Pain Reliever (586 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: 1.46 on 16 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Gabrielle <Spirits_Song15.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2006-06-19 19:57:44 EDT
This girl had everything. Adopted by respectable, upper-middle-class parents at six months old into a beautiful two-story ranch home, in one of the nicest suburban areas in Jersey. She had an older sister, her own room, and a decent education. She excelled in her early school years. Granted, kids made fun of her. She was moved up from kindergarten into first grade, and preferred to sit under a tree reading while everyone else played Ninja Turtles or gossiped about New Kids on the Block.
She passionately loved animals, but her mother was allergic to everything and afraid of reptiles. Needing something to care for, inspired by nature books, she one day decided that she was very proud of her pet amoeba. During her short stint in kindergarten, she walked into the classroom carrying a Dixie cup with a drop of water in it. "You can't see him, because he's microscopic," the little girl explained patiently to her frazzled teacher. "But he's there. Can I use him for Show and Tell?"
In middle school, as with most socially inept kids, was when things began to go downhill. Try as she would, the girl simply could not fit in with others. Her voice cracked and her tongue froze when she tried to make conversation, or she'd say something either completely inappropriate or way too intelligent - usually the former. She'd cry at nothing. She couldn't speak in class. Disfiguring acne beset her a few years earlier than the other kids, and now she became a real "freak" instead of just "that weird girl." She kept her grades up, but fought constantly with her family, and had no real friends.
At around eleven, her perfect parents decided that she wasn't, and brought her to see a psychologist, then a psychiatrist. These were the first of many mental health doctors she'd be seeing. In eighth grade, it was discovered that she had scoliosis. To keep this from progressing and turning her into a hunchback, her doctor and family made her wear a back brace for a year and a half. It was horribly uncomfortable, didn't allow for much sleep and, since she had to wear it for sixteen hours a day, ate up any time she might have spent trying to be sociable.
Fast-forward to high school. This girl who third-grade teachers promised was "extremely bright," was now the one no one knew, the one no one spoke to, except for a few other outcasts and the occasional curious popular kid. She dressed all in black for the hell of it and failed classes. She became pathologically sexual, and when she wasn't hiding from responsibility under someone's bedsheets, she'd immerse herself in artwork. She'd draw werewolves, dragons, unicorns, anything to make her forget the world for a while. She did this so much that she drew them well. She began to get heavily into music, one of the few things that gave her a feeling of power. She wrote bad poetry, smoked pot and clove cigarettes and hung out in graveyards. She did all the things high-school outcasts normally do, including not bothering to apply to college.
She'll be twenty-three soon, and since graduating from high school hasn't done a whole hell of a lot. She's met a couple of new people. Found herself a decent boyfriend. Been on every psychiactric medication known to man. Has had more dead-end jobs than she can count on one chipped-blue-nailpolished hand. She had wanted to be a veterinarian, a photographer, a wildlife researcher. She had wanted to help cure her mother's fibromayalgia, had wanted to take the pain from her, to make everything better. It's suddenly hit her, just how far she's fallen. She could have done it all. She can barely handle community college work, where at one point she could have made Ivy League. She's on a low dose of antipsychotic for bipolar tendencies, doesn't sleep much, works a temp job at the town courthouse entering traffic tickets into a computer, for ten dollars an hour. Her greatest goal is to at least transfer to state school, maybe as a psychology major. She has little energy and she's losing her beauty. Her spine is straight but her mind is warped. She's rotting here.
She can still feel her dreams. Though she wants to share in the joy of others, she mostly tastes her own regret in every friend who graduates, who goes to art school, who goes to Germany on a student exchange program. She feels it every time she's faced with someone who's made a success of themselves. Anyone who's had the strength and attention span she hasn't, the strength to chase their passions and follow through on their goals. She badly wants to succeed at something, but doesn't know what she can possibly do that would satisfy both the world and, on some level, herself. She dwells and dwells on this every day. Inbetween panic attacks and missing certain someones and text messages and her meaningless job and good times with her loved ones and her boyfriend keeping her sane and fights with her parents, it hits her. She makes a plan she can follow through on. She's finally got it all figured out.
