Angst (36 page)

“Why are you drinking that?” he asks again, and still I
don’t speak. I’m caught. What can I say? Finally I speak.

“I needed to drink more before we go anywhere,” I say. It’s
lame. It’s all I’ve got.

“Why? There will be plenty of alcohol there, Victoria.” he
says with a small smile and I feel my stomach plummet. Now he’s going to escort
me outside and into a waiting car and it will be the end of me. It’s like I’m
being socially arrested.
Hello, Officer. Damn.
And I’m still not drunk
enough. I’ve had enough to officially help me feel extra sick. I feel terrible.
I’m sweating now and I can feel it in my hair line and under my arms. My hands
feel clammy and my pulse is beating like a drum.
I can’t go. No. No. No.

“I can’t go with you,” I say finally because there is
nothing else to say.

“What is wrong, Victoria, you don’t look very good,” he says
and I sag.
Yes, I’m sick.
Clearly that’s my problem, right?

“Yeah I feel sick,” I say and he looks at me again, serious,
wheels turning and I can tell he’s feeling me out, he’s figured something out
about me. I’ve been sick too much lately. Too sick to visit him, too sick to go
to the movies, too sick to have dinner at Ian’s apartment, excuses galore for
everything he wants to do. I’ve used up my excuses.

“You’ve been sick a lot lately, what’s going on?” he says
and I feel like bolting. I need to leave here. I am going to be sick all over
his shoes. I am going to cry or breakdown. I’m losing it while standing in
front of him. I’m trembling from head to foot, knowing that soon he will find
out the truth and soon he will leave me, laughing.
I’ve got to go.

I start to walk out of the room and he grabs my arm.

“Why are you drinking like that in secret? Why are you doing
that if you feel sick? Why are you leaving? Victoria this doesn’t make any
sense.”

I halt and turn. Tears are forming in my traitor eyes. I’ve
got my free arm grasped tightly about my middle because it hurts terribly and I
can tell he thinks I look kind of hysterical. I can feel myself breaking. I’m
very nearly shattering like my glass of vodka dropped on the floor. I can
almost watch it happening outside myself, see myself and how I appear to him.
Upset.
Something is clearly wrong.

“What’s wrong, Vic, you can tell me,” he says and I begin to
wonder. What if I did tell him the truth? What if I just blurted it out right
now?
No I can’t. I cannot.
I seal my mouth shut and then open it again
into a fake smile that I hope he will buy. I’m cornered. I must go through with
it. I must get into the waiting car and allow the officer to lead me to my
social death.

“Ok, let’s go,” I say with tense brightness. He’s not buying
it.
Please Jared, there’s a sale in aisle one on Crazy Victoria, buy one get
one free. You know you want it. He’s still not buying it. Fuck!

“Seriously, what is wrong? Did something happen?” he asks,
all seriousness, eyes boring into mine. I look away because it’s easier to lie
that way.

“Nothing happened. There’s nothing going on.” Now I start to
get angry. Maybe anger will cover up my lies and make them sound better? “Let’s
just go, or else I’m going home,” I say.

“Victoria, what the fuck?!” he finally says in a harsh tight
angry voice. Low, deadly low. I’ve heard this voice before.

“What the fuck, Jared,” I say half-heartedly, not sure where
this is going. What can I say to lead him astray?

My stomach is still aching something fierce and I feel the
bile rising in my throat at the thought of getting into that car, and
everything looks fuzzy and blurry. I need that damn alcohol on the counter over
there. I need it like an alcoholic. I imagine myself zinging that glass into my
hand from across the room, mentally. I can already feel it, like it’s in my
hand, like the panic has been murdered beneath 17 shots.
God…Am I am
alcoholic?
I am…except that I don’t really enjoy alcohol. I only need it to
feel calm, to erase the real Victoria. But here’s the thing…I can’t start
acting the slut or distant or like I want to get drugged and drunk out of my
mind and expect to keep him. I imagine his ex-girlfriend drinking, snorting
coke, smoking grass, taking X and then cheating on him. He won’t like it.
He
just won’t.

Ok, I’ll tell him. I’ll lay it on the line right now and see
what happens. He can make his choice. Choose the drunk drugged out chick or the
crazy one. Whichever he wants. Spin the wheel, win a prize.
Some fuckin
prize.

