Why I Committed Suicide (34 page)

Jenifer is supposed to be moved to Dallas for therapy soon.

♦ ♦ ♦

Isn’t life supposed to change in incrementally inconsequential ways? I hate my job, I’ve been working the early morning shift which starts at 5 a.m. and it’s the only shift I specifically requested
not
to be on. Everything is fucked up, the only thing to do with my paychecks is spend them on more H, so I do.

There’s nobody to go out with, and my best friend is in the hospital. At least she’s closer now, doing physical therapy at Baylor Hospital in Dallas, so I should get to visit more. Since my cast came off it’s hard for her to be so weak and see me relatively uninjured. I get to visit more now. Sometimes we’re actually alone for a while, which is nice. She’s worried about me and I think she’s worried I won’t love her anymore but I hope I’ve allayed those fears. I can finally see her starting to have to cope with the reality of the situation she’s in, now that the doctors are decreasing the big mind numbing meds she’s been on. I don’t know how to help her with this, hopefully there will be more of a support system in the rehab facility where she’s at than I had. She asks me to bring her smack now, sometimes begs me, and I guess I will. How can I be a hypocrite when it’s my own escape from reality and it’s likely been the only thing keeping me going for the past few months? I brought her the sequel to
Jurassic Park
to read, I’m never allowed to be in there with her enough to get to read to her like I want to, like I
need
to, but maybe her mom will read it to her. I often show up late to visit her and I can tell she’s getting a lot of flak from her folks about it.

There’s probably nothing worse for her than having to defend me to her parents when they can all tell I’m fucking up again. The dopeman makes me late sometimes, but usually I just get lost trying to find her building in Dallas. There’s only one good way to get down there and the ever-changing road construction adds so many detours and delays that by the time I find the newest route to the hospital everyone usually looks on me with disappointed eyes.
“Don’t you see Jenifer, I want to be there with you? I want to sleep there every night and take care of you in your hour of need like I should but I can’t. I’m fucking pathetic.”
Really though, what will her family let me do? With her mom there 24/7 I’ve been nothing morethan an outside casual visitor since this all happened.

♦ ♦ ♦

I got fired for fucking up my time card at work one day when I tried to use my lunch hour to cash my check and buy some H. It didn’t even work, but I don’t fucking care. I’m tired of waking up at 4 in the morning to chop endless mounds of vegetables and prepare gourmet meals for other people to eat. I wasn’t doing very well there anyway; I would fall asleep while cutting vegetables and all the Mexican ladies who work in the bakery section of the kitchen would giggle, probably betting on how long it would take before I lost a finger.

One day I didn’t have a needle so I tracked down a diabetic and asked her if she had a spare. She was nice, about it, but after I left she called security and I had to get into this big ordeal and tell my boss I was a diabetic. Did you know there are two types of diabetes and only one uses needles? I think I guessed the right type but later on that week the messed up time card was enough of a third strike to get me canned.

Melanie’s pissed off because someone broke into her apartment and stole some buckets of change from her brother, but I won’t comment on that. She was starting to think that my loneliness for company was a prelude to a re-romance, despite my direct insistence to the contrary. I honestly never wanted to, but we ended up having awkward sex in her closet late one night and I came after only about two seconds, so whatever image she had of me as being a good lover went out the window along with any romantic intentions. So now I’m technically a
cheating
junkie fuckhead bastard, but it really didn’t mean anything. I hadn’t even masturbated since the accident so I wasn’t sure if my equipment still worked. I guess it didn’t, so I have another reason to feel just super great about myself. I’m sorry, but the woman I love is in the hospital, I need her more than anyone and it has nothing to do with sex.

I still manage to make it down to see Jen about every day but it’s hard. Sometimes I get too fucked up and embarrass her in front of her parents. I don’t want them there, I just want to lay down by the bed and put my head in her lap without having to worry about the delicacies of conversation. I’ve also managed to bring her heroin a few times, she’s got this tube in her arm that is permanently stuck in the vein so whenever the nurses need to give her meds they can inject whatever into the end of the tube instead of having to stick her again. It works out nicely to inject a little cooked H in the tube and it even makes Jen feel better for a while.

