I back out of the stall, my stomach still on edge, heart pounding at my secret mission and head down the hall toward the kitchen. It is blessedly empty and I go to the cabinet that I’m pretty sure I saw the alcohol in last time. It’s there, behind the ramen, and a few bottles of pasta sauce, one slim half-empty bottle of vodka. Who knows how long it’s been sitting here? But I don’t care. I pull it out, careful not to make any noise, cause I don’t want anyone walking past to notice me here. I quickly find a cup that appears semi-clean and rinse it with my fingertips under the faucet. Then I pour myself a very large shot.
I’m draining it down the back of my throat, and it’s burning and I want choke and cough. I’ve positioned myself facing the door in case someone should come in and catch me, when Jared appears out of thin air at the doorway. Fuck, I thought I’d have some notice if someone was coming! Startled, I fumble the cup down on the counter and move to stand in front of it so he won’t see it. But he’s already seen me and what I was doing and walks toward me with a questioning, sort of wondering look on his face.
“What are you doing in here?” he asks, coming up to me to peek around my shoulder at the half-full glass of vodka on the counter behind me and I realize with a start that I’m a complete idiot. I left the bottle on the counter right next to me, there’s no claiming this is water. My mind is racing. What do I say to him?! What can I say about secret drinking? Secret drinking is supposed to be just that, secret. I’m an idiot! I should have taken it in the bathroom with me to down it in private. That’s where I’m supposed to be right now, not here being caught by Jared basically free-basing a full glass of pure vodka. I don’t speak for so long that he just looks at me.
“Why are you drinking that?” he asks again, and still I don’t speak. I’m caught. What can I say? Finally I speak.
“I needed to drink more before we go anywhere,” I say. It’s lame. It’s all I’ve got.
“Why? There will be plenty of alcohol there, Victoria.” he says with a small smile and I feel my stomach plummet. Now he’s going to escort me outside and into a waiting car and it will be the end of me. It’s like I’m being socially arrested. Hello, Officer. Damn. And I’m still not drunk enough. I’ve had enough to officially help me feel extra sick. I feel terrible. I’m sweating now and I can feel it in my hair line and under my arms. My hands feel clammy and my pulse is beating like a drum. I can’t go. No. No. No.
“I can’t go with you,” I say finally because there is nothing else to say.
“What is wrong, Victoria, you don’t look very good,” he says and I sag. Yes, I’m sick. Clearly that’s my problem, right?
“Yeah I feel sick,” I say and he looks at me again, serious, wheels turning and I can tell he’s feeling me out, he’s figured something out about me. I’ve been sick too much lately. Too sick to visit him, too sick to go to the movies, too sick to have dinner at Ian’s apartment, excuses galore for everything he wants to do. I’ve used up my excuses.
“You’ve been sick a lot lately, what’s going on?” he says and I feel like bolting. I need to leave here. I am going to be sick all over his shoes. I am going to cry or breakdown. I’m losing it while standing in front of him. I’m trembling from head to foot, knowing that soon he will find out the truth and soon he will leave me, laughing. I’ve got to go.
I start to walk out of the room and he grabs my arm.
“Why are you drinking like that in secret? Why are you doing that if you feel sick? Why are you leaving? Victoria this doesn’t make any sense.”
I halt and turn. Tears are forming in my traitor eyes. I’ve got my free arm grasped tightly about my middle because it hurts terribly and I can tell he thinks I look kind of hysterical. I can feel myself breaking. I’m very nearly shattering like my glass of vodka dropped on the floor. I can almost watch it happening outside myself, see myself and how I appear to him. Upset. Something is clearly wrong.
“What’s wrong, Vic, you can tell me,” he says and I begin to wonder. What if I did tell him the truth? What if I just blurted it out right now? No I can’t. I cannot. I seal my mouth shut and then open it again into a fake smile that I hope he will buy. I’m cornered. I must go through with it. I must get into the waiting car and allow the officer to lead me to my social death.
“Ok, let’s go,” I say with tense brightness. He’s not buying it. Please Jared, there’s a sale in aisle one on Crazy Victoria, buy one get one free. You know you want it. He’s still not buying it. Fuck!
“Seriously, what is wrong? Did something happen?” he asks, all seriousness, eyes boring into mine. I look away because it’s easier to lie that way.
“Nothing happened. There’s nothing going on.” Now I start to get angry. Maybe anger will cover up my lies and make them sound better? “Let’s just go, or else I’m going home,” I say.
“Victoria, what the fuck?!” he finally says in a harsh tight angry voice. Low, deadly low. I’ve heard this voice before.
“What the fuck, Jared,” I say half-heartedly, not sure where this is going. What can I say to lead him astray?
My stomach is still aching something fierce and I feel the bile rising in my throat at the thought of getting into that car, and everything looks fuzzy and blurry. I need that damn alcohol on the counter over there. I need it like an alcoholic. I imagine myself zinging that glass into my hand from across the room, mentally. I can already feel it, like it’s in my hand, like the panic has been murdered beneath 17 shots. God…Am I am alcoholic? I am…except that I don’t really enjoy alcohol. I only need it to feel calm, to erase the real Victoria. But here’s the thing…I can’t start acting the slut or distant or like I want to get drugged and drunk out of my mind and expect to keep him. I imagine his ex-girlfriend drinking, snorting coke, smoking grass, taking X and then cheating on him. He won’t like it. He just won’t.
