pushed it past my lips. It sat on my tongue for a bit, and I felt it dissolve around me. It was a disgusting flavor of bitter, but nothing worse than the alcohol we’d downed before. It just sat on my tongue, and the teasing flavor had nearly consumed every thought to run through my mind until it was nothing but a scary
realization of what I was doing.

The pill sitting on my tongue, the pile of its brothers sitting inches away from me, Alex staring at me with a knowing expression on his face, it all hit me at once; a swing of a baseball bat into my chest, a gasp of air to try and obtain something that wasn’t as
scary as reality.

We were gambling suicide.

And I’d swallowed the pill quickly, a feeling of guilt washing over as I did so. The panic, which may have been caused by the adderall, immediately set into my stomach suddenly, terrifyingly, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. Instead of breathing, all I could think about was what the fuck we were doing, coming here every other Saturday and gambling with pills the same way people play Russian roulette. We may as well be loading a gun and holding it to our heads and playing truth or dare to see who pulls the trigger first.

And I turned to Alex, tears falling from my eyes and choking on my words, my chest rising up suddenly and then falling just as quickly, I turned to Alex and managed to spit out, “Alex, what are we doing?”

Alex had grabbed me suddenly by the shoulders, pulled me to face him before sliding his hands up to cup my cheeks and stare into my red rimmed eyes. And I remember the look in his eyes, probably the same that was in mine at the time; disbelief, terror, the sudden need to be fixed or to change everything that has been going on for months. And he pressed his forehead to mine and closed his eyes, his thumb massaging my neck and collar bones and cheek bones, sighing slightly.

“We’re destroying ourselves, Jack.”
The next decision I made was definitely a drunk one, one I wouldn’t have made had my mind been thinking properly or sober, and I can’t really even remember how the decision was made. But suddenly, for some reason, my mouth was on top of his, my lips caressing his own, and my eyes were closed and hands sliding down to tug on his shirt and pull him closer to me. The feeling of his soft lips on my own was enough to take away everything else running through my brain, to stop the tears from falling from my eyes, and it felt so damn good to kiss Alex, a lot better than it should have.

But Alex was pulling away suddenly and the feeling was gone and my hands were shaking with embarrassment and my drunken thoughts were scrambling my brain to try and come up with an excuse as to why I was kissing my best friend, and I was pretty sure he’d said my name multiple times already in question but all I
could really come up with fell from my mouth a bit unsteadily.

“I’m really drunk,” I had told him, nervously fidgeting with the sides of his shirt because I hadn’t a clue of what to do now. And thankfully, fucking luckily, Alex let out a stupid chuckle as he pulled my head into his again and murmured a “Me, too”.

Our lips gliding together again, I shook against his body and mumbled out a soft proclaiming of my heterosexuality to which Alex softly agreed to again. And it was okay for then, I think, because Alex’s hands were in my hair and tugging at my roots and his tongue was swiping against my bottom lip and I was pulling him closer to me and it felt nice, it felt so much better than anything I had felt in forever.

And I was falling backward, pulling Alex on top of me, and my back hit the pile of forgotten pills and his chest crashed into my own and his legs slid between mine and my lips parted in a gasp. And our tongues were battling, exploring and our teeth were clashing together almost painfully. Alex’s tongue in my mouth felt pretty goddamn amazing, I had decided, running my hands up his chest, digging my fingers into his back, him gasping into my mouth.

“I really fucking hate myself,” Alex mumbled suddenly against my lips, and the confession jolted my body alive as I wrapped my arms around his middle and pulled his thin body even closer to mine, not wanting for us to separate during such an intimate time.

“Tonight wasn’t the first time I’d nearly made the decision to kill myself,” I groaned out a confession as Alex’s teeth had moved from my bottom lip to nip at the tender skin on my neck. My fingernails had found the skin of his back underneath the thin t-shirt he was wearing and dug them in painfully.

“I cut myself so I don’t have to deal with ugly shit my brain comes up with,” Alex gasps as he sucks at the bruising skin where my neck merges with my shoulder and I could feel my body trembling under the touch of his tongue to one of my most sensitive areas.

