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Yeah, anyways, so my roomate tried to commit suicide the Saturday before last, and that was stressful.
I thought about writing about the entire day, and I was going to mislead y'all into thinking that I had been a complete bastard by cheating on my girlfriend with either her sister or Felix and now I was feeling bad about it.
I didn't do that by the way, I just had a couple of idle fantasies that day that I felt guilty about later.
I have no idea why I was trying to write the thing like a suspense novel, that's going to bother me now.
Anyways, I got the call from X-roomate at about a quater til midnight. X-roomate and Roomate are on-again off-again boyfriend and girlfriend, the whole story about how his girlfriend came to live with me is pretty complicated, and involves drugs, corrupt policemen, legal drama of the self-representative variety, sexism, and fleas. It's a story in and of itself.
If those two make it, it'll be the Greatest Love Story Ever Told.
I'm digressing. I got the call, I was at the bars with Felix and friends, I was medium rare drunk. X-roomate is in Charleston, Roomate has taken a lot of pills, and somebody has to take her to the hospital, but I can't tell anyone (Roomate is that kind of girl that other girls love to hate and the people we know would seize on this so fast). I am no longer drunk. I am hesitating, I am telling Felix I have to go, I am hesitating, I am running, I am not wondering why there is no ambulance, I'm not thinking. I am not calling Roomate for fear she would lock me out. It's only a half-mile, but the most direct way is across a torn up "roadway", plus I don't exercise, so it takes me almost five minutes to get to the house, where I run into Roomate coming out of the bathroom, she walks to my car, I'm saying something, she's saying something, I don't know what, but my hazards are on and I'm running redlights. If a police officer decides to come after me I will wave for them to follow and then I'll have an escort--
She doesn't...look like she's dying.
She's sobbing and saying she's sorry.
She feels embarrased to be putting us through so much trouble.
Why wasn't there an ambulance?
Because she didn't want one.
And now the hospital, where the nice lady directs us (me) to fill out a card and I'm back and forth, and now I'm back, and I'm whispering that she took a lot of pills, and she's nodding kindly and pointing to the nurse who's letting us in and Roomate's sitting on the stool and the nurse is asking and she isn't answering so I say what I was told and that is
23 pills of Effexor, at 75 milligrams apiece.
And I am done.
And I have no idea if it's deadly, or even harmful but this is one situation where intentions are very important. And her phone is ringing, and it's her friend, she must have called her, and I am taking it, I am asking what she knows, my first instinct is to keep those In The Know as few as possible, I am telling her, she is on her way, and I am answering questings, and I don't know her birthday, or her home address, I only know her name and phone number, and that she used to cut herself, and must be doing it again, because now there's a cross on her arm, as detailed as a tatoo. And X-roomate's calling me and I'm talking to him and the lady at admissions and then there's her friend but I'm shushing her because I can't handle all four things at once, I and I feel bad about that, but now we're talking but we can't see her yet, so we have to wait and I'm still sweating and breathing hard and the lady tells me to sit down.
Okay.
I need to calm down.
And so we wait.
I forget what we said, I made a weak joke about wearing a 14 year old's shirt (Roomate's little brother, all of 14, is 6'2", and I used to be able to fit in his cast off clothes, but now they're too big for me) which Roomate's friend, Seagreen, laughs at far too loudly. We're both tense.
What just happened? Why am I at the hospital?
But now we can go see her, she's rated herself to guards outside her door. She's got the monitors hooked up, but she seems fine. She's drank about a liter of charcoal, which will neutralize and expel everything in her digestive system. She's joking and doing what everyone says she does best: complain. Work sucks, our house sucks, and school sucks. But not a thing on what the hell happened, and I don't know what to do so I don't press her. Roomate and Seagreen aren't quite chatting it up like it's Friday night in down town Athens, but it's pretty close for being in the ER under Suicide Watch.
