Page 32 of Fight or Flight

Feeling the heavy weight of depression looming over me, I turn Christy’s head in case she needs to throw up again and then get to my room, which looks as if a hurricane swept through it. I toss the jumble of clean and dirty clothes from my bed and crawl under the comforter.

Even though my body is tired, and I know sleep would be the best remedy, I end up staring at the ceiling for what feels like forever. My eyes are bleary but dry, even though I feel like I could cry forever.

What happened to me? How did I get to this point? And with the way things are going with Christy lately, will I be saying goodbye to another friend again?

Is Christy even my friend?

We met during my stay in the psych ward, and she was in the same therapy group as me—a group for suicidal kids with mental illnesses. Christy has a borderline personality disorder. She was also struggling with anorexia for years before deciding to take her life by swallowing a bunch of pills.

At first, we didn’t seem to see eye to eye because she hated my constant smile and the way I used to hide my pain behind the sweet girl exterior. Christy called me a phony many times during our sessions together.

With time, we became friends, but because the doctors didn’t want us to become too dependent on each other, they signed us up to different groups. It didn’t change much. We still saw each other during our spare time and other group activities, and it was Christy who waited for me outside the hospital when I was discharged.

We decided to give up on school or going back to our families and move to Chicago together, where Christy’s cousin Riley had a job waiting for both of us at the strip club. As soon as we rented the place and I sweated out the last remnants of the meds that they pumped me with for over six months, I started to struggle big time. I didn’t sleep, I didn’t eat, and I barely got out of bed.

That’s when Christy decided to introduce me to my new way of living.

“Look, you struggle with highs and lows, yeah? So, listen, there won’t be any lows if the highs never end, right?” Christy waved a little plastic bag in front of my face, her eyes already glassy from snorting a line not a minute before.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Chris. What if I get addicted?” I bit my lip with worry. I’ve never done drugs before. I didn’t even like to smoke weed with Jenny because it made me feel even worse.

Christy snorted and rolled her eyes at me. “According to the wacko doctors, you’re supposed to take meds until your last breath, Claire. Do you think that’s any different? It’s all the same stuff, but the pills had the fun part removed from them, so what’s the point?”

And that’s how it began.

It was working great for a year or so. We’ve been having fun together. Working at the club, with me as the bartender and Christy as a stripper. We used what we made for rent, bought minimal amounts of food, and used the rest to splurge on more cocaine. After work, we would close ourselves in the apartment and watch movies, play video games, or have a dance-off. I thought life couldn’t be any better.

But then the highs began to waver. Last shorter. It was harder to reach that blissful state for hours to come. And the lows were getting even lower.

It was then that Christy started to mix things up, looking for something stronger, more potent, and cheaper. I didn’t like it and was very vocal about that.

With time, our friendship fell off the rails completely. Christy only being civil whenever she’s high nowadays.

She started to lose weight, and after a while, even some of her teeth fell out. It took one look from Sergio and Nico at her pathetic state to throw her from the club like she was nothing.

It’s been downhill from that point on. And there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m in it myself, even though I do always find excuses for the way I’ve been living. I need it to survive, and after all, I’m nowhere near Christy’s state.

But am I really better than her? The answer is no.

When I can no longer keep my eyes open, after hours of boiling in my miserable thoughts and oncoming memories, I feel myself getting dragged to sleep.

As always, the last thing that I see are the eyes of a boy who held my heart in the palm of his hand, only to crush it into tiny pieces. He still holds the shards, and I worry he’ll never let them go, so they could never be sewed back together.

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