Beautiful Great Terrain
It's the prettiest shit you ever did see
Eight pills. Eight of them on a hundred mid-low-something pounds and four hours ago water-broth vegetable soup. 10cal. You don’t need to know. You don’t care. And I’m going to fucking puke or I’ll have a heart attack or something but right now I’m sitting here shaking and it’s three and I’m thinking “oh, I should sleep” but I can’t. Because I’m shaking. Supposed to take two pills for an obese man over fifty so go fucking figure I guess.
It’s fucking sick. I’ve stopped trying to explain it to people because they don’t get it, just think I’m fucking dumb. Sophi watched me buy them and rolled her eyes. I said I Have To Because For Break, she said Ok But I Don’t Want To Hear A Single Thing About It Ok? Ok. Parents watch the news every night, eleventh hour. Specials on ozempic. I come down night after Christmas. Mom says: Don’t You Dare Even Try I Know You’re Into That Drug Stuff.
Me: Oh No No I Would Never.
And it wasn’t a lie but it was so fucking worse: pacing the childhood room now zipping the bottle into my toiletry case and stuffing that all into the least incriminating inconfuckingspicuous old backpack. I’m scared I’ll die and they’ll find it. I’m scared I’ll live and forget it tomorrow. Might not be the worst thing, but also it would. That would be what kills me, really.
Third hanger to the left, orange bag from seventh grade.
But it’s not an addiction. Gotta make it clear. Racing to tell you. Not addicted. I know that because I didn’t take them for three days so I could enjoy Christmas and I loved every second of it. If I’m addicted to anything honestly it’s not taking them. But I started to see those lines on my stomach fade out just a bit so I had to tonight. Had to take them. Not an addict, a logician. Normally I can just sleep on it too and I’ll wake up a bit nauseous and drink some diet coke or water and then I’m fine. I’m chilling. Not right now, but then. At school. Sitting here I don’t know how I manage it but at school I’m like the great plains in summer: hilless, sunny, still. No–not hilless. I’m such a fucking liar. You run your hands on my ribs and feel the ridges. That I’m proud of. Run my hands down my side, take in my waist and feel that too. What a terrain. Lord, could I fucking die.
Did three hundred arm circles earlier. Saw no difference.
So I’m freaking out. Damn bed is scorching. No, it’s freezing. No, it’s something else, it’s something crazier. I’m going fucking crazy. I didn’t clean my apartment before I came here, straight to Ohio then Orlando International then BWI–no, it doesn’t make sense if you think about it but a forty buck flight’s a forty buck flight and it’s a fucking steal. It was for a friend, anyway, to distract her so she didn’t get back together with her shit boyfriend. And they’re back together now, or nearly. Blame airplane mode. Blame the election. Blame me, I don’t fucking know, blame this preoccupation. These goddamn pants are falling off me. Damn bed is scorching. It’s all so fucking cyclical.
And all I can think is how I don’t read enough books now. I go to school for literature and in spring I go sit on the back field and look out over the hill while I read whatever the fucking philosophy of the week is. I shouldn’t say that. I like it, but I don’t like the conviction. I don’t like the examination of my insides every time class gets heated, examining my insides out when I get too nervous to go to it. All smoke and mirrors and bile. Roommate always said the mirror was warped but now that I’ve got my own place I know it wasn’t. But the hill, the spring, the books, the fluctuation of the weather every ten minutes–that’s the real shit. I’d look out and down, over towards the water and think “If that isn’t the prettiest shit I ever seen.” And then if I was out there enough I would read something for myself, too.
Give me that again. That’s what I really want, but I gotta get it physical first before I internalize anything else, before it blows me up like a balloon. Or fucking blow me, I don’t care. Give me a thigh gap and you can do anything: stick a dick in the space between and lemme ride it like a castrated king kong, like I’ve never seen one before, like I actually want to see one again. This rocky bed’s no hill and the room’s so dark but I can pretend. I’ll fucking pretend. And y’all can pretend to bury me on that pretty little hill and get the biggest-ass casket they have. No. Cremation. I want a fucking cremation. And I’ll pretend in the ground or the air or the urn that I’m not sinking further and settling into a mass in hell, too.
This is the worst of it, I’m thinking. All of this is fucking delusion or delirion or a deathnote but in a few hours I’ll come down. I’ll finish this essay and come down. It’s not being high–really I’ll come back up. Anything but this is high. That’s how I know I’m not addicted is because it feels awful, grass growing unevenly over the plains and the sun burning each blade until it shrivels. Ants building anthills in my intestines. I want it to be over and I’m done. No pills. I won’t take the damn pills again.
Except I will. Probably tomorrow. Today. I’ll remember all this and I will anyway. I’m a weight loss pro in terms of sheer desire and motivation and effort but not really in results. Because I’m fat inside. Inside I think if I let myself win I’d be four hundred pounds which isn’t winning but still. Even grass is edible, so the whole hill metaphor’s all bullshit too–might as well go fucking figure.
Footnote! where I literally only talk about how I enabled paid:
I enabled paid!! And it’s like, I don’t want to ask people to pay to read my writing because that’s weird and maybe capitalistic and evil but rent is going up and if you like poetry and podcast format and my New York Journal (oohhhh) through June and July shorter pieces that I want a paywall on so my parents can’t find them then I’d love if you considered subscribing. Like, that would be so cool to me I’d probably geek out.
Here’s to acknowledging the elephant in the room but not actually interacting with it. I’ll see you all next month! Unless you’re paid, then I’ll see you in like a week.
Much love, R <3