Mother's Little Helper 3.07

*Wrote this in a calm before the storm....*

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I hate the smell of hospitals. I've never met anyone who didn't feel less than repulsion, fear and sometimes utter nausea at the scent of one. Even if clinically clean, with happy attendants dressed in crisp white, the sort of white only those of sound mind wear, it just feels dirty. Like the ailments of those surrounding you will somehow creep into your body, into your thoughts and limbs. That you will step out of there with the liquid stench of sick and death on your footsteps. At the very least, it's not a fun place to spend a day.

A friend of a friend of mine apparently overdosed on pain pills last week. My friend was caught in the emergency room, waiting to hear. There apparently weren't hard drugs involved so no rock n roll suicide in this situation. Only the daily grind of maintaining a stable mood and a disappearing stomach lining to wallpaper the situation. She got out of there once it was apparent that all was relatively ok. And the patient? All he got was a free ride to the hospital and some overdramtics that he thankfully, slept through. You know the sort. When people suck out the trauma nectar from other people and make it their own. Like a mentally ill transubstantiation, without the wine.

Back to the idea of pain pills. I will only ever call them pain pills, and not medication, treatment, therapy, anything else that cushions the situation. This world is rough, and for some it can be absolutely fucking brutal, so who am I to comment on what people need to get though their day. Some like cold turkey, some like warm Prozac. A side of denial and a generous helping of over-analyzing? Maybe. It's really not the idea of taking a pill for a mental condition or situation that arose out of the life lived of the person surrounding the brain that irks me. It's the recent development of the Norm of all this- not for the abused, not for those who survived hellish families, or were abandoned by them when tanks came rolling in, it's the idea that when you don't feel happy, you must now take a pill so you will. The replacement system. People are running, bolting, streaking practically to the drive through drug store to get their medications. They cough when you smoke near them, they worry about those who drink too much but they, in return, step up to the barstool in their bathroom and watch themselves silently get drunk. The sort where there is no imagination, no jovial undertaking, just them – their own bartender for free looking back at them. Like drinking alone.

But let's be honest. Pills, when taken moderately don't make you "drunk". But maybe it's just my love of the double dog dare that asks the question: what would happen if there were no pills? Would they collapse? Would they have a breakdown? Would they commit suicide, hurt themselves or others, would they sleep for days or check out of life while sleepwalking in the same way as the rest of us? The answer is different for everyone I suppose. As I stare down with my high and mighty glare, I did not come here to judge. But only to say, people should start asking themselves why they NEED certain things. And in the tradition of the dare, and in the idea of stubbornness, try to let that black hole inside of you remain, untouched. The hissing will turn into sweet music, or into a good conversation or even if into screaming and yelling, it needs to be looked at and not drugged or put to sleep. The dormant stinking gases of what Hurts needs comforting, and as you wrap your arms around each one with a mother's sweet embrace, they could just happily burn in the fire and rise up from you, and be transformed. No one seems to believe in the idea of transformation anymore. That you can, in fact, BECOME something else. All the way to your core.

The bottom line – I don't think there is one. I tend to go the route of this: We, as human beings, have been around a LONG time. For eons, centuries, nights and days into millennium and endless mornings, we have been disappointed, enslaved, hit, raped, killed, disregarded, enraged, fucked over, unloved and abandoned. Some of us made it to something better, some of us didn't. We should put down the pills and turn to the right or left and not forget that we are here for each other. No pill can save us from ourselves, each other or this beating heart. Neither can a drink, a fix, a binge; neither can pushing away those we love, shutting ourselves down and banishing ourselves to our own private padded room, hurting and hurting so when the good disappears we won't feel it anymore. Saying yes instead of no, saying no instead of yes, tempting ourselves ands trusting that there is more to this breath than our own anxieties, doping ourselves up so we can sleep through life. It's not a hangover, it cannot be slept off. You wake up and it's all still there. Hard, razor sandpaper in your skull, sloughing off the cells of empty promises.

My father once told me that my mother would believe the first person who told her that she was crazy and needed to be put away in a mental hospital. That most people would believe, say, the third of fourth person. But that he and I were different. That the whole world could call us crazy and we'd simply say "na-uh". Perhaps this just makes me a crazy gypsy bitch who comes from a long line of crazy gypsy bitches, but, well, like a scar yours is yours until the end of time, and not belonging to anyone but you. Sipping side effects and glazed eyes poolside while your insides rot and your thoughts dull, dreams reduce into a stock of mushy thoughts, a porridge of average, a cauldron of acceptance. You can have it. I'll dive deep into that black hole, hear the hissing in all my broken places and bind them every morning, heal them and keep diving, curious to know what's to come and knowing that I am the captain gypsy bitch of this ship. And I'll take you with me too. I'll slap you into submission, set you free, love and heal you without losing myself, name every of your fears and let them fly off to a country where they belong, and we'll keep on sailing. I'm strong enough to take you all on. There is no bottom to my eyes, or my heart or the depths otherwise. I know what forever means and I live it every second. It's like living in a cluttered attic room when the house is empty, you don't owe any rent and you can have your run of it. Why stay cooped up in that room? You don't know what's out there, but pack a lunch, some good strong boots, and GO.

And, as long as my heart beats loud, my body wants what it wants, my intangibles keep on the journey and I know the fact that the mystery shouldn't be dissected on the street corner, operating table, therapist's chair, bar or in the rooms we hold inside our secret selves, you won't be seeing me in the Emergency Room anytime soon. That's a promise.