100 Unfortunate Days

by Crowe, Penelope

  Day 68

  Today I don’t feel like killing myself as much as I have the past week. I still do not want to do anything. I do not want to have a conversation because it is too much trouble to think.

  If Lyme is a bio-weapon, it is perfect. It might not be as awe-inspiring as the flash and burn of bombs or as quick-acting as anthrax—but even though you survive, you will never be the same.

  You have become the walking dead like the brain-eating tribe in New Guinea that gets Kuru. Maybe it is worse than being a zombie because the world still expects you to go about your business because you do not have blood oozing from your pores or staring bone-white eyes. But you have worms in your brain and you are responding to their needs and wants. They thrive on sugar and you have an almost irresistible urge for cake and sweets. They come to life in the spring—their offspring hatch again in your brain and you see sparkling lights as you are driving and you have to pull over because you can’t see through them. You feel dull, like you have had a hangover for months and months and then you want to kill yourself because you don’t even have enough energy to blow dry your hair or take care of your son or let the dog out in the middle of the night.

  Some days are better than others. Some days you don’t just want to kill yourself—you want to kill somebody else. Maybe they seem so happy and they are giving you advice on being happy. Really? That’s what I should do? I should work out and eat better? Okay, I’ll try that—for the 7,000 time, I’ll try that, because that is what happens—you relapse and there is nothing you can do about it. Do everything right and God will love you because you worship him. So you do everything right and you obey him. It is so far from the truth it makes me cry.

  Like I said before—he doesn’t give a fuck about you. And if he is picking his favorites and blessing them with big cars and health and beautiful children and forsaking others, then he is an asshole. They don’t deserve things any more than you do, or I do, or maybe I should say we don’t deserve these things any less. I would be very happy with a brain I could control a little. I could pray and pray for that and absolutely nothing would happen. Like when my friend was sixteen and getting sicker and sicker day by day and I prayed harder and harder day by day.

  Please let her get better.

  She died.

  Dick.

  Day 69

  I read somewhere that the word hope is just as bad as any of the other four-letter words. According to this article, having hope was tantamount to digging your own grave because you are hoping and hoping and waiting and watching the world go by, but the hope is the thing that is giving you inertia and preventing you from moving. So when you lose the hope and actually get off your ass and do something—that is when the good things start to happen.

  But what if you actually lose hope? I lost it and now I have one day that fades into the next. There are days where I know I am impotent to do anything good, where no one is really happy to see me and the time just bleeds into night and then into the next day. And it hurts to smile more than it hurts to be alone. I also read that if you force yourself to smile then your body releases endorphins which make you begin to feel much better. What if your body forgot how to produce endorphins and the only way you can get them is by eating the cookies the worms want and then you get so fat that you can’t get up off the chair? That would be par for the course. Or maybe you can take one of the endless drugs on the market.

  Slightly depressed? Here you go—this could work in conjunction with your other anti-depressant. But just be careful and go to your doctor if you feel weak, or shaky, your eyes turn yellow, or if you start to pee blood and your thoughts of suicide and murder worsen. Please stop taking the product immediately if you develop leukemia or tuberculosis or your skin bubbles and bleeds and your eyes pop out. Okay. I’ll make sure I stop if I get cancer.

  You don’t need to suffer from depression anymore!

  Day 70

  A is for Apple—a fruity red treat

  B’s for Bipolar—and thoughts of red meat

  C is for Cavern—the one your friend fell in

  D is for Devil— the hell that you dwell in

  E is for Everest—and all those who died there

  F is for Fame—what they want when they try there

  G is for Gasp—you can’t get enough air

  H is for Heaven—don’t think you’ll go there

  I is for Incest—in love with your brother

  J is for Jerk-off—hands under the cover

  K is for Killer—the one that awaits you

  L is for Lover—your married one hates you

  M is for Mary—who I hate less than God

  N is for Nothing—no lightning or rod

  O is for Oven—for roasting for basting

  P is for Poison—use it all, no sense wasting

  Q is for Queen—what I am of the world

  S is for Snake—who’s my King and is curled

  Round the T in the Totem that sits in my garden

  Cursing U and your children and watching them harden

  Into Vicious and Wandering X-cons with no souls

  And You open a Zoo filled with ferrets and trolls.

  Day 71

  I have collected pens since I was little. Magic Markers—partially because of the beautiful colors and partially because of the name. Some of them were scented to match their color. Pencils that felt good when you held them in your hand. Pencils that felt good when you wrote with them at a certain angle. The mechanical pencils all my friends in school wanted. A set of four retractable and spring-loaded pens in girl colors—pink, purple, light-blue and light-green. They had gold swirls on the outside—I won them in third grade during an auction in class—I spent a dollar—which was a lot.

