I've Got a Fixation, an Inclination

After that night at the party, there was one week of school left, and I spent it in a daze of first love and weed. Any chance we got, C and I would sneak off somewhere to light up a joint and make out.

Making out was something entirely new to me, I'd never even been kissed before C, and with him we skipped the sweet first kiss and the timid kisses searching for more, and we went straight to mingling tongues and butt grabbing.

He took my breath away, everything about him. The way his hair fell on his forehead and the shadow over his eyebrow that it created in the right lighting. The way his eyes could hold so much.

Sometimes they would pour out such happiness, and other times unbearable sadness would seep from their dark depths. And damn, his laugh. That was something I never had a chance against. It didn't come often, but when it did, it was wonderful. It was usually accompanied by the biggest grin you ever saw in your life, and he'd pick me up and twirl me around and kiss me.

We didn't officially call each other boyfriend and girlfriend, but my mother decided that C was my boyfriend, so I went along with it. Of course, she was ecstatic, a handsome upperclassman was interested in her bland daughter whom she worked so hard on changing. She didn't even care that he was nineteen and I was fifteen. I'm pretty sure my dad didn't like it, but she never let him speak for himself, so I guess I'll never know for sure.

The summer started off wonderfully, the first week was spent just C and I, every moment we could get with our hands on each others bodies and our lips glued together, tasting everything we could.

We smoked a lot of weed, and C wanted me to try some prescription pills, but I didn't want to because I was afraid I'd somehow accidentally overdose and die. A few weeks ago that didn't sound like too bad an option, but now it felt like I had so much to live for.

C got pissed. He said to me, "Don't be such a baby Lana. Times like this I really remember how much younger you are."

I tried to apologize, I tried to explain why I didn't want to, I tried to patch things up. C wouldn't hear any of it though.

"Get in the car." He said through gritted teeth, "Get in or walk five miles home."

He was really angry and I really couldn't understand why. "C, I'm really sorry, I just really-"

He cut me off. "Please. Just don't talk to me right now."

He drove me home and stopped at the end of our driveway. I turned to him, expecting a kiss goodbye, something, but he just stared straight ahead, his jaw clenching and unclenching in the glow from the dashboard. So I just climbed out of the car and walked slowly to my front door, hoping he'd come stop me and tell me that it was okay, asking myself why I'm so stupid.

I dragged myself up the stairs and to my bed, and I laid there in the dark for a long time.

The next morning I woke up to my phone buzzing. I snatched it off my bedside table, hoping it would be C. It was.

"Hey" the text message said. A man of many words obviously.

"Hey. What are you up to?" I typed back, and waited.

"I'm just at my house by myself. Wanna come over?"

"Sure but I don't have a ride."

"I'll come pick you up."

"Are you sure? I can walk." Afraid that he might still be angry with me, I didn't want to inconvenience him, even though it was a two mile walk.

"Yeah be ready in 15." Then another text from him, ":)"

About an hour later, at C's house, just him and I, we were kissing on the couch and I felt like the previous days' spat was in the past and we could just be us again.

C lit up a joint and of course I didn't pass up the opportunity to get high, so I sat on his lap and we passed the joint back and forth, we ended up smoking the whole thing.

"Why do you still smoke joints?" I asked him, "Everyone I know has switched to pipes and bongs."

"I guess I'm old fashioned," he said and laughed.

His laugh reassured me that everything was okay, and I reached my arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. He shifted under me and pulled something out of his pocket.

I looked at his hand and saw that it was a baggy of pills. He grinned at me and popped two little blue pills into his mouth and swallowed them dry.

"I know we fought about it yesterday," C said to me, "And I'm sorry I got so mad, but please try it? If you don't like it you never have to again. But it'll be fun, I promise."

I didn't want to fight with him anymore, I didn't want him mad at me, it was the worst feeling, so I told him I'd try it.

He kissed me full on the mouth. "You're the best Lana, really. Since you're a beginner we'll start you off with like a half of one okay?"

"Okay," I told him, my mouth dry.

He gently pushed me off of him and onto the couch and he stood and headed for the kitchen. I could hear drawers opening as he searched for a knife.

As I was talking myself down off the ledge of anxiety in my head, C reentered the room with half a little blue pill in his hand and a beer in his other.

"Open up." He placed the pill on my tongue and held the beer to my lips to wash it down. Then he lifted the beer to his own lips and took a long drink. He set the beer down, and so suddenly it scared me, he lifted me up, sat back down on the couch, and settled my butt in a very intimate way back on his lap.

