Red Underpants

2008-11-09T17:51:00.005-05:00

“Wassup?” Chris asked me as he took a seat casually by the side of the bed. It was as if we had been friends for ages and there was nothing wrong with the fact that this really cute stranger was sitting there while I rested in a tiny bed wearing nothing but my red underwear and a pink and black bra. “I’m not matching,” I thought to myself. I wonder if he would look at me weird if I told him that confidential detail about myself, then laughed when I realized that considering the situation I was in, my underwear wouldn’t be the only thing eventually put on display. I wasn’t ready to tell him yet; to tell him what as really up, how I had crash landed myself here, how up until a few hours ago, I didn’t even think I was going to be here at all. It didn’t seem right. Everything had this sort of dream like state to it. Was I dreaming? Or was it just the after effects of too many solo slumber parties with nothing but a bottle of vodka to pierce that insane numbness.

I looked deviously around the room. How the hell I had gotten here? How could a straight A student, seemingly happy and full of excitement, get to where I was now? I felt like the stone statue of a fallen angel one would see in a cemetery. They see it, they see me in that bed totally void of dignity and clothing, then immediately there is some sort of guilt, some sort of unexplainable sadness. The way everyone kept walking by, looking at me, the way my mom sat in the corner, bugged eyed from crying, it all made me feel like a bulldozer should just come, knock me down and end this sorry state of affairs. Maybe that had already happened; maybe that’s why I was here. It was time to fix me, call in the architect and mold a beautiful Aphrodite from this crumbling block of despair.

I was cold, but Chris was a mind reader in his blue scrubs, handing me 2 white night gowns with blue and pink splotches on them. I looked closely at them and after they stopped swirling, I noticed that they were flowers, tiny little flowers clustered together in groups of 3 or 4. There were an un-even amount of pink and blues, the blue flowers bigger, calling for more attention than the pink ones, more intricately designed as well, but failing as a whole because it never stood still long enough to be properly examined and admired. Fuck it, I’m cold and I don’t care. I thanked the magician man after he told me that the second gown would cover the back of my butt, which was exposed in all its shame and glory. I couldn’t shake the hilarious irony of the phrase “Liar Liar Pants on Fire” that was now echoing in the back of my mind. I had been lying about so many random idiocracies through out the year and now on the day when I finally come clean, I was wearing fire engine red underwear. What is it with hospitals and their triumphant endeavor in constructing an awkward, self-reflecting environment?

“I’m not wearing any pants.” I finally admitted to Chris, smiling like the lunatic I really was and pointing towards the obvious spot that my pants would be had I been wearing them (but nope, as originally stated, totally pants-less like a frail pre-mature crying crack baby). Chris had a sense of humor and chuckled to himself as he handed me another blanket to warm my shivering, flimsy, tired body. Our hands touched for a brief second and that pure, innocent contact that I hadn’t felt in well over a year seemed to expose every emotion. We looked at each other. I knew my mocha brown mirrors reflected my contrite, pathetic soul could no longer hide the pain and guilt that I had bottled up for years. How could I run away from it any further? How could I continue to live this way?

The unavoidable truth, I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t handle that constant feeling of falling and failing. I was drowning like the drug-addicted alcoholic of Alice in Terrorland. The madness wouldn’t stop and I kept descending farther and farther down the bunny hole. The faces around me blurred and slurred like a sickly carousel ride with that eerie music that is supposed to be fun and happy but fails miserably, and you are left feeling as if you are in some sort of crazy freak show where in the end, you are shackled to a dart board and some one eyed, deformed, twitching, paraplegic is aiming meat cleavers at your face and you can’t scream out for assistance, you can’t scream out to end this insanity because you are gagging on your own blood; your teeth have sliced right through your tongue after months and months of biting that small moist pink muscle to refrain from stating the obvious faults you were making in your life. I had to get help. Bottom line is this: after the initial titillation of being on an insane acid trip in the back seat of a fast moving car, reality sets in. Everything progresses way too rapidly for you to gain any sense of control, you have no idea what to do but ask to hold your friend’s hand and hope that you don’t fall flat on your ass because once again, you are lacking in the pants department.

That’s when it hits me, like a football to the nose as you walk out into your backyard. You have to find that one thing, anything to just laugh at in your life. Without it you’ll end up totally miserable in a hospital bed, naked, cold and alone. There are so many poop mounds out there and you are going to step on a few, so why not look at your shoe and laugh at it.

Finally with a defeated, exhausted, acquiescent voice, I admit the truth that I have been holding onto with claw clenched fists. It was as if a part of me was dying and slowly fading away; this dark hand was unfolding, unearthing this pure, feeble light that I thought I had lost a long time ago. I looked back at Chris as he repeated the question once again. “Hey, Aimee, wassup?” Here it goes, “Last night I tried to commit suicide”

2007-10-02T16:54:00.000-04:00

On a beautiful autumn day....

Blue Jays + Butterflies + Cigarette? = Very Odd Combination

Parts Of Me

Red Underpants