  I stole a gigantic pen the size of my forearm out of a girl’s desk and put it in my locker in the tin foil box, but she found out it was missing and I eventually gave it back. I have an Agatha Christie pen that is black with a white gold snake with ruby eyes for a clip. I asked for it for my birthday. I watched my grandfather steal a pack of felt-tipped pens from the corner store for me—I did not say anything. I have traded pens I got to sign the check at a restaurant with a pen that I had in my purse because I liked the pen in the check folder better.

  An old silver pen I own writes on its own if I hold it a certain way. I will leave a penny on the ground if I see one but I will pick up a pen. I ask what kind of pen someone is using and say that I like it very much with the hopes they will give it to me. Green ink does not feel good to write with. Some kids at school bought the awesome multi-colored pens that had several retractable tips. Usually they were blue, black, green and red.

  Day 72

  Bad habits are just easy habits. Biting your fingernails is simple—they are attached to you. When you stop a bad habit, it gets replaced with another. Nail biting changes to hair twirling, or eating too much, or collecting cats. And overeating feels good too. So, let’s say you stop all your visible bad habits. You don’t chew the skin on your fingers, you don’t snack all day, you quit smoking and you don’t pull out your eyelashes or pop your zits. So now what…you look so good because you lost weight and your hands are healing—but now you watch porn. How fun! It’s harmless. Or you start tapping your feet because you are a nervous wreck all the time. Maybe you start yelling at your husband and kids, or feeling depressed. So you have to find some kind of replacement. And oh dear, you will…

  Day 73

  My boyfriend was in jail and he took pills to keep himself awake at night so he would not get raped. He only had to go on the weekends and he figured he could stay awake for a few nights at a time. He made a small slit in the tongue of his sneaker and hid the drugs there that he would have to take to prevent sleep. I never loved him and I wrote letters to him that said I loved him and he poured soda in my lap while we were driving because I disagreed with him and I made him get out of my car.

  I hope he is dead.

  Day 74

  I did not t
ell anyone at work that I was dating a co-worker. I liked it to be a secret, and I did not care very much when one of my friends thought it was terrible that I’d kept this from her. Before I dated him, I liked him and I wanted to fuck him. I had the room right next to him at the company Christmas party and I listened to him fucking his girlfriend through the wall. It sounded like they had an alright time—but it would not have sounded that way if I was fucking him.

  If he was fucking me he would have been far more interested. He may have even made some noise or said something like, “You like that, do you like that?” The headboard would band against the wall, and the person in my room would get hit by the picture hanging over their head. They would have to bang on the wall and say shut up, or maybe quietly listen.

  He would kiss me all night long and tell me he loved me with his mouth pressed really close to my ear, and he would bite me and it would hurt and then I would cry out and he would kiss where it hurt. He would ask if I was thirsty and after I fell asleep he would cover me because I would fall asleep naked and he would know that eventually I would get cold. He would not be hungry for days because he loved me so much. He would pray for me before he went to sleep at night and he would never kiss another.

  Day 75

  How many pieces of jewelry with birthstones do you have? Take them all out and put one on at night right before you go to sleep, because all gems have a life in them and if you wear the wrong one and it could hurt you. Wear it to bed and remember your dreams. If you do not have a dream you are fine, unless someone tells you that you were sleepwalking or you screamed in your sleep—then that is not the stone for you.

  Although opals are beautiful, even if you love them, you probably should not wear them to bed because the stone is lit from within by the devil. It will also take some of your energy to keep it glowing and bright. Wear it now and then but do not leave it on always or you will wither. Rubies are good to wear, especially in the winter, and especially with yellow gold.

  Day 76

  I think you can change the way you taste. I believe fruit was created sweet and delicious for this reason. I think we should eat a lot of it and we will taste sweet too. Eat fruit for a whole day, or two days—nothing but fruit and then go down on each other.

  Day 77

  I don’t think I believe in love anymore or maybe I am incapable of love. I really don’t want any relationships—I just want to be admired or known for something and left alone. Maybe I would surprise myself and do well with someone who I am madly in love with and who can be madly in love with me—but that is not what I have. I have a relatively poor semblance of a marriage. There is nothing to sink your teeth into.

  There are no conversations that go beyond sports or goofy stories. I used to feel things and believe in rapture and joy. Now I don’t. I feel sorry for kids who are just getting into relationships—they have no idea. Hormones are everything. Your body finds someone it can reproduce with and then all you can think of for months and months is wrapping your legs around that person and swallowing them up. Then your hormones decline a bit, and if you are lucky you chose a decent person and you can be happy together and be friends and love to be with each other. Or you can come out of your pheromone fog and realize you picked a great one for a pretty baby, but a bad one to love.