On one really depressing day she asked me for a hot-shot
*
and I actually brought it to her, letting her put the dope into the tube herself and then I watched her beautiful face relax as she sank into that pleasant deep sleep that precludes respiratory failure and death. Her mom had left us alone and I cried as I watched her but I realized I still couldn’t let her go. Not like that. I rushed out to get the doctor and he gave her this stuff that immediately counteracted the morphine-base and woke her up. I didn’t even get in any trouble for giving the dope to her. Apparently patients on severe pain meds overdose a lot and they have the shit that saves their life readily available. Her mom was crying and kept saying thank you to me over and over since I had reacted quick enough to go get the doctor and technically saved her daughter’s life. This was the third time I watched Jenifer die, and she would have died if I hadn’t been so selfish. It’s all becoming too fucking much to handle. I can’t pretend to play God with her life anymore.

It’s gotten so bad at home now that I would stay at the hospital all the time if Mrs. Lansing hadn’t already reserved the option solely for herself and silently forbade it. I go to Narcotics Anonymous meetings just to get out of the house and I can usually meet some people who want to go and score afterwards. I want to quit and I want to die. If I quit I’m going to spend a lot more time actively pursuing the second option, so maybe this way of life is for the best right now.

I’m now working at Malibu, the race track just down the highway from my parent’s house with the putt-putt golf and video games. I work on the track, fixing cars and helping little kids put their seatbelts on and stuff. Nothing too hard, I was glad to find something to occupy a little time after the cooking gig went sour. It’s an easy job but I can tell that I am not destined to work here for very long. There are just too many problems and things going on around me for anything good to last.

Jenifer is progressing but still can’t fucking feel anything from the stomach on down and the mental shit between us is still not connecting like it used to. I don’t know what to do. She isn’t used to me being the most important person in her life anymore and it hurts deeply, but what can I do? I’m the one letting other people tell me how to behave around her and I’ve relinquished my responsibility to be there for her so it’s my own fucking fault. She wants to be with her mother and I understand that, but nobody ever had what we had together.
God, I don’t want to lose her, I don’t mind the physical problems, just don’t take her away.

My brain is screaming inside my head to talk to anyone about what’s happening and nobody wants to hear any of it. It’s too gruesome, too real to think of someone they know involved in a tragedy.

I watch Jen in physical therapy and realize that there is just so much I am not a part of now, but I honestly want to learn but I still can’t quite come to grips with hurting her this bad and I’m still getting more and more suicidal every day. I come home and we still never talk about the accident. I’m already a dope head again and that makes me even more depressed. I’ve been subconsciously pushing my habit to the limits while I’m in Dallas, hoping for the worst (or best, depending on whose point of view you’re looking at).

The other morning I woke up in my little twin kiddie bed with a needle on the mattress after passing out with it still in my arm. I remember cooking up a huge amount the night before and slowly pushing in the plunger of the syringe in order to savor the sensation of my last thoughts on Earth. When I woke up, I was depressed to be alive and I finished what was still left in the syringe after flicking out the coagulated blood.

The state of Texas is dropping Jenifer’s theft conviction and wiping out her probation. I guess having to lie on your back for three months with tubes sticking out of your body qualifies a person for dismissal of a minor misdemeanor. It’s good news for her though. My probation is still in effect in Denton I guess, but the court date for the fucking watch I stole in Dallas keeps getting put off and looms over me.