Next thing I know our lips are locked together and I'm out of breath. It had never been quite like that before.

Maybe twenty minutes later, I started to feel the effects of the pill that I took, which I actually wasn't even sure what it was. I felt light, my head was floating above my body. All sensation in my body was focused ont the parts of me that were touching C, my lips, my hands, my butt, my inner thighs. I wanted him and I didn't know how to explain what I felt, I had never felt it before.

C could sense it though, I'm sure. Because suddenly we were horizontal and he was on top of me, and before I could even catch up, my shirt was missing.

I knew where this was going, and I didn't really want it. But I had no control over my voice, my legs, the butterflies in my stomach. I didn't want it, but my body was both heavy and light, I was confused because I did want it. But I didn't want it.

So that day, I lost my virginity to C, and soon after I found out that it didn't mean anything to him, and it meant the world to me.

Fast forward a few months, and I'm off and on with C, mostly on when he had some good weed to share. Or pills, or acid, or one time, cocaine.

I spent my days smoking weed and drinking, getting nice and numb. I spent my nights at parties and in the back seats of boys' cars doing things that would make my daddy cry.

I didn't really eat anymore, and you could tell by looking at me. I was sharp and all edges. I pushed my family away more than ever, to the point that even my mother didn't try speaking to me anymore. All I could think about that was, 'Good. You did this, bitch.' I was so angry. Angry at myself, at C, at my parents, at my lack of friends, at my need to be loved, at my own vulnerability. Just so angry, and even more sad.

Fast forward a couple years, I was seventeen and a heavy user. I couldn't make it through the day without vodka and a couple oxycodone.

I was at a party one night, and of course I was drinking, and I had done a little heroin, and I said I had a headache, so some guy offered me some ambien to help me sleep with all the party noise, he said that sleep would get rid of my headache. I was completely shitfaced, and high as shit, so it sounded like a great idea. I just grabbed whatever pills were in his hand and swallowed them down.
Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later, I didn't feel right. Nothing felt right. I was pretty sure I was dying. I was dying.

Somebody screamed, "Call 911!" and suddenly there was a small group of people hovering over me, and everyone else was fleeing the party for fear of being arrested.

Next thing I remember I was in a field next to the house the party was in, and there was a guy I knew very vaguely, and he was shoving his fingers down my throat, trying to make me puke up the pills. I threw up everywhere, all over him, all over me.

I saw flashing lights, and I felt him lower my head to the ground, and then I heard his running feet, fleeing the scene.

I probably would have done the same.

Everything is blank after that, and I remember waking up in the hospital with my mother's tear soaked face near mine.

She saw that I was awake and called for a doctor. She started crying harder, but I couldn't understand why.

"Why are you crying?" Why did my voice sound so weak?

Her face contorted in anger before she reigned it in once more. "You almost died Lana." She came back over to me and rested her head on my shoulder. "Thank God you're alive." She whispered.

"What?" I was so confused. My head hurt. "What are you talking about?"

Then the doctor came in, and he explained to me what happened. I had a 0.286 blood alcohol level (very high), there was ambien, heroin, oxycodone, and Vicodin in my system. In short terms, I overdosed and I was lucky to be alive. They pumped my stomach. I was legally dead for about ten seconds. I'm going to have trouble with my heart for the rest of my life, it will never beat in a normal rhythm, and I will always be at high risk of a heart-attack.

The doctor told me that I'd be kept in the hospital for a seventy-two hour suicide watch, and the I'd be released on the condition that my parents would send me to an in-patient drug treatment facility of his recommendation.

My mother agreed without asking me of course, and left my room to make phone calls and start making arrangements to send me to rehab.

I was left alone, just my thoughts and me, and I just couldn't wrap my head around any of it. I almost died? Heart condition? What the fuck has my life become?

I was fine last week. I was in a comfortable daze, and I never in a million years would have ever considered the possibility that I would need rehab.

Now, from my hospital bed, it seemed that it had become impossible to avoid the cold hard facts anymore.

Fact 1) If I can accidentally overdose on an average Friday night, maybe, just maybe, I could use some help.

Fact 2) I really wasn't that mad when my mom didn't ask me what I thought about rehab and just started making arrangements.

Fact 3) I saw the disappointed way my brother looked at me last week.

Fact 4) I wanted a way out, but I didn't want to die.

Fact 5) When I thought about going a day without a drink, without a little blue pill, I didn't know if I could do it.