10.

Ten years ago, give or take a couple of hours, I woke up and decided to live.

I was at the tail end of yet another binge. My cycle as I reached the end was four days awake, and three days asleep, yet this time, I was well into day six.

I remember clearly the moment I began, and I wanted to remember the moment I stopped. So I wrote this a few years later:

I wondered when I would die.

This wasn’t a new thought. Its repetition was the white noise, the buzz that surrounded my day.

Maybe it was going to be today.

My life had never been a series of wondrous events tied together with congratulations and hope. My greatest skill was finding the gray in every rainbow. And here I sat, at the moment I knew the noise could — would — be silent.

The speed at which my heart beat certainly was promising. As I looked down, I could almost see my heart twitching against my chest.

“Stop already,” I implored my heart. “I’m done.”

I caught a glimpse of the burn scar on my wrist, and touched it as I had thousands of times.

At the age of about ten, I would turn the electric burners on the stove on until they blazed a beautiful red, only to turn them off until they were a dead black.

Off and on. On and off. Hot and cold. Red and black. Sometimes, it was hours until my mom would come into the kitchen. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

As soon as she left, I turned the burner back on. “It wont hurt,” I told myself.

Red hot. Dead black.

You could smell the heat the burners gave off. It was inviting, almost drawing me in. “Even if it does hurt, at least it will be something else to think about.”

I spent most of my life feeling very different. Not in a traditional teen angst way, but in a “I am probably an alien” way. I smelled things others didn’t. Saw things they missed. Heard voices. Saw the grey in the rainbow. I was just unique; I was dissimilar. I was unlike.

I ran my hand over the burner while it was red hot. I could feel the heat warm my hand. I held my hand in place until tears came to my eyes. As I drew my hand back, I turned off the burner watching it darken. As soon as it had gone completed black, taking a breath, I slammed my hand down. The searing sound hit my ears before the putrid smell of burning skin caused my eyes to water. I kept my scream muffled behind a smile.

I took my shirt off to make sure that I could see the moment my heart stopped. It was taking too long. “Make it go faster.”

By that point in my life, happiness was something that happened to other people. I could laugh. I could smile. I just couldn’t believe.

Testing my nostrils, I leaned over the plate and inhaled. The amount of cocaine I used daily had grown to the point where my drug dealer would call to make sure I was alive. When I answered, he was relieved. I hoped to never answer again.

My nostrils barely worked. My brain was cloudy with the Xanax and Valium. My eyes were barely open after six straight days.

“Just stop, goddammit.”

Another memory fought its way through the clouds. The memory of the first time I tried to end my my life.

I was barely two.

My mom tells the story, her voice filled with wonderment and sarcasm.

“He was such a smart child,” she beamed. “He used to find my bobby pins, crawl over to a light outlet, and stick the metal pin into the plug. After a shock, he would pull the pin out of the wall, cry, and do it all over again.”

“I wish I was successful then,” I often muttered wistfully under my breath. “It would have made things so much easier.”

I had about three-quarters of an ounce of cocaine left. A couple packs of cigarettes, and two bottles of vodka chilling in my freezer.

“That should last me through the day. I hope I can finish it before I die.”

For each line I took down, I punished myself by doing two more. I stood up from the couch, still wobbly from the paralysis in my right leg, I stumbled to the kitchen. I rummaged through the cabinets, grabbing every antihistamine and nasal decongestant I could find. “Organic. Good.”

I took a couple drags on my cigarette, and stuck the nasal spray up my nose, and took a practiced inhale. I could barely breathe.

I decided against smoking the cocaine, knowing it would have a limited affect on my current state. I turned towards the refrigerator, welcomed by the word “Retard” I had written across the freezer with magnets.

“Yup.”

Ripping open the freezer, I pulled out the ever present bottle of Grey Goose. Three sharp gulps; two deep breaths and three more gulps cleared my head just enough for my thoughts to stop crashing into each other.

“Shut the fuck up, already,” I said to nobody.

I took a labored breath through my nose. My left nostril was completely closed and was it was painful to the touch.

“Sorry, Lefty. Looks like I am going to cheat on you with the right.”

The familiar refrain, which had become my mantra, started its slow repeat in my skull.

“You are a fucking failure. You cant even kill yourself right.”

“You have tried and tried and tried. But, each time, you go to sleep, you wake up.”

As anger began to swell, my mind began to clear. My focus came back. I stood a bit straighter.

“Not this time. I am done failing at everything.”

I pulled one last time on my cigarette, and threw it in the sink. I briefly wondered how long it would be until someone noticed I was gone. Who would feed my animals? Would my cats eat my face?

I didn’t really care.

Back on the couch, the rhythm of my heart was erratic and rapid.

“Today is the day. Today I finally become a success.”

As I inhaled, I smiled.

It was soon after that moment that I looked at the drugs in front of me and decided to go to sleep. My plan was if I woke up and decided that I wanted to live, I would give up all the drugs. If I wanted to die, I would commit suicide in a much more efficient manner.

Clearly, I chose to live. I packed all the drugs I had in the house into a box, drove to a friend’s house, gave her the box, and then went home. It felt like I sat on a couch for a year, and in that year I apologized to so many people and got right with myself. Well, better with myself.

It has been ten years, and it is easy to look at those ten years and point out all things that would not have happened if I didn’t stop on April 1, 2006.

It’s easy to read this and congratulate me for not dying and being sober.

But thats not what I have learned over the past ten years.

We are all fucked up in our own ways. We assume that everyone else is doing better than us; or at least is more happy. We spend our lives in a constant search mode.

And that sucks.

What have I learned in the last ten years? To walk slower. To listen. To look at the colors next to the grey. To be.

When one is in a constant state of motion, it is impossible to enjoy the now.

Stop and let your fears catch you. You might be surprised at your strength.