“I don’t eat anymore on purpose,” I hum, moving my hands from Alex’s back to his hair, pulling hard to expose his throat, biting into his Adam’s apple and relishing the groan he lets out, feeling it vibrate underneath my teeth as the tremor spreads throughout my body.

“I know,” he sighed, moving his lips back to mine and pressing them softly together, as our bodies calmed down, chests rising and falling against each other but more steadily than the raw excitement that had been coursing through our veins as if they were nearly the same just seconds ago. And we were kissing carefully again, before Alex leaned down again to press our foreheads together, just as we were in the beginning.

“Let’s not do this anymore,” he breathed out, caramel eyes meeting mine. “The poker and pills and shit, it’s stupid. We’re going to die if we keep it up.”

I nodded, turning my head to the side as Alex slipped himself off of me to lay by my side. And we lay together in silence for a while, just thinking about everything that had happened recently, everything that we’d confessed; the cutting, the eating, it was a lot to take in, I remember. But somehow, I managed to feel at peace for a while, lying side by side with Alex.

“And Jack,” Alex started, turning his head to look at me again, “You need to eat. Like, it’s not even an option anymore. You have to eat, it’s unhealthy as shit to choose not to. If you don’t, I will force feed you, I promise.”

I was taken aback and a little disappointed by his proposal, because the not eating thing was the only way that I could control any of the thoughts that ran through my brain. It was the way that I didn’t take one too many pills or hang myself from the nooses I’d gotten all too comfortable making. The headaches and hunger pains were glorious and I reveled in them, and the way I could count my ribs without lifting my arms or sucking in my stomach gave me something to feel proud about. But Alex was worried, I could tell from the sound of his voice, and I guess I would be willing to give him some comfort.

“Okay,” I said carefully, hoping my disappointment and reluctance wasn’t too apparent in my voice. “But you need to get rid of that cutting habit, too, Alex. It’s too dangerous, what if you hit something or died?”

Alex grimaced. “I know, I know,” he said with a grumble, turning his head away from me momentarily. “I’m trying. I’ve been trying to stop, but I mean, it’s difficult, you know? I know it’s destructive and that I’m going to end up nearly fucking killing myself if I keep it up, but… it’s just difficult to put it down, the razor,” he paused for a moment before looking over at me again, a sort of smile settling on his lips. “I’ll stop if you stop.”

And somehow, I managed to smile too, because the look in Alex’s eyes was so hopeful, it nearly bounced back to meet mine in that same way until all I managed to feel was hope and it consumed every part of my being until I couldn’t do anything but agree with him.

“Deal. And we’ll tell each other any time we feel the need to bounce back into old habits?” I offered him, trying to come up with a plan that would keep us from falling back into a spiral of self destruction in the future (though, as you will find out, it didn’t work nearly as well as we may have hoped).

Alex smiled a toothy grin and I felt my heart lurch into my stomach as he said, “Done.”

And I guess after all of that, life started to go pretty well. I mean, Alex and I had to explain to Rian and Zack that the pills and the gambling were on a list of things that were not a good way to deal with our problems, and eventually that worked too.

Alex’s and mine friendship never really faltered after our brief departure from heterosexuality, but that little “exploration” was a good segway into a more affectionate relationship between the two of us. In fact, I think we almost definitely managed to find ourselves a hell of a lot closer than we were before after it, too.

And we managed to keep our promise to each other, surprisingly. It led to a lot of awkward phone calls and apologies as we raced to each other’s houses in the middle of the night to sit down and comfort the other who had been spending the past hour panicking and trying not to relapse, and the promise had even spread to the other members of the band, too.

Through this experience, an unseen bond had been wound into our blood, one that ties all of us together through thick and to the point where I might need to be hospitalized thin. We’ve been the shoulders and arms to hold each other up and comfort them if
they feel like falling, and it’s kept us away from a relapse.

Until now, at least.

Because I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing or what the fuck I’m going to do, but I haven’t eaten in nearly five days and I my head feels like it’s taken a beating. All I can hear pounding through my ears is my heartbeat, but it’s loud and disgustingly condescending because my heart knows that I’m trying to kill it again as each
pump of blood is a baseball bat to my head.

