Then the panic hit.
It wasn’t from the pill. It was because I’d taken it.
I’d thrown away months of sobriety in a single swallow. Shattered my recovery with one decision I couldn’t take back.
Sweat beaded along my hairline. My breaths came too fast, too shallow, my chest rising and falling like I couldn’t quite catch up with myself. My lips tingled, numb, and pins and needles prickled at the tips of my fingers. I bolted upright and staggered into the bathroom, collapsing over the toilet. A sob tore out of me and echoed around the bowl. I gripped the seat so hard my fingers ached.
I needed to throw up. Needed to shove my fingers down my throat and get the Oxy out before it finished dissolving. It wouldn’t undo everything, but maybe it would blunt the worst of it. Maybe I could claw back some semblance of control. My dignity. My willpower.
The nausea curling in my stomach felt like permission.
But my arm wouldn’t move.
My fingers stayed locked around the porcelain, nails digging in as tears streamed down my face. I sobbed because I couldn’t make myself do it. Couldn’t make myself get rid of the pill I knew was already seeping into my bloodstream.
Because I wanted it.
I wanted the high. The floaty warmth. The relief. I felt like I deserved it. No. Ineededit. After everything that had happened, I needed the world to go quiet for a few hours. I needed to turn my feelings off.
Fuck work. Fuck the band.
Fuck Trix for giving me the pill.
Fuck my brother for being the perfect child.
Fuck my parents for never caring.
Fuck Marc for saying the things he did and meaning every word.
Fuck Bodhi.
Fuck him for trusting me when I didn’t deserve it. For loving me when I had nothing left to give back.
And fuck me most of all.
Fuck me for being broken. For being selfish. For being a waste of space.
In the end, I wasn’t worth loving. I was an addict. And that was all I’d ever be.
I let go of the toilet and lowered myself onto the floor. The cool tiles pressed pleasantly against my overheated skin. I curled onto my side, knees pulled tight to my chest, arms wrapped around myself as I stared at a scuff mark on the side of the bath.
I don’t know how long I stayed there. An hour. Five. Time stopped meaning anything.
Then suddenly, I felt incredible.
Then suddenly, it hit.
Not all at once like a punch. It was like sinking. Like slipping beneath the surface of warm water and realising, with stunned relief, that I didn’t have to fight to stay afloat. My body loosened in slow stages, tension unspooling from my muscles as if invisible hands were untangling me strand by strand. My chest expanded on a deep, unforced breath, the first one all day that didn’t hurt.
The noise vanished. The constant hum in my head, the anxious buzzing, the self-loathing chorus that never shut up, it all faded into something distant and irrelevant. Not gone,exactly, just muted. Padded. Like the world had been wrapped in cotton and gently set aside.
My limbs felt light, buoyant, like gravity had decided I’d carried enough for one lifetime. The ache in my hip dissolved into a dull memory, then into nothing at all. Even the guilt softened, edges blunted until it couldn’t cut me anymore.
I laughed once under my breath, a small, disbelieving sound.
This was it.
This was what I’d been chasing without admitting it. Not chaos or destruction. This quiet, perfect suspension where nothing hurt and nothing mattered and I didn’t have to be anything for anyone.
