Take as Directed

On the tenth anniversary of my sister’s suicide, I took a handful of her oxycodone.

And I felt alive again.

Ironic, really, since I was trying to kill myself. God, I was so stupid. As if a handful of oxy was going to kill me. Oh yeah, there’d been nausea and sluggishness and a general blanket of grossness that I couldn’t shake after the high wore off, but death? What a joke.

But I’d been desperate.

Because when your dad is sobbing for hours in the kitchen and your mom is trying to coax him to bed and no one can even look at you the entire day and every tabloid and music channel is displaying sick memorials and you know, deep down in your bones, If I had never been born, this would never have happened and you have to deal with the same shit every year, you lose it. You’ll do anything. Like take a handful of prescription pain pills on the off chance you’ll never wakeup.

My parents had no idea.

They had no fucking clue. They were always so wrapped up in their own grief, they never thought about poor little Brooklyn. Sitting alone in her room. Clutching a pillow around her head to muffle the sounds. Biting her tongue to keep from crying. Praying one of them would notice that she wasn’t okay and maybe, just maybe, give her the same affection they gave a dead girl. Fuck them.

They still don’t notice. I’m destroying myself, and they can’t see it. The money that goes missing from their wallets, the perpetual sweaters to hide the track marks lining my arms, the nights I come home high off my ass with the stench of cum on my breath, four years of my downward spiral paraded in front of their faces and they don’t see any of it.

… I wish they’d see.

How pathetic is that?

But I can’t help it. There’s something inside of me, the remnants of the three-year-old whose sister hadn’t died yet, that’s convinced they can fix me, and she shows her ugly face when I’m coming down.

So I crush that bitch with more pills.

And powders.

And the occasional inhalant when I’m feeling real feisty.

And once it’s settled into my system, I don’t feel so needy, stupid, ugly, useless. I am on top of the world and numb at the same time. I can breathe again. I feel alive. Even though I’m slowly dying. I know I won’t live to see eighteen and I can’t bring myself give a flying fuck.

I don’t care.

Call me selfish. Tell me I’m self-medicating. Explain to me, with pretty charts and studies and scientific facts, that drugs are drawn-out suicide. Talk me off the metaphorical ledge. Do whatever. It won’t change anything.

I found salvation in the pill bottle marked Dannilynn Sanders, Oxycodone, and no one will take that away from me.