One early summer evening after work, the little girl, a woman now, comes home and greets her family as usual. She waits till dusk, when her parents have both gone out. From the two well-stocked shoe boxes above their glossy white refrigerator, she digs up the economy-sized bottle of Tylenol. She grabs a bottle of Poland Spring water and eats the pills by the handful, chasing them with water, pretending they're ecstasy, telling herself that in 20 minutes she'll be skipping down the streets high as a kite just like that one time in Boston. With shaking hands, she puts everything back exactly the way she found it, the way her mother finally taught her. She's got a note already written. Before it hits, she takes the note and a fist-sized stone, and walks out to a field near her house. When she was a child, she loved this place. Still does. She used to chase rabbits, or fireflies, or just sit for hours under the only tree there and marvel at the world. She goes to that tree and tries to relax. Leaning back against its trunk, she feels a sudden rush of gratitude, and closes her eyes.
When the cops and her parents and the neighbors find her, pinned under the rock next to her is a small piece of notebook-lined journal paper. She's where she always wanted to be, now - a part of the Earth, as close to Nature as one can get.
"I'll tell you how the sun set.
As shadows marched in lines.
And God sent west his rainbows.
A color at a time.
The hills put on their blankets.
The hawk and crow were done.
And as I said softly in twilight.
See you tomorrow, sun.
I sat out in the darkness.
And I felt the dew drops fall.
I watched the moon rise in its place.
I heard the night birds call.
God's world, in perfect order.
In line, one after one.
May I be in accordance.
On my last setting sun."
---Johnny Cash
User Reviews
Submitted by Nie_ein_Engel (user info) at 2006-06-20 17:45:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Righto.
Submitted by Fungah (user info) at 2006-06-20 17:43:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
When the fuck did this become emo-site?
Submitted by Nie_ein_Engel (user info) at 2006-06-20 17:20:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
You already reviewed mine, cunt.
You can take this la dee da uppity crap here and jam it in your shitter, you understand?
You know, even from here, I can still see the coat hanger scar on his forehead... Glad you liked the story, Flak.
And yeah, the house is colonial, guys. Good point. Thanks. And I'll change the tylenol thing to something more believable. Maybe risperdal? I dont think that would kill someone, though. Hm...
Submitted by No.1Scumbag (user info) at 2006-06-20 12:55:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Nice, but just FYI, ranch homes are one story.
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2006-06-20 11:32:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i like the way this was written out. here's a better idea if you ever redo this for something else. tylenol will not kill you. you will throw it up if you take a bottle at once. even the jumbo sized one. actually especially tylenol because it can upset your stomach if taken as directed. if she was on psych meds she probably would use those, those'll kill you with like 10 instead of 100. next time make sure she od's on her psych cocktail.
Submitted by alwayspeach1 (user info) at 2006-06-20 11:12:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by leilani (user info) at 2006-06-20 10:09:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by FlakMonkey (user info) at 2006-06-20 09:53:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Nie_ein_Engel (user info) at 2006-06-20 00:00:14 (#)
Ranking: 0
"I wish my grass was emo, so it would cut itself." --some random IM quote
figured you guys might like that.
More reviews? please? I'll review yours if you review mine, baby.
===
You already reviewed mine, cunt.
You can take this la dee da uppity crap here and jam it in your shitter, you understand?
This wasn't bad.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2006-06-20 09:39:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
really nice
Submitted by PeopleAreStrange (user info) at 2006-06-20 05:43:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
It's a sad state of affairs when in the western world these kind of 'troubles' are deemed worthy of suicide. Compare that to children in Africa who have experienced civil wars and relatives being raped and killed, and famine and all kinds of actual terrible shit. And when you think after all these horrors many of them are able to overcome it, and contrast it to the wealthy, loved and looked after people in the west killing themselves just because of societal 'pressure' it's unbelievable really.
I guess we've got to get the death rate up somehow to battle over-population.
Submitted by Wildman (user info) at 2006-06-20 01:56:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
.
Submitted by deedee (user info) at 2006-06-20 00:05:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Nie_ein_Engel (user info) at 2006-06-20 00:00:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
"I wish my grass was emo, so it would cut itself." --some random IM quote
figured you guys might like that.
More reviews? please? I'll review yours if you review mine, baby.
Submitted by ssspunkstaa (user info) at 2006-06-19 22:16:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Would have been better if it was a mass Emo suicide...
Submitted by dr_weazel (user info) at 2006-06-19 21:50:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Auto "death-to-emo/goth" +2
They should all be dead.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-06-19 20:02:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
The only good emo is a dead emo.