Ok, I’ll tell him. I’ll lay it on the line right now and see what happens. He can make his choice. Choose the drunk drugged out chick or the crazy one. Whichever he wants. Spin the wheel, win a prize. Some fuckin prize.
“Here’s the thing, Jared,” I begin, noting his blazing eyes, knowing that I can’t push him any further. But before I can continue Andy walks into the room, startling me, causing Jared to look over at him. My chance has been lost. Damn. I was going to tell him. Really I was. I wasn’t going to chicken out at the last minute and somehow, magically come up with a really nice doozy of a lie. Or was I? It’s impossible to know what I would have done.
“Ready to go?” Andy asks and Jared looks at me.
“Yup, let’s go,” I say with another fake brittle smile. Let’s go Mr. Officer, why don’t you put on those cuffs and actually restrain me even more. I need to be humiliated. I deserve this shit for even imagining that I could handle it. Corporal Punishment.
I follow Jared’s tense back outside and I can tell that he’s still not satisfied with our encounter. What must he be thinking? He walks into the kitchen to find his girlfriend of a month, alone, chugging a full glass of vodka at a party. What does that mean? Is she an alcoholic? What other reason could there be? I’m sure it makes no sense to him.
Now the car is in sight and I realize I need to go to the bathroom again. But I just went and I can’t really have to go pee again right? No. If I had to go again it would mean something else. Something socially unmentionable.
Wow, if I’m lucky perhaps I can convince Jared that not only do I have a massive secret drinking problem, but I am also bulimic too. Awesome! All the things I am not, simply to hide the one thing I am.
Ok, I’m focusing on me again, nothing new, and I’m sick, dead sick. My stomach is slamming and sloshing and the stomach acid is climbing and I’m sweating and burning up and the world has been left behind. Everything is gauzy and ethereal, but not in a pleasant way, in a terrifying way. The car doors are open now and they want me to get in. It’s like fighting a black hole, a social dragging unpleasant sucking black hole. But I fight it. I can’t do it. I can’t. I’m f
ull on panic mind fucked. I can’t!!!!!!
I just stand there. I’m frozen. Jared sits down and he expects me to sit next to him. My muscles won’t cooperate. Can’t do it. I can’t forcefully put myself into a situation that will mean certain utter social destruction. No!!!
Jared looks at me, eyebrows up, questioning. I know my eyes must be huge as saucers and my feet are telling me to run away and my belly is telling me that it needs to make a white porcelain deposit and…I…I…run away. Run away. Can you fuckin believe this girl? I’m around the building now and I throw up in the bushes. Heaving and heaving and it’s burning my throat, the alcohol coming back up to haunt me. I straighten up just in time to see Jared come around the corner. Oh fuck. Cornered, dying animal. Terrified. Wide-eyed.
“Victoria, what is wrong?” he asks again and this time I will tell him. I have to. I have to tell someone or I will die. It’s been too long. This terrible burden. Ten years. I start to cry, loud wracking sobs. He shakes me a bit and I wake up enough to finally blurt out…
“I have a problem.”
“A drinking problem? An eating disorder?” he asks and I can see that his face is sincere. Maybe he won’t laugh. “It’s okay, Victoria, please just tell me. I care about you. I want to help you.”
“I can’t...really explain it. It makes…no sense. You wouldn’t understand,” I say, gasping for breath around the tears.
“Wait a minute, let me tell them to go on ahead and you can tell me everything,” he says, gripping my shoulder for a moment. I nod and he walks off to tell them. Meanwhile, I sit down on the freezing ground. Instantly the cold seeps in. And I’m so fucking tired, I no longer care. Life is over. If he rejects me, as he is bound to do, I might as well end it all. Life is too hard. I give up. I’m done. He’s bound to reject me and I will tell him the truth.
“Ok, tell me,” he says, coming up to me again, pulling me up off the ground. My body is limp. Limp with the realization that I risk everything to tell him. The panic is gone, replaced by cold resignation.
“Fine. I have this problem where I feel all this irrational fear about going places, or doing things or even social situations. I can’t control it. It makes me physically sick when I’m faced with a situation I don’t want to deal with.”
“You mean like going to that party?” he asks and I can’t really read what his face is saying. He’s serious. I don’t see any mocking or glazed eyes, not yet. Just him trying to understand. Perhaps so he can mock me once he fully gets it.
“Yes, like going to that party. I can’t ride in cars with other people. I’d feel trapped. If I got sick in that situation it wouldn’t be pleasant. It would be embarrassing,” I continue on. I’m stating facts now, maybe they are facts about someone else? I wish.
“What happens when you get faced with a situation?” he asks, again, rather clinical.