I am standing up because my legs hurt, I landed wrong a couple of times and I haven't run like that in years.
Seagreen and I are back and forth between the waiting room and the ER ward. There are various people calling and who need to be called, i.e.: her parents. But not yet. There's a special nurse talking to us about sending Roomate to a mental hospital for a few days, and did any of us have any idea she might do this, and I don't, but Seagreen had some phone conversations with her, and she has a history, and I have nothing useful to say, and I guess Roomate's going to be okay because no one's mentioned anything about her health since the charcoal so I guess that takes care of everything then, right, okay.
That was easy...
The next 7 hours are us waiting with her as she gradually shits out all the charcoal and embedded pills and waits for the van to Augusta. Seagreen has to leave to go to work but I stay until the van comes and then I'm back at Murder Wilkerson and when I walk into her room it's like walking into a dead person's room.
On her desk what I think is her diary and there are pill bottles scattered around. In the Effexor bottle there are seven pills. 23 + 7 =30, and sure enough it's a thirty pill bottle.
She counted them?
She said she scarfed them all down in a moment of heat.
Maybe she did what I did.
There's no note, but I violate her privacy by reading a few pages of her diary, and it was about what I expected, a lot of anger, and things I shouldn't have read, but there's also a drawing of what must be her arm with cuts, one of them cross shaped, smeared with something that you would have to convince me wasn't blood.
There are two glasses of apple juice, both half-drunk.
The fan is going, the light is on, and all the pill bottles are open.
She picked Effexor, the drug that she had fought to get off of 5 months ago, she said it did more harm than good. She spent a lot of time crying and screaming at people because of the withdrawel symptoms. Everyone whispered that she was crazy, and smiled while they did it.
Everyone smiled and snickered.
They aren't bad people, they've just been on the wrong side of Roomate's mouth.
She can cut you down to size.
These people are the ones we can't tell.
Effexor is a capsule, pink, with a purple W on the top half, and 75mg and the bottom. In my mind I have designated it "The Murder Weapon", though no one is dead.
PVC takes Effexor, 3 times as much as Roomate takes.
I told her about this, omitting names, and made her promise never to take too many pills.
X-roomate told me that morning over the phone that he doesn't think she meant to kill herself really, he thinks this was a literal cry for help.
My theory is more radical: I'm not actually sure that she even took the pills.
It's a thought I can't make go away.
But she at least wants people to believe she tried to kill herself, so we should act accordingly, but:
Roomate went back home with her parents for a few days, and came back with them a couple of days ago to move her stuff into the new apartment.
Everything, everyone, seemed normal. Roomate and X-roomate are back in their on-again phase, her parents are smiling and being friendly (they like me).
Did nothing happen? No one seems concerned.
Am reading too much into it? Roomate once said, in her patented maybe-I'm-insulting-you-maybe-I'm-not voice, that "Sean, was like, just born."
Referring, of course, to the fact that there's a lot of things that other people know that I don't, because I sort of raised myself.
Everything's back to normal, I don't understand.
When I put a gun to my head, I needed help, but no one was there.
But she has people.
But maybe they don't understand crazy people like us, maybe they just want things back to normal as fast as they can.
When I spoke to her mom over the phone that morning, she kept saying "This was really unexpected."
Did she think I needed to be convinced?
I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to do now, I guess. She seems fragile now.
I'm not really one of her friends, she doesn't dislike me but I'm not her kind of fun, but pretty much none of her friends know, so now what?
I want to help, but I'm not sure how. Or if I'm overreacting, and don't even need to.
Okay.
I thought about writing about the entire day, and I was going to mislead y'all into thinking that I had been a complete bastard by cheating on my girlfriend with either her sister or Felix and now I was feeling bad about it.
I didn't do that by the way, I just had a couple of idle fantasies that day that I felt guilty about later.
I have no idea why I was trying to write the thing like a suspense novel, that's going to bother me now.