“Here’s the thing, Jared,” I begin, noting his blazing eyes,
knowing that I can’t push him any further. But before I can continue Andy walks
into the room, startling me, causing Jared to look over at him. My chance has
been lost.
Damn.
I
was
going to tell him. Really I was. I wasn’t
going to chicken out at the last minute and somehow, magically come up with a
really nice doozy of a lie. Or was I? It’s impossible to know what I would have
done.

“Ready to go?” Andy asks and Jared looks at me.

“Yup, let’s go,” I say with another fake brittle smile.
Let’s
go Mr. Officer, why don’t you put on those cuffs and actually restrain me even
more. I need to be humiliated. I deserve this shit for even imagining that I
could handle it. Corporal Punishment.

I follow Jared’s tense back outside and I can tell that he’s
still not satisfied with our encounter. What must he be thinking? He walks into
the kitchen to find his girlfriend of a month, alone, chugging a full glass of
vodka at a party. What does that mean? Is she an alcoholic? What other reason
could there be? I’m sure it makes no sense to him.

Now the car is in sight and I realize I need to go to the
bathroom
again
. But I just went and I can’t really have to go pee again
right?
No.
If I had to go again it would mean something else. Something
socially
unmentionable
.

Wow, if I’m lucky perhaps I can convince Jared that not only
do I have a massive secret drinking problem, but I am also bulimic too.
Awesome!
All the things I am not, simply to hide the one thing I am.

Ok, I’m focusing on me again, nothing new, and I’m sick,
dead sick. My stomach is slamming and sloshing and the stomach acid is climbing
and I’m sweating and burning up and the world has been left behind. Everything
is gauzy and ethereal, but not in a pleasant way, in a terrifying way. The car
doors are open now and they want me to get in. It’s like fighting a black hole,
a social dragging unpleasant sucking black hole. But I fight it.
I can’t do
it. I can’t.
I’m full on panic mind fucked.
I can’t!!!!!!

I just stand there. I’m frozen. Jared sits down and he
expects me to sit next to him. My muscles won’t cooperate.
Can’t do it.
I
can’t forcefully put myself into a situation that will mean certain utter
social destruction.
No!!!

Jared looks at me, eyebrows up, questioning. I know my eyes
must be huge as saucers and my feet are telling me to run away and my belly is
telling me that it needs to make a white porcelain deposit and…I…I…run away.
Run
away.
Can you fuckin believe this girl? I’m around the building now and I
throw up in the bushes. Heaving and heaving and it’s burning my throat, the
alcohol coming back up to haunt me. I straighten up just in time to see Jared
come around the corner.
Oh fuck. Cornered, dying animal. Terrified. Wide-eyed.

“Victoria, what is wrong?” he asks again and this time I
will tell him. I have to. I have to tell someone or I will die. It’s been too
long. This terrible burden.
Ten years.
I start to cry, loud wracking
sobs. He shakes me a bit and I wake up enough to finally blurt out…

“I have a problem.”

“A drinking problem? An eating disorder?” he asks and I can
see that his face is sincere. Maybe he won’t laugh. “It’s okay, Victoria,
please just tell me. I care about you. I want to help you.”

“I can’t...really explain it. It makes…no sense. You
wouldn’t understand,” I say, gasping for breath around the tears.

“Wait a minute, let me tell them to go on ahead and you can
tell me everything,” he says, gripping my shoulder for a moment. I nod and he
walks off to tell them. Meanwhile, I sit down on the freezing ground. Instantly
the cold seeps in. And I’m so fucking tired, I no longer care.
Life is over
.
If he rejects me, as he is bound to do, I might as well end it all. Life is too
hard. I give up. I’m done. He’s bound to reject me and I will tell him the
truth.

“Ok, tell me,” he says, coming up to me again, pulling me up
off the ground. My body is limp. Limp with the realization that I risk
everything to tell him. The panic is gone, replaced by cold resignation.

“Fine. I have this problem where I feel all this irrational
fear about going places, or doing things or even social situations. I can’t
control it. It makes me physically sick when I’m faced with a situation I don’t
want to deal with.”

“You mean like going to that party?” he asks and I can’t
really read what his face is saying. He’s serious. I don’t see any mocking or
glazed eyes, not yet. Just him trying to understand. Perhaps so he can mock me
once he fully gets it.

