A/N If you get who Marla is, you know what I've been reading a lot of. I suggest you check out his site, great writing tips...but I will give quadruple bonus points if you know Marla. Octople if you've read the book and not just seen the movie. But you can definitly tell what's inspireed me recently. I guess I don't own Marla, and I don't own Garret, they both belong to their respective gods.
I don't want to be here, it's something that I'm going to just to get them off my back. I've poured bottles down the drain; I've put on a grand show of making it look like I'm "dealing my problem." But I really don't care. There's this thing, a medical condition, well, psychiatric condition to be exact-anhedonism-where you don't feel any pleasure from the normal things that give normal people pleasure. They say it happens a lot in those who just kick an addiction, where they don't know what it's like to live without the pleasure of whatever it was that they used. She talked about it in a roundabout way. Marla. That was her name. And she started talking about how it was as if she'd been riding the great big huge extreme roller coasters every day for months on end and now she wasn't. And her friends kept trying to drag her onto the small ones and it just felt blah, and her friends can't see why she finds it so bland when they have fun doing such normal things. And she knows why, because she experienced so much more, something so much better than that.
I know how she feels. Jordan keeps trying to convince me to find the pleasure in the little things in life. You don't know what pleasure is until you're comfortably numb to the world, with nothing to care about but the pleasure. You can't love the small roller coasters after you've known the big ones. Sure, it's a bit of a thrill, but Runaway Train feels like nothing after you've been on Scream Machine. You don't know what it's like to feel good without the rush anymore, without being numb anymore.
But I make it look like I care. Like I give a damn about what I'm doing. I put on the theatrics with pouring the bottle down the drain in front of everybody. They don't know that it was very quickly replaced. I go to the meetings and make it look like I give a damn about recovery. I act out the twelve steps and make it look like I care, but I really don't. And she knows. Not Jordan, Marla. At least that's what she says her name is, I don't know, I don't trust any of these people to give their real names. I don't. I go to the out of the way meetings where no one's going to see me, and even if they do, they know I have good reason for lying. She goes too. She knows I'm faking.
She stares at me with calculation in her eyes. She reminds me of something out of some Japanese animation cartoon that you see when you decide to flip through the channels at three in the morning because you can't sleep. Because they don't want you to have your fun, have your pleasure. She stares at me with those big round brown eyes and sees right through the facade I put on. The eyebrows narrow every time I speak and she just stares at me, always silent, but always watching. She knows I don't mean a damn word of what I say. I don't think she means any of her words either.
But the only reason why I haven't touched a drop yet is that I want to spite her. Yeah, I don't mean any of it, but I'm not going to drink to prove her right that it's all just an act and I don't want to get fixed. I don't want to get fixed. There's nothing wrong with me, not really. Or rather, there's something wrong and the booze fixed it, there's nothing else that can. Except therapy. And booze is cheaper and healthier for me than months upon months with Howard. I think everything I say in these things is bullshit, bullshit about what causes me to drink ad all that good crap. I just make everything I say up, it's all lies. And she knows it, she sees right through me. And it's about the only thing that keeps me from actually going back into a bottle. I don't want to give her the satisfaction of knowing everything about this is a lie.