Anyways, I got the call from X-roomate at about a quater til midnight. X-roomate and Roomate are on-again off-again boyfriend and girlfriend, the whole story about how his girlfriend came to live with me is pretty complicated, and involves drugs, corrupt policemen, legal drama of the self-representative variety, sexism, and fleas. It's a story in and of itself.
If those two make it, it'll be the Greatest Love Story Ever Told.
I'm digressing. I got the call, I was at the bars with Felix and friends, I was medium rare drunk. X-roomate is in Charleston, Roomate has taken a lot of pills, and somebody has to take her to the hospital, but I can't tell anyone (Roomate is that kind of girl that other girls love to hate and the people we know would seize on this so fast). I am no longer drunk. I am hesitating, I am telling Felix I have to go, I am hesitating, I am running, I am not wondering why there is no ambulance, I'm not thinking. I am not calling Roomate for fear she would lock me out. It's only a half-mile, but the most direct way is across a torn up "roadway", plus I don't exercise, so it takes me almost five minutes to get to the house, where I run into Roomate coming out of the bathroom, she walks to my car, I'm saying something, she's saying something, I don't know what, but my hazards are on and I'm running redlights. If a police officer decides to come after me I will wave for them to follow and then I'll have an escort--
She doesn't...look like she's dying.
She's sobbing and saying she's sorry.
She feels embarrased to be putting us through so much trouble.
Why wasn't there an ambulance?
Because she didn't want one.
And now the hospital, where the nice lady directs us (me) to fill out a card and I'm back and forth, and now I'm back, and I'm whispering that she took a lot of pills, and she's nodding kindly and pointing to the nurse who's letting us in and Roomate's sitting on the stool and the nurse is asking and she isn't answering so I say what I was told and that is
23 pills of Effexor, at 75 milligrams apiece.
And I am done.
And I have no idea if it's deadly, or even harmful but this is one situation where intentions are very important. And her phone is ringing, and it's her friend, she must have called her, and I am taking it, I am asking what she knows, my first instinct is to keep those In The Know as few as possible, I am telling her, she is on her way, and I am answering questings, and I don't know her birthday, or her home address, I only know her name and phone number, and that she used to cut herself, and must be doing it again, because now there's a cross on her arm, as detailed as a tatoo. And X-roomate's calling me and I'm talking to him and the lady at admissions and then there's her friend but I'm shushing her because I can't handle all four things at once, I and I feel bad about that, but now we're talking but we can't see her yet, so we have to wait and I'm still sweating and breathing hard and the lady tells me to sit down.
Okay.
I need to calm down.
And so we wait.
I forget what we said, I made a weak joke about wearing a 14 year old's shirt (Roomate's little brother, all of 14, is 6'2", and I used to be able to fit in his cast off clothes, but now they're too big for me) which Roomate's friend, Seagreen, laughs at far too loudly. We're both tense.
What just happened? Why am I at the hospital?
But now we can go see her, she's rated herself to guards outside her door. She's got the monitors hooked up, but she seems fine. She's drank about a liter of charcoal, which will neutralize and expel everything in her digestive system. She's joking and doing what everyone says she does best: complain. Work sucks, our house sucks, and school sucks. But not a thing on what the hell happened, and I don't know what to do so I don't press her. Roomate and Seagreen aren't quite chatting it up like it's Friday night in down town Athens, but it's pretty close for being in the ER under Suicide Watch.
I am standing up because my legs hurt, I landed wrong a couple of times and I haven't run like that in years.
Seagreen and I are back and forth between the waiting room and the ER ward. There are various people calling and who need to be called, i.e.: her parents. But not yet. There's a special nurse talking to us about sending Roomate to a mental hospital for a few days, and did any of us have any idea she might do this, and I don't, but Seagreen had some phone conversations with her, and she has a history, and I have nothing useful to say, and I guess Roomate's going to be okay because no one's mentioned anything about her health since the charcoal so I guess that takes care of everything then, right, okay.
