No Longer Myself

Whether you want to realize it or not everything you do affects me. When you ignore me for days and even weeks in a row, it hurts. I don’t do well in school and I seclude myself and withdraw from people. I don’t like to hang out with my friends anymore because I’m constantly on the verge of tears and every time they mention nascar or Tennessee or use a fake southern accent to make a joke funny I’m not on the edge anymore. I’ve just jumped right off without a parachute.

They don’t care about you. They ask me what’s wrong and I just say Richard and they know exactly what I’m talking about. “Oh, is he not talking to you again,” damn they got it right on the nose. But they don’t care. “Just forget about him he’s an asshole and he’s too old anyway.” I don’t care if you’re old. It doesn’t make a bit of difference to me. But I can’t hang out with them because they don’t understand.

I can’t be with my friends so I go home. I can’t be around my family so I go upstairs. I turn on my music. Tim McGraw,

“You always had an eye for things that glittered,

but I was far from being made of gold.

I don’t know how but I scraped up the money,

I just never could quite tell you no.

Just like when you were leaving Amarillo,

taking that new job in Tennessee.

I quit mine so-”

Richard lives in Tennessee. And here come the tears. So I turn off the music and turn on the TV. TLC, a wedding story, no. MTV, engaged and underage, no. GSN, to tell the truth, no. TBS, everybody loves- what the fuck?

And the tears keep flowing so I turn off the TV. I grab some candy from my little stash but all that’s left is some chocolate for Sheila. I hate chocolate. Whatever I eat it anyway. That doesn’t help. Now all I’m doing is getting fatter while I’m crying.

What else can I do? There’s still some sleeping pills left. I think about 12 actually. Yes, and that’s exactly what I can do. I grab the bottle of Snapple off my TV where it always sits and I reach under my mattress and grab for the pills. The tears subside a little as I choke them down four at a time, gagging a little bit after each big gulp. All 12 down. Its only 10:00 so I should be fine tomorrow morning. No worries at all as I lay down and wait for these magic little pills to get to work. I close my eyes and after about maybe 15 minutes I stop crying completely.

Half an hour later and I’m flying through the air. I hear an orchestra. Its not playing Beethoven or Mozart. It’s playing music so beautiful, it’s playing music I’ve never heard before, that nobody’s ever heard before. I become entranced by this unconducted orchestra sitting in my bedroom, playing especially for me.

A little while later I become bored by the music and I open my eyes. I stare at the ceiling. It appears to be breathing, like at the doctor’s office when they tell you, “Take a big breath in, and now out, and in…”

What happened to the rice crispies I was just eating?

The walls are undulating as if there are little colonies of