Addiction- Edited on 30th july

I'm floating away. Coasting on a highway of nothingness. It is almost as if someone has sucked away all my thoughts and feelings, bit by bit, leaving nothing but an empty shell. I'm rather like a robot now, incapable of emotion, ambition, anything that made me... human.

“Jesus Teri! You've got to stop this – this madness!”
“Relax Joan. Why're you so stressed out? Here. Take one of these, it helps calm the nerves.”
“That's what I'm worried about, Teri! You've been taking these – these things every hour! Teri, you're addicted to your medication!”

The pills were starting to kick in again and I could feel a wave of nothingness overcome me. My eyes turned cold and I knew that the Teri of old had yet again receded into the safety of the darkness, letting the drug take over.

“If only it was just that Joan.” If only you knew the truth...

I woke up in a pool of blood.

The blood is everywhere, and I'm panicking, because I've never seen so much blood before. There was blood on the sheets, blood on my nightgown and blood encrusted on my inner thighs. For a brief second I thought I was dead.

The most excruciating pain pulled me back into reality. Apparently, I was still very much alive.

I rolled off my bed, crawled to the phone with what little energy I had and dialed for an ambulance. I had just managed to rattle off my address weakly into the receiver before collapsing into a ball on the floor. Shaking as the pain intensified. I remembered thinking 'Oh God, don't let me die” as I numbly closed my eyes.

I was lying on a cold hard surface when I came to.

“I'm dying! Help! I'm dying!” My stomach felt like someone had just taken a hammer to it. My insides felt like a million sharp knives had been shoved into them repeatedly and my head was swimming around in a fog. In all of my pain and hysteria, a lady in white came up close to me and whispered with a menacingly sweet smile, “No darling, you're not dying. If anything is, it's your baby.”

My baby?

The doctors were now telling me in garbled English that I had been pregnant, probably for a few months.

I had been carrying a baby without even knowing - until I lost it.

Then I started to cry. Perhaps I was crying out of shock. Then again, perhaps I was crying out of shame. But I think, deep down, I was crying out of loss. The loss of something so great. Something I had never even known I'd had, but knew with all my heart I had wanted. God was just so unfair. He had given me something so precious, so beautiful, without telling me, and then took it away just as I realised its presence. How could it be?

My baby...

An image of a small bundle with beautiful eyes and a cute button nose filled my mind. Then, as though in some sick horror film, its eyes bulged and blood trickled out of its sockets, down its cheeks. It started to wail, a deafening screech. The blood was just pouring out of everywhere and it started choking on its own blood. And then, as suddenly as it had started wailing, it stopped. It's lifeless head hung heavily to one side, as its blood-drenched eyes stared mercilessly into mine.

I awoke, spewing the contents of my stomach all over the floor. I was hysterical once again. I must have been uncontrollable, because that's when they started giving me Xanax.

It made me numb, it made me forget, and it took away any and all my reasons for crying, for thinking, for even feeling. There was nothing there. Nothing there at all.
No pain, no tears, no baby...

“Teri, I really think you should go see someone.”
“I really don't have an addiction Joan.”
“You're in denial! Face it Teri! You're practically living on those drugs! It's an addiction.”
“The drugs help me live with myself okay?”
“What? Teri, what do you mean?”

I fled and locked myself in the bathroom. Tears filled my eyes as the image of my baby's blood caked face filled my mind yet again. His eyes stared lifelessly into mine. It had been months since I'd last seen it.

Grabbing the bottle, I popped the cap and swallowed two pills.
“Mommy!”
Two more. Just to make it stop.
“Mommy, don't you love me?”
Two more.
“Why did you leave me Mommy?”
My tears clouded my vision as I poured all the pills into my shaking hand and swallowed.

Silence.

“Teri! Oh My God! Teri! Open the door right now! Teri!”


“Mommy, don't you love me?”
“Yes baby I do. Mommy loves you very much! And I'm never leaving you again.”

GO AWAY.

"You're DIFFERENT! You can mix around with people so well! You can talk to the older people and people your age... you can even mix around with those who can't speak english properly. You're different. I'm such an anti-social. I can't talk to anyone or .... " What my brother doesn't realise, is that it took me years to become like this.


I was always the introvert. Always the one that never rocked the boat, that sat in one corner and read her book. That preferred quiet and calm over noise and play. That hated anyone who disturbed her in class, even if they did need to borrow something urgently. It wasn't like I was shy or anything, it was just... I hated being disturbed by irritating immature cry babies (Not that I wasn't one myself, but I suppose at that time I was a bit deluded) But now that I come to think of it, I was one hell of a rude bugger.


But I guess things changed a little. I met Joan, Abigale and some others, and I realised how much I liked talking with them, how wrong I was. And how alone I had been. I think it was that moment that I made up my mind I would change. I'd be a whole new Teri. Unafraid of speaking my mind, of uttering COMPLETE rubbish(no matter how stupid I really thought it was) just for fun, of being a social creature. It took time of course, and even until now, I haven't graduated from that course.


And so now it seems like I am gifted with this 'talent' for socialising. But I'm not. I feel awkward just to do it, I always force myself to. Just like I force myself to speak up and be heard. Over the years I suppose I've built this incredible front that few can see past, that few I guess even want to see past. Because once they do, they lose the 'easy' me.


If truth be told, deep down, I sometimes wish I could crawl back into my tiny hole and just lie there and die a slow horrible death. I sometimes wish I could just revert back to the good old days when people wouldn't be able to hurt my feelings. And sometimes, I just wish I didn't know any of you.


None of these wishes are possible. Because now that I'm here on the other side and I've learnt how much fun it can be, and how much I love it, it would kill me if I had to turn back. So then, it's at times like these when I wonder WHAT IN THE HELL did I change for. I should have just stayed alone, quiet, friendless. Then I wouldn't have to have this front, this pretend, this image. Then I wouldn't have to feel like the world's biggest liar.


I can feel myself losing control. Getting tired. Like cloth fraying at the edges.

I'm scared.

I don't want to be alone.

What am I supposed to do now?