What the fuck am I doing?

What the fuck am I doing?

Shit, my head hurts so goddamn much and I feel like someone’s taking a knife to my stomach and ripping open my gut and pulling out my entrails and laughing their fucking head off as I reel over in pain and I still don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.

I don’t know when these thoughts came back again or when I stopped eating but for some reason, here I am at 24 years old and starving myself for the first time again in nearly ten years. And it’s such a fucking stupid decision, not eating, I know that so much and it hurts me even more to know that I’ve fallen back to this stage again, but all I can think about is getting thinner and weighing less because it’s the only thing I have going for me anymore.

I haven’t had a girlfriend in over a year, you know; I have an inability to hold a stable relationship and every time I find someone I like it’s like they’re dead set on getting away from me. I’m telling everyone that I’m more comfortable in one night stands and shit than I am with a relationship, but holy God I’ve never felt so lonely in my life.

It’s actually kind of ironic, actually, having millions of girls (and guys) around the world want to tie me down and fuck me senseless and yet I’m here unable to get into a serious relationship no matter how much I want to. It scares me, the thought of being
alone, and yet all I’ve felt for over a year is just that.

Alone.

And maybe that’s what’s caused me to fall back into this self destructive spiral. Because all I can do anymore is look at food and think about how much weight I would gain if I consume it or how much weight I would lose if I don’t consume anything. The only goal I have anymore is to be able to look in the mirror and not want to destroy what I see, and the only way I can think of doing that is to stop eating all together.

“I really fucking hate myself” is what Alex had said to me all those years ago, and his words have never rung clearer through my head than now as I look in the mirror and have to clench my fists to stop myself from breaking down. I suck in a gasp as I try my hardest to not to break the image I see in front of me and instead convince myself to destroy exactly what the image itself represents.

And I feel disgusting, so fucking disgusting lying to everyone again, breaking the promise that has held us together for so long, and all I want to do is run to Alex and tell him what I’ve been doing and what I want to do and break down again and have someone fucking tell me what the fuck I’m doing and what I can even do anymore, but there’s still that thought holding me back to keep me from going to get help.

A wave of dizziness runs over my body, and I turn on the sink, splashing water into my face. The cool water is a splash of reality as much it is a physical splash. I let out a shaky breath, my knuckles turning white as I grip the edges of the sink and close my eyes, turning away from the mirror so I don’t have to face my reflection again.

With a breathy sigh, I turn to face the door, opening it with my head turned towards the ground, but- what the fuck was that?
Feeling my head hit something quite obviously solid, I look up with confusion, only to have my breath taken away to see a face looking back at me with confusion, and it’s like life really doesn’t like me as I have to see the only thing that can bring me back from this torrential freefall from life and the thing I feel most guilty about letting down.

“Jack, are okay?” Alex asks, his hands cupping my shoulders to look me straight in the eyes as my head spins to try and find something the tell him in response, to try and grasp the fact that I’ve been starving myself and Alex is, unrealizingly, asking me to spill everything out to him.

Maybe this was my chance, I think, to turn my entire life around. Maybe if God exists, he’s trying to tell me something. Maybe I don’t have to stop eating to make myself feel good, maybe Alex can pull me out of this slump I’m falling into, is what I think.

And I’m standing there still, mouth gaping, eyes bulging, still trying to come up with something to say to Alex, who is saying my name again to get my attention. Because I don’t know what I’m going to do, I still don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, and I can barely breathe anymore as panic rises into my throat.

What do I say? Do I tell him everything? This is my one chance, my moment to save myself finally, to sit Alex down and tell him that I’m relapsing and that I think I’m going to do something stupid and I’m afraid that my depression that had been hiding itself in the corners of my mind, waiting to strike again and that it’s finally come out, even worse than before and I’m cracking, I’m fucking cracking and it’s only a matter of time before I break.

But somehow, the promise of recovery wasn’t enough to get me to talk. Somehow, my mind was made up and my mouth was twitching slightly as Alex looked into my eyes again, repeating my name like a mantra to snap me out of it, I shook my head and put on my best smile.

“Yeah,” I said, grinning, “I’m just fine.”