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[your-changing-face-blog]

A Step-By-Step Guide on Perfecting the Downward Spiral

I dropped out of college a few days after my 18th birthday. My friend and I had rented a hotel room one state over, and I spent most of the time there sitting fully clothed in the bathtub, picking at the ends of my terrycloth robe. When we came home, he went back to school, and I went to a party down the street. I didn’t know anyone there so I hovered on the edges of conversation, pouring myself drinks in the kitchen and bumming cigarettes from people on the porch. When I was too drunk to stand, I laid down on the carpet next to a boy chugging a bottle of Svedka. He gave me some Adderall and I decided to make him fall in love with me. I don’t know why I picked him.

His name was Mason and he wasn't known for anything good. He had blue eyes and he sold coke to college students. He had a distaste for being sober, so the first time we hung out, we candy flipped. When we had sex I saw a thousand stars on the ceiling behind him. I didn't realize until the next day that he'd bitten through my lip. I got stitches and told people that my retainer cut me.  I fell into a depression that seemed inescapable. I quit my job, drove through New Mexico and Arizona, and slept in Wal-Mart parking lots with my cheek pressed against the glass. When I came home I took a pair of scissors to my waist-length hair and cut it all off.  Mason kept me high so long as I was fucking him, but he was too rough with me. I started finding blood stains in my bras and underwear, and there were bruises polka-dotting my body. I shoved stolen concealer up my sleeves at Safeway and learned how to cover it up. 

When I would tell him to stop-- to please stop-- it was hurting me, he would smile and say "you like it". I just laid there until it was over. There was no use pushing his hands away anymore. Things got more toxic and I left him when he sent me to the hospital. I bleached my hair blonde and started going out again. I went out with three or four boys at once, but I always told them they were the only one. Some of them were too nice, they even tried to save me from myself. 

It wasn't so bad until I met Caleb. On our first date, we went to the Botanic Gardens. On a bench in the corner of the Japanese Gardens, I snorted heroin for the first time. He was even worse to me than Mason. We took a bath together and he held my head underwater, and he liked to play a game where he would put his cigarettes out on my skin. I can't explain why it took so long for me to leave him. Maybe the heroin kept me submissive. Maybe I believed him when he said no one else would want me. I felt so sick all the time that I started drinking bottles of laxatives and nausea medication like soda. Three of my ex-addict friends from high school helped me get clean. One of them stayed the night while I shook, sweat, and cried in bed. That night I thought I was going to die, and it comforted me. Death was synonymous with hope.  The next day, I woke up and went to a Fourth of July barbecue. It was there that I met Andy. He was sweet, with a nice smile. Our first date lasted 24 hours from start to finish. He kissed me in the drug store parking lot and I fell for him right away. For a while, things were perfect. But we had an expiration date. He had just graduated college and was going to work in Sri Lanka for two months before going back home to New York. I wanted to move to Washington State. But we decided that I would go to New York, and things could be perfect again. He said it felt weird to say goodbye, so instead, he said: "I'll see you in 2 months." I walked to my car and he walked back to his apartment. Part of me knew it was over then. I got tired of sleeping alone and started filling my bed again, and in the end I told Andy I couldn’t go to New York with him. I moved back home and started calling my exes. I felt obsolete in my own life and wanted to detach. That’s how I met Max. I wanted something meaningless to fill my Friday night and he happened to be free. But things went wrong somewhere between Christmas and my nineteenth birthday: I fell in love with him. 

One night we were driving to the store and got into a car accident. The guilt ushered in every feeling of self-hatred, of sadness and hate and depression, and I tried to run into traffic. Max took me home after I begged him not to call the police, but the next morning I tried jumping off the roof of our apartment building and he had no choice.

I spent a week in the psychiatric hospital, staring at sad beige walls and writing apology letters to Max in felt-tip marker. We only had an hour of visitation every day, but he showed up without question. I spent most of the hour crying into his shoulder. They let me go and I attempted one more time. Standing in the darkness after an argument that had lasted all day, I stole Max’s X-Acto. He caught me and told me we were over, and that he never wanted to see me again. While packing up my things I pictured myself back in the hospital, only this time alone. I would be the lone patient left in the common room after everyone had gone to visiting hours. There would be no family meeting, no one there to pick me up. The only thing I would write in marker would be the words “FUCK-UP” over and over again. But when I came into the living room Max was crying. I used my thumb to brush away a tear and he said he was just a stupid kid. He thought we were going to grow old together. Heartbroken, I sat with him and cried, and when we were done he held me and kept me whole.

Things are not better yet. Every time I drive, I still imagine the way my steering wheel would glide through my hands if I jerked off of the overpass. I have cuts on my arms that still need the sleeves of a jacket to cover them up. I cry more than I smile, but someday that will change. I have to believe it will. For now, all I have are therapy appointments penciled into my calendar, Max’s arms around me when I sleep, and I watch my cuts get a little more shallow every passing day. This is all I have, and all I can offer is love.