Backwards

This was the year that I moved backwards. This year, I stopped drinking, but I started doing worse things. I gave in to Stockholm Syndrome, and let someone that I loved knock me down in the street. He got beat up by a Mexican street gang, and I forgave him for putting his hands on me. It happened three more times after that. I started rolling over and going to sleep instead of caring. I got a new job, but I slept with my ex-boyfriend, twice. I fell in love with someone I wanted to spend forever with, and when he left me, I threw a heavy tray of ice cubes at his face. I tried to cure my depression, but the panic attacks got stronger. Instead of wanting to die, I cried everyday for a year. 

This year, I went to the doctor more times than my credit card would allow. I took all of the pills that I was supposed to take and nothing happened. I grew a tumor on my shoulder, and when the surgeon cut it out, I wasn't any less scared of dying. I bought Love is a Dog from Hell instead of just reading it in the bookstore, but he still fell out of love with me. When my co-worker called me baby, honey, sweetie at Thanksgiving dinner, I stormed out of his smoke-filled apartment and into the street, swearing and crying and trying to play god. It didn't work. The Klonopin didn't work either. I was still afraid.

I became best friends with someone who hates me, and I let him make me feel small whenever he wanted. I moved back to California, but couldn't connect with any of my friends. New York didn't make me any tougher. It made me dumb. Like I could try my very hardest for the rest of my whole life and still never be the best. Or even close to the best. Or even great. Or even just good. And I certainly didn't feel okay. I threw up almost every morning this year. The mornings that I didn't were a miracle. I threw up last week in front of a guy I haven't even had sex with yet. He kept asking me if I was okay, and I didn't know what to tell him, so I laughed about it instead. My ex remembered the bracelet he bought me at the Brooklyn Flea two years ago, but he didn't think that the sex was as good as it used to be. Whatever test he wanted me to pass, I failed.

This year, I stopped writing my book, or even my essays. I watched a lot of crime shows on television instead. When my dad left my mother, she and I used to stay up late together watching serial killer true crime dramas on Court TV, and I thought, maybe this will fill the same empty spaces that it did back then. I sent my ex-boyfriend topless photos, and he looked at them while his girlfriend was at work. They have a dog together, and a nice life. I have an apartment filled with Star Wars action figures and old ska records. Sometimes, I feel too small for my little studio. I think that feeling comes from years of being shoved underground in a too-warm coat with a bunch of strangers on the subway in Manhattan, but I can't be sure. I don't have any bad men left to write about. And besides, I'd feel too pathetic doing it.

This year, I lost most of my friends because I was weird and sad at parties when I came back from New York. This year, I gained thirty pounds and threw away my favorite jeans. This year, I bought a parking pass for a hundred and thirty dollars so that this guy I was dating could sleep over whenever he wanted, and then we broke up. This year, I couldn't put on a brave face anymore, so I talked about my depression. This year, I learned that people have a very low tolerance level for how often you're allowed to be sad around them. This year, I felt mostly bad, so really, it was just like any other year. But this year, it was different. Because this year, I started thinking about dying and how it's happening to me so slowly that I probably don't even notice it. I started thinking about getting a dog so that maybe I wouldn't feel this way anymore.