Jenifer got to go home today and she came over to my parents’ house from the hospital, which means I probably got fired from Malibu. I had requested time off for the afternoon, but the assistant manager bitch wouldn’t let me go when it was time so I snuck out over the back fence and drove home. Sometimes you have to make a decision about what’s really important in life and I felt like this was one of those things. It was good to see Jen in her racing machine and we did the family formalities. My mother showed surprising grace and poise and had even sewn together a couple of things for Jen to take with her, like a hot pad for her lap. I guess her nursing experience clued her in to some things that most people forget about. When you can’t feel your legs it’s easy to set a hot pan or plate of food in your lap and get severe burns without ever feeling anything.

Jenifer’s still shy around me but more open to me than anyone else (besides her mom) so I still see there might be hope for us if she’ll have me. I don’t want to lose her over this but I’ve made things so bad for myself and I know they’ll only get worse. It might be best to drive her away before I fuck her life up even more.

I’ve started cashing in some of my parents savings bonds that I found in a box under their bed. There’s one local bank that cashes them if I go through the drive-thru and send my mom’s driver’s license through the tube. I plan on paying everything back. I have ideas in my head that could work, but when they catch me at this I’m going to be seriously fucked even if I do have the cash to pay them back.

Seeing Jenifer again made me feel as if there might be more to the rest of my life than trying to end it with this addiction but I’m hooked and back at the point where I can’t stop again. I don’t think Jenifer can really even believe what I say half the time anymore.

Malibu called just after Jenifer had left to let me know I was definitely fired. Even if I cared enough to go in and try to explain, I still don’t know if I could make them understand. Besides my sister, I don’t think anybody understands. Maybe not even her.

My parents found out about me cashing in some of their savings bond money when they were searching my car for drugs. They found one last bond in my backseat with my mom’s forged signature on it that the bitch at the bank wouldn’t cash for me.

I’m losing my grip and I’m using my malice against them to justify taking their dough. They’re rightfully pissed and I feel like shit about it. Things are BAD, bad around here.

Now the ‘rents come into my room at odd hours searching through my things while I’m half asleep. It makes me so mad I just sit in my bed with my hands around my legs and glare or laugh at them, usually sitting on my stash if I’ve got one. Except for my sister, none of them care about me or Jenifer because they’re too busy being obsessed with themselves…like I’m not.

I officially welcome all parents to the fucking 90’s and the wonderful world of drugs where no one is immune, especially your children. The first time I took a puff off a joint I realized that I had been lied to my entire life. Pot doesn’t lower sperm counts. Pot doesn’t give men breasts or make people jump off buildings America! My mom’s an alcoholic but she doesn’t drink? What’s really going on?

I shouldn’t spew at my parents though. If I was my kid I would have kicked my ass from here to Mexico by now. Stealing their money was an impulsive egotistical moment that has only made things worse in a situation none of us are prepared to deal with.

I still feel pretty abandoned with Jen being in and out of the hospital so much, there’s no shortage of selfishness and justification I can tap into to meet myneeds. I scare myself with my newfound capacity to be ruthless.

♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve always liked the way people cheer when an injured sports player gets taken off the field. It invokes that base human instinct to cringe at the thought of our own mortality. The way most of us are wired, we genuinely don’t want to see anyone get hurt or killed. We hear enough news about children dying or fireman being killed while trying to save lives and it’s all the same damn thing. Cheering for a felled sports hero is really just an extension of those emotions. In fact I think it’s one of our most important release mechanisms. We cheer because of all the unpreventable cruelties that life offers to the innocent. When we can witness someone getting hurt and then get up and walk off the field it’s almost fulfilling in a way. A person has accidentally injured themselves for the sake of our entertainment and we cheer them for their sacrifice. It’s the one area where most of our public feelings of dread can be transformed into excited relief in an instant. Our excitement and cheers are fueled by relief, not just for the injured athlete but for ourselves.

I awoke this morning to the smell of plastic pillows in a not uncomfortable bed, in a room that was not familiar to me in the least. It had the smell of institution pillows, in the sort of institution where they give you pillows. I barely remembered how I got here but I instinctively knew that it is a good thing I’m here. The morning grog dissolved quickly enough for me to sum up my surroundings and summarize yesterday’s hell.