style="font-size:15px;"> I was lying on my bed when all of a sudden it hit me
I wanted to close my eyes, but every time I did it made me more dizzy
It felt like I was literally spiraling out of control
Like I was falling out of the world and had nothing to hold
I felt glued to my bed, as if my eyes were the only thing that could move
I was paralyzed and did not know what to do
I glanced at my closet doors and between the two of them, I thought I saw a face
I looked away and looked back to see another man in his place
Then there were two of them, hiding in my room and watching me
I knew they weren’t real, but what if they could be?
I tried to ignore them, tried to tell myself I was on drugs, it wasn’t real
But I started getting more and more scared of how their hands around my throat would feel
What if they had been there all along and their timing happened to be perfect?
If I died here, in my room, high and alone, who would even suspect
That it wasn’t my doing, but instead that of two criminals with brilliant minds?
Was I exactly the target they had been trying to find?
I couldn’t bear to be killed right then and there, but I didn’t know where to go
I went to the backyard to smoke a cigarette, my mom was there too because early evening was the coolest time of the day to mow
I watched her go back and forth across the yard, begging myself not to say anything about the pills I had taken
But my reality had been placed inside of a glass jar and then shaken
And dumped back out into the world in a jumbled up mess
I wasn’t a body or a person, but a confused, high, paranoid ball of stress
The colors of the world didn’t look right, nothing was familiar
I had never been high like this, nothing even similar
I tried to relax into it, but I was far too terrified
So when my mom sat down to join me in a smoke, I told her I thought I was about to die
She was pissed that I had stolen from her
She didn’t know what else to do other than supervise me while I suffered
She made me follow her into the bathroom and lay on the floor while she took a bath
I couldn't tell if I was overdosing or having a severe panic attack
She didn’t want to take me to the hospital because she was convinced I would be fine
And because if she had, I would have definitely been sent back to the hospital for the sixth time
I couldn’t bear the thought of going back to my mental health jail
Not when I had gotten out nearly two months early because I’d convinced the staff I had been doing so well
For hours, it seemed, I seized on the tile floors
My mom told me to remember this moment, remember this fear, and use it as another reason to understand that I can’t do drugs anymore
I thought that maybe the dream I’d had the night before was a premonition of dying today
She told me that no God would ever wish for me to die this way
And that even she had strange dreams when she took a single pill, as was prescribed,
I was just hallucinating when I heard a voice telling me I should die.
After her bath we had to go to Quik-Trip to buy more cigarettes
And I saw some shit there that I will never forget
My mom gave me a stern talking to before she went inside: speak to no one, do not leave the car, she would be in and out
As she walked through the doors, a young man and woman were walking out
They were speaking as if they knew each other while they walked back to their cars that had been parked at the gas pumps
He grabbed her arm and lead her over to his van, in my throat there was a massive lump
Because as she turned and started to walk away, he grabbed her and threw her into the open door
The car was already moving as he hopped in too and pushed her to the floor
I watched the car speed out of the parking lot and started dialing 9-11
My mom got back in our car and I told her I had seen a man kidnap someone
She took my phone out of my hand before I could make the call
She reminded me I was on drugs and that I probably hadn’t seen anything at all.
I told her it looked real and that that girl had looked so scared, what if I was the only one who knew what happened?
They did it so fast, no one else saw it. At least, nobody else had reacted
But I wasn’t allowed to because if any police officers were to see me and speak to me they would immediately recognize that I was on something
They’d be pissed off that I was getting them worried about nothing
I was nothing more than a fifteen year old high out of their mind, why would they listen to me anyway?
Did I want to call the police so they could throw me into rehab straight away?
Or somehow get the two of us into trouble with the law?
There was no way to justify, prove, or accept what I saw.
So instead we drove home and my mom said we would check the news tomorrow and see if anything had been reported
But for now, all we could do was wait for me to come down because I needed to get my shit sorted
We spent the rest of the night chain-smoking together while I cried
But when I told my mom that I didn’t want to do drugs ever again, I lied.
A week or two later, I got caught stealing pills from the grocery store she worked at
They fell out of my pants in the parking lot, my sister pointed them out, and oh boy, I have never seen my mom look so mad.
She