That was easy...
The next 7 hours are us waiting with her as she gradually shits out all the charcoal and embedded pills and waits for the van to Augusta. Seagreen has to leave to go to work but I stay until the van comes and then I'm back at Murder Wilkerson and when I walk into her room it's like walking into a dead person's room.
On her desk what I think is her diary and there are pill bottles scattered around. In the Effexor bottle there are seven pills. 23 + 7 =30, and sure enough it's a thirty pill bottle.
She counted them?
She said she scarfed them all down in a moment of heat.
Maybe she did what I did.
There's no note, but I violate her privacy by reading a few pages of her diary, and it was about what I expected, a lot of anger, and things I shouldn't have read, but there's also a drawing of what must be her arm with cuts, one of them cross shaped, smeared with something that you would have to convince me wasn't blood.
There are two glasses of apple juice, both half-drunk.
The fan is going, the light is on, and all the pill bottles are open.
She picked Effexor, the drug that she had fought to get off of 5 months ago, she said it did more harm than good. She spent a lot of time crying and screaming at people because of the withdrawel symptoms. Everyone whispered that she was crazy, and smiled while they did it.
Everyone smiled and snickered.
They aren't bad people, they've just been on the wrong side of Roomate's mouth.
She can cut you down to size.
These people are the ones we can't tell.
Effexor is a capsule, pink, with a purple W on the top half, and 75mg and the bottom. In my mind I have designated it "The Murder Weapon", though no one is dead.
PVC takes Effexor, 3 times as much as Roomate takes.
I told her about this, omitting names, and made her promise never to take too many pills.
X-roomate told me that morning over the phone that he doesn't think she meant to kill herself really, he thinks this was a literal cry for help.
My theory is more radical: I'm not actually sure that she even took the pills.
It's a thought I can't make go away.
But she at least wants people to believe she tried to kill herself, so we should act accordingly, but:
Roomate went back home with her parents for a few days, and came back with them a couple of days ago to move her stuff into the new apartment.
Everything, everyone, seemed normal. Roomate and X-roomate are back in their on-again phase, her parents are smiling and being friendly (they like me).
Did nothing happen? No one seems concerned.
Am reading too much into it? Roomate once said, in her patented maybe-I'm-insulting-you-maybe-I'm-not voice, that "Sean, was like, just born."
Referring, of course, to the fact that there's a lot of things that other people know that I don't, because I sort of raised myself.
Everything's back to normal, I don't understand.
When I put a gun to my head, I needed help, but no one was there.
But she has people.
But maybe they don't understand crazy people like us, maybe they just want things back to normal as fast as they can.
When I spoke to her mom over the phone that morning, she kept saying "This was really unexpected."
Did she think I needed to be convinced?
I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to do now, I guess. She seems fragile now.
I'm not really one of her friends, she doesn't dislike me but I'm not her kind of fun, but pretty much none of her friends know, so now what?
I want to help, but I'm not sure how. Or if I'm overreacting, and don't even need to.
Okay.
posted by Sean at 12:26 PM
3 Comments:
Call me crazy, but I think the above two posts might be spam.
Your roommate's probably going to be okay.
Well, no she's not. She'll most likely struggle with depression, pain, and body issues (just a guess - relating to the cutting) for a really long time.
But, I don't think she's going to kill herself.
You're of course right, in that even if the attempt was "just" a cry for help - it's a cry that needs to be listened to.
Maybe she didn't take the pills at all...
But life can hurt so fucking bad sometimes, can't it?
Howie Mandel: Funny?
Howie Mandel's new Bravo show starts this Thursday. It's called Hidden Howie: The Private Life of a Private Nuisance.
Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you!
I have a tapety site/blog. It pretty much covers tapety related stuff.
Come and check it out if you get time :-)
Does being spammed mean I've hit the big time?
Have I been discovered?
I'm going to leave up the ones I like.
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