End Tay

It's always unexpected. One minute I'm on top of the world, I can do anything, follow my passions, multi-tasking, taking on new jobs, making new friends, I can do it all. My brain is whirring so fast and I'm positively exhilarated. Feet firmly on the ground, but I'm flying.

The next is stasis. I'm trapped. Stuck within my own inability to function. A lump on a log. I am a human blob on the face of the planet. A waste of space.

The ebb and flow of my mood is inconvenient, to say the least. Caffeine brings me up, makes me alert, full of energy, and ready to take on the world. Over-eating slowly immerses me into a coma of self-loathing and numbness, my brain over-loaded with serotonin.

The uppers make my mind explode with fireworks - pretty, fiery, explosive. Happiness in all its colours. Valium brings me down, makes the world move more slowly - I'm wading through life like I'm up to my eyeballs in pool.

I don't even know what I want anymore. It used to be happiness; now, sometimes all I crave is clarity. Respite from the fogginess that permeates my existence. More recently I've thought wistfully of death. Lusted after it. The quiet. The peace. But I know it's not the answer.

Popping a few friends into my mouth, I swallow breakfast. I can function fairly normally off of ecstasy, and it's a great way to start the morning. I feel alive.

I've lost 20 pounds since starting this deadly regimen. My clothes hang on me like my body is a coat hanger. My hair comes out more quickly than I'd like to admit. But my stomach is flat as a board (concave sometimes) and I'm managing to get everything done. I've never been so creative. My art is prospering - my professors are noticing, and the feedback is good. They're talking about art galleries. On a good day I listen, and nod enthusiastically (yet modestly). Other days I'm a typical artist; completely out of it, immersed in my work.

Jason (my boyfriend) is supportive, but not in the way you would think. He likes 'em thin, and he is a child of the 80's at heart. He shares drugs with me, we do them together. Instead of roses he brings me acid. What a sweetheart. We trip out together, and watch the colours of a sunset bleed into the trees below. We watch the trees dance in all the light.

I stop eating. It's not intentional. I'm just so busy, and really, what with all the appetite suppressants I'm ingesting, it's not surprising. When I can't get real uppers I combine pseudoephedrine (a decongestant in cold pills) with coffee, and I feel pretty ok. I consume liquids and pills; food is incidental, serendipitous, or the result of the munchies on the rare occasion that I smoke pot. Sometimes my roommate slips me a vitamin pill. She's a sweetheart, but I can't help but think: What's the point? No pill can undo the damage I've done.

I'm careful though. I never use needles - I don't want to bother speeding up this process by catching AIDS or a festering wound that turns into gangrene. That doesn't sound like my idea of a good time. Cocaine, now that sounds like a good time. It feels clean, and it doesn't leave much of a mess, except for when I sneeze blood.

Jason's a tool, and when he drinks we have fights that are high volume, high velocity. It always ends with some E and some intensely hard make-up sex. Rough. Like I want him to beat the love into me. Fierce. Make me feel something, even if it hurts.