“My heart starts to beat really fast, I get hot, the world seems unreal, my thoughts race, I shake and shiver and I get physically sick, like throw up sick and worse,” I say, cringing with these last words. “I drink to forget all that shit, the unpleasant thoughts and sensations.”
Jared looks at me for a moment. Eyes on mine, face completely sincere and serious. Then he pulls me in and hugs me, hard. I can hear the beating of his heart in my ear, pressed up against his chest. His voice rumbles.
“You have panic attacks,” he says simply. I start at those words. Panic Attacks. Panic Attacks. Simple. Just two words. They sound terribly right. “It’s okay,” he says, rubbing my back, squeezing me and I relax in his arms. “Don’t cry,” he says and I try to control my sobbing.
I pull back for a moment and look at him. “What does it mean? What’s wrong with me?”
“To put it simply, some of the chemicals in your brain don’t work correctly triggering the fight or flight response, and on top of that you’ve learned to be afraid of situations that remind you of your first attack and you make up new fears. It’s not your fault.”
“How do you know about it?”
“One of my cousins has panic attack disorder. Andy and I grew up with her and we noticed something was going on. She hid it, like you, but eventually it came out and she got help for it.”
“Help, what help?”
“She went to therapy and took medication and now she’s a lot better. But it was really hard on her for a while. She explained it to me once and it sounds a lot like what’s been happening with you. How long has this been going on Victoria?”
“Since I was eight years old.”
“Jesus Christ. Poor girl,” he says, pulling me toward him again, into another bear hug. Finally he murmurs, “Listen, I just want you to know that I want to be there for you.” I nod dumbly and let him lead me to his car. All I can think is, he knows, he understands. It’s okay.
May 10, 2005
A little sip, medicinally speaking
There’s this party at the frat tonight. End of semester celebration. Huge bash with all my friends and Jared. And I want to go. I need to go. But I can’t leave my house. I can’t. I want to. I need to, but I feel horrific. Body sick, thoughts racing, I’m totally fucked up.
I’m sitting on my bed in my room feeling like absolute hell on earth staring at my water bottle on the floor in the middle of the room. My stomach clenches, sloshing like I have the flu and I want to run to the bathroom. But I won’t let myself. I stare hard at the water bottle, it’s half full and calling to me. Drink me and you can be normal. Drink and you can go out and have fun. You’ll feel like shit tomorrow, but it won’t matter because you got out of the house tonight. Do it, bitch. Give in, you drunk slut. You know you want to. You know you’ll do it in the end, so stop stalling.
I get up off my bed, sit down crossed legged on the floor and touch the bottle with shaking fingertips. I’m stone cold sober right now and as close to not able to function normally as I have ever been in my entire life. Near breaking, and quivering so hard I can’t think straight. My thoughts are rushing, imagining every terrible thing that could happen to me tonight, every embarrassment, every trapped situation that could occur. But I can’t let anyone know I feel this horrible. I must go to this party. I must appear normal. Everyone expects me to be there and it doesn’t matter that Jared knows because no one else does. Plus I don’t want him to learn any more about how fucked up I am. I still want to try to hide the extent of my crazy. I splash the vodka back and forth in the bottle. Slosh, slosh, drink. Do it. My stomach clenches ever tighter, like a knobby-knuckled fist connecting with muscle, thud, tight, tight, sick. I can’t drink and drive. I can’t. I shouldn’t. I must.
I pick it up, take a long swig, screw the lid on quickly and drop it as if it burned my fingertips. Just a little sip, just enough to get me out the door, medicinally speaking. But after a few minutes of waiting, jittering, I feel nothing. My first swig is not enough to stop the thoughts of fear, not enough to calm my shaking sick-ass body. I take another long sip and then another in quick succession. That should be enough. It should be. But it isn’t. Goddamn it!! I take a few more and then one more for good measure. Then I wait. Finally the trembling and stomach clench ease a bit and I feel confident enough to walk down the stairs and out the front door.
In the car I’m on pins and needles. I must drive as sober as possible. But I’m actually kind of excited now. Normal, sexy, not sober Victoria is way more fun. I wish I could be her all the fucking time. She can’t wait to see her friends. She can’t wait to dance. She can’t wait to smoke pot, drink beer and fuck her boyfriend’s brains out. She’s wicked cool. Drinking and driving like some kind of dumb betch.
My driving seems fine to me and soon I’m on campus and parked. Ready for the shit show, ready to see Jared and party my brains out. I’m leaving my car in B lot overnight because I can’t park at Jared’s without getting a ticket. He’s meeting me outside the MUB and then we’re off to his place for some pre-game and then finally to the frat for the party of the year. Speaking of pre-game, I grab my bag
from the passenger’s side and pull out my water bottle. Just a few more sips.
The party is fun, so much so, that I’m blacked out for about half of it. Dancing, smoking pot, guzzling beer, hanging with Hannah, Samantha, Ian, Andy, and Jared and I’m so disgustingly happy to be out, and damn worried about starting to feel panicked again that I am way overdoing the alcohol. I’m trashed, out of my mind, stupid, ridiculous. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.
Before I know what’s happening, it’s late and I’ve sobered a bit. Jared