***
Rating: PG-13, or R depending on your language limitations.
Summary: Someone once told me that an obsession, or an addiction was simply something to distract the mind from pain. It's probably true. But it's not like I'm going to admit that to anyone aloud. It's like admitting I need help.
Nicotine---
When you drop down everything's all the
same
Saccharine caffeine nicotine gum
Yeah it tastes sweet but it's not for long
And I just think you thought it would be
When you're looking for truth on the cover of a magazine
---
Sometimes I wake up in the mornings and think that I'm not living, I'm just alive; I'm not feeling, I just feel. And it's just another cup of coffee because I've fallen into the habit of drinking it, and it's just another missed breakfast because it's not, and has never been, in my routine. I think sometimes, the things I do must have had a reason. All things begin with a reason.
It's just.
I can't remember what they may have been for the life of me.
So I sit on the train and watch everything pass me by. Sometimes morning paper headlines glare at me, and the people sitting behind them pretend they're not sitting on a public train with all sorts of people; some of them shafted from reality, but most trying to ignore each other in the vain hope of keeping their routine intact. Sometimes I see an old man sleeping in a doorway and I forget that he must have been someone once. Now he's just another object in the scenery. Sometimes I see a mother tugging at a child, who spits, his screams meaning to discomfort you, but I walk past, politely ignoring someone else's problem.
Most of the time, I don't feel anything. I just sort of drift into "unthink", where everything goes by quickly and nothing is colourful. Most days I walk to work like this from the train station with a disaffected look drawn in lines across my face.
Even the different patients, with their character-specific cases begin to blur out of focus. A pregnant teenager with crack-junkie parents, or a senile old man who doesn't understand anymore that his wife won't wake up, or a mother who accidentally left a bottle of bleach out where her son could reach it. It all adds up to the same thing, however hard you try.
Sometimes you save 'em, sometimes you don't.
And that's what you're working for – the 50% chance that your patients live. Of course, sometimes it's not always 50/50, but what I mean is that they can only either live or die.
Maybe I only try to tell myself I don't care at all. Maybe this disaffected attitude I paint all over myself is just a weak shell to protect myself from the liability of human emotions. Maybe that's why I find it so hard to let myself think with the heart rather than the mind. I just need to be in control.
Control-freak. It echoes around my head like an airborne disease. Control-freak. Control-freak. But I don't think I'm tough enough to admit it aloud.
What is everything adding up to? What am I going to achieve with this?
I don't know. I really don't know.
***
Footsteps jog up the stairs and come to a stop when they reach the top of the roof. I don't bother turning around. I just hold my lit cigarette delicately between my fingers and breathe in the nicotine, feeling like I'm smoking myself up and away with each breath. Up somewhere where I can't be hurt by anyone or anything. And a lit cigarette is good conversation even if no one else is.
Oxygen isn't enough. It's the nicotine I crave. Scientists say oxygen gives you life; without it we wouldn't survive. Well, it certainly allows you to live. Whether you do or not isn't up to the oxygen.
I think it's stupid how those who can, will smoke, or drink, or take drugs, or anything really, that's not good for their health. Whilst somewhere, someone feeling the consequences of their excess habits in life, lies in a hospital, hooked up to tubes to keep them alive. And we all know what happens, -the organ failures, the respiratory diseases… we all know that we're killing ourselves slowly. And I think that secretly, we enjoy it. It's as if we feel like we can control our deaths, in some minute way. I mean, who doesn't worry about dying within the next second, and not doing everything they've ever wanted to do? And all those who say they live their lives as if there was no tomorrow are liars. If you lived your life like there was no tomorrow, you might blow all your money, or spend the night in a brothel, or something. You'd probably do something akin to the guys in Armageddon, the night before they were shot up into space to save the world.
"It's… cold up here." His voice shakes me from my reverie. I still don't turn and there's a long silence as he comes to stand beside me. I don't need to turn to know who it is. We look over the edge and watch the little ants go about their day-to-day lives in cars they have built, and I wonder, how many of them could honestly say they were happy. I can't honestly say I haven't thought of jumping. Just to interrupt their mundane, routine lives. Well, that reason and a whole lot of others.
Maybe one day I could start up an EA – Empty Anonymous – club where all the people who've continually fucked up their lives as if they couldn't help from doing so, like a habit, an addiction, because they haven't ever known anything else, could go and wallow in their emptiness. We could ask questions like, 'What is the meaning of life?' and compete with each other in 'saddest story of the week'. But it seems to me in all my years as an addict, attending those AA meetings, the only thing I've ever learnt is that no matter what people say to make you feel good, everyone's just clinging on to each other, not believing what they're saying but hoping that they help anyway.
This silence might mean something. You know, like in movies, where two people who cannot be together – and yet cannot be apart – stand next to each other, looking at the same thing, wanting to say something, but not knowing what. Maybe like that. But I really don't know.
There's an ache throbbing in my gut to just explode, but that may not be caused by his presence. (Well, maybe.) He just makes me feel awed. I mean, it's crazy how someone can continually smell so good, come rain, wind or shine. Today he smells citrus-sy. It could keep me thinking for the rest of my life as to why we're not together. But then I'd probably get close to finding the answer and promptly die, a 95-year-old spinster half-eaten away at by moths, locked away in some scummy cupboard-apartment.
Timing, they tell me, it's all to do with the timing! I even tell myself that, but I'm not sure up to what extent I believe that.
I hate the thoughts silence can induce. One of the things I've learnt in my life is that thinking too much about your life -especially if you're naturally pessimistic- can make you want to kill yourself. So I speak aloud to him, but quietly, just to avoid thinking and I can almost feel him straining to hear me.
"My brother calls my cigarettes 'bitch sticks,' you know."
He relaxes a little and smiles to himself. I can see him do it out of the corner of my eye.
"Well, it certainly hasn't been scientifically proved that there are links between crankiness and nicotine anywhere, but in your case…" I laugh a dry cough, which reminds me to get some more coffee. He's cute when he's being funny. Insulting, but funny. And I know he's joking. Most of the time.
"Cranky is a quaint way to put it."
"Cranky is the nice way to put it."
"Thanks a lot!" I feign an indignant punch at him, all the while smiling. I hate that he can make me smile. It really sucks.
A beeping interrupts, and he checks his pager.
"I've got to go," he says, seeking to meet my eyes like it's important, "You okay?"
I nod, my head tilting slightly to the side, inadvertently questioning him. He starts walking back towards the stairs, but before he disappears, he says half-joking, half-seriously (at least, I think),
"Don't jump. We'd miss you and your bitch stick breaks." I smile a little and turn back, stumping out my cigarette and placing my hands on the ledge. I lean my entire upper half over, and exert a little pressure on my hands so that my feet lift off the ground. My heart beats quicker as I entertain the thought of falling, but then I drop back.
I wouldn't jump. I wouldn't do something as stupid as that.
***
Any reviews or comments or plots/ideas (!!) would be very much appreciated. *looks at Tori* Help! allstar88uk@yahoo.co.uk