“Yes, like going to that party. I can’t ride in cars with
other people. I’d feel trapped. If I got sick in that situation it wouldn’t be
pleasant. It would be embarrassing,” I continue on. I’m stating facts now,
maybe they are facts about someone else?
I wish.

“What happens when you get faced with a situation?” he asks,
again, rather clinical.

“My heart starts to beat really fast, I get hot, the world
seems unreal, my thoughts race, I shake and shiver and I get physically sick,
like throw up sick and worse,” I say, cringing with these last words. “I drink
to forget all that shit, the unpleasant thoughts and sensations.”

Jared looks at me for a moment. Eyes on mine, face
completely sincere and serious. Then he pulls me in and hugs me, hard. I can
hear the beating of his heart in my ear, pressed up against his chest. His
voice rumbles.

“You have panic attacks,” he says simply. I start at those
words. Panic Attacks. Panic Attacks. Simple. Just two words. They sound
terribly right. “It’s okay,” he says, rubbing my back, squeezing me and I relax
in his arms. “Don’t cry,” he says and I try to control my sobbing.

I pull back for a moment and look at him. “What does it
mean? What’s wrong with me?”

“To put it simply, some of the chemicals in your brain don’t
work correctly triggering the fight or flight response, and on top of that
you’ve learned to be afraid of situations that remind you of your first attack
and you make up new fears. It’s not your fault.”

“How do you know about it?”

“One of my cousins has panic attack disorder. Andy and I
grew up with her and we noticed something was going on. She hid it, like you,
but eventually it came out and she got help for it.”

“Help, what help?”

“She went to therapy and took medication and now she’s a lot
better. But it was really hard on her for a while. She explained it to me once
and it sounds a lot like what’s been happening with you. How long has this been
going on Victoria?”

“Since I was eight years old.”

“Jesus Christ. Poor girl,” he says, pulling me toward him
again, into another bear hug. Finally he murmurs, “Listen, I just want you to
know that I want to be there for you.” I nod dumbly and let him lead me to his
car. All I can think is, he knows, he understands.
It’s okay.

There’s this party at the frat tonight. End of semester
celebration. Huge bash with all my friends and Jared. And I want to go. I need
to go. But I can’t leave my house.
I can’t
. I want to. I need to, but I
feel horrific. Body sick, thoughts racing, I’m totally fucked up.

I’m sitting on my bed in my room feeling like absolute hell
on earth staring at my water bottle on the floor in the middle of the room. My
stomach clenches, sloshing like I have the flu and I want to run to the
bathroom. But I won’t let myself. I stare hard at the water bottle, it’s half
full and calling to me. Drink me and you can be normal. Drink and you can go
out and have fun. You’ll feel like shit tomorrow, but it won’t matter because
you got out of the house tonight. Do it, bitch. Give in, you drunk slut. You
know you want to. You know you’ll do it in the end, so stop stalling.

I get up off my bed, sit down crossed legged on the floor
and touch the bottle with shaking fingertips. I’m stone cold sober right now
and as close to not able to function normally as I have ever been in my entire
life. Near breaking, and quivering so hard I can’t think straight. My thoughts
are rushing, imagining every terrible thing that could happen to me tonight, every
embarrassment, every trapped situation that could occur. But I can’t let anyone
know I feel this horrible. I must go to this party. I must appear normal. Everyone
expects me to be there and it doesn’t matter that Jared knows because no one
else does. Plus I don’t want him to learn any more about how fucked up I am. I
still want to try to hide the
extent
of my crazy. I splash the vodka
back and forth in the bottle.
Slosh, slosh, drink.
Do it. My stomach
clenches ever tighter, like a knobby-knuckled fist connecting with muscle,
thud, tight, tight, sick. I can’t drink and drive. I can’t. I shouldn’t.
I
must.

I pick it up, take a long swig, screw the lid on quickly and
drop it as if it burned my fingertips. Just a little sip, just enough to get me
out the door,
medicinally speaking.
But after a few minutes of waiting,
jittering, I feel nothing. My first swig is not enough to stop the thoughts of
fear, not enough to calm my shaking sick-ass body. I take another long sip and
then another in quick succession. That should be enough. It should be.
But
it isn’t. Goddamn it!!
I take a few more and then one more for good
measure. Then I wait. Finally the trembling and stomach clench ease a bit and I
feel confident enough to walk down the stairs and out the front door.