  As for me, maybe I can’t love honestly. Maybe I am too needy and my expectations were so high that my relationships were doomed from the start. So now my personal guardian angel is getting worn out—or maybe it has been worn out for some time and this is why I’m having such a hard time. It’s funny to think angels actually exist. And if they do, they may have personalities just like we humans do. Some people must get really good ones and they help the person with their potential and keep them out of trouble and are always alert. But what if you get one like me, relatively sickly and depressed, and quite incapable of doing a good job because you are too tied up in yourself?

  Supposedly angels have a hierarchy—seraphim, cherubim and so on. Some are higher ranked than others. What happens to the people who get the lowliest of angels? Were those all the people in the World Trade Centers on 9/11? What about the women who get raped? How about all the people across the world who are starving to death right now—or being beaten by their husbands, or tortured by a harsh government? Is it because they are forsaken, or do their angels suck? I can’t understand how life can be beautiful…if you have any answers or insight, please contact me…

  Day 78

  I am twenty-two days away from publishing this and I wonder who will read it. I wonder who will connect with this and if anyone will understand it at all. I have decided to write it under a pseudonym, because even though most of this is information just flowed through my mind onto the keys in a blathering, spurting fit, some of it is close to true, and I do not want to hurt anyone or have to explain myself. If I did I could not be honest and I could not write anymore and I would like to continue.

  Over the past few days I have thought of the names I could use for my new birth certificate, my new author name. I started thinking of names on graves that are kind of funny, like Frank N. Stein—not that I would use that—but the inspiration is there. I used to wish I had a twin and I could do anything I wanted to her. For instance, I could cut her hair and see what she looked like because she would not care because she belonged to me. This is kind of the same thing. I wish I could do this without being myself, yet still get the credit for it. This is day seventy-eight of one hundred unfortunate days.

  Day 79

  I like porn where there is bondage. I don’t want to see anyone truly hurt or injured, but I love the domination and submission aspect of the whole thing. I like it when the man acts like he loves her, yet is still going to punish her. I love to see kissing on the mouth, but only if there is real chemistry—not just senseless domination with the poor girl sad and gasping for breath.

  Day 80

  There is the nothing sadder than being rejected.

  Day 81

  Your own personal and specially chosen demons watch you like a cat. They know your every weakness and eat you up from the inside out. Whatever is hard for you, they will make harder. If you enjoy something that is bad for you, they will make you love it and crave it. They will make you think if you don’t have that one perfect thing you will die and that’s why you shouldn’t have it. Because after all, it is the only thing that really makes you happy.

  Demons blind you against what is right and make you not really care about anything after a while. You will be able to make excuses for yourself for just about anything. If there is a hole in you—that is the perfect place for them. If there is a crack in you, this is where they get in. Doubts? Doubts are like a playground for them because they use them in endless ways. They can take one doubt and turn it into dozens. The dozens turn into hundreds. Nothing will ever seem clear again.

  Demons make it appear that nothing is black and white. In fact, everything will fade to the same dull, moss-covered shade of grey, and even if you want the blackest night to help cover and protect you, it will not come. The grey will permeate everything you see and you will begin to send your demons onto others without knowing it. You will see other people as bad and intolerable. You will know they are beyond help—when actually, it is you. You won’t be able to think of anything but yourself.

  The good thing is, you won’t be afraid anymore—not afraid like you used to be—like when you were a kid when fear blazed in your stomach and you could feel the adrenaline pump in your veins because you knew something was after you and you also knew you had to get away before it was too late. When you did make it up the cellar stairs, you were exuberant and felt happy for hours. You told everyone what happened.

  You escaped the boogie man. But now it is too late and you are not scared anymore. Because the demons are in you and they are part of you now. Now the only thing you are afraid of is forgetting how to smile. They make you tired and bored and vicious—and you don’t really care. So how do you ge
t out of this? Every once in a while you feel a glimmer of hope, but it doesn’t last long because you have too many other things to worry about (like how your kids won’t talk to you, and how your husband is mean and calls you names). Or you feel sick again, and just how long can one single day last. You forget how to keep the demons from running your life. So they take over and run you for as long as they can.

  Day 82

  What do you do when you realize they are here? That you have been surrounded for years? You fight and do all the things you are supposed to do. The simple things. The things you have not been doing because they seemed ridiculous, like cooking dinner for your family, talking to your kids without telling them everything they are doing wrong. You believe in yourself and stop telling yourself on a regular basis what an asshole you are.

  It’s so hard to stifle the voice because it’s the voice of something dark, something black and sticky. So you hit bottom and realize there are two ways to go, and the choices are simple: you can go down the road you’re on and smell the ashes burning behind you as you continue, or you can fight. And it is going to be a fight alright, a terrible and beautiful fight. But don’t look too far into it because it may make you crazy. Only look at what is going on now because too much focus on the future or the past somehow turns on the witchcraft and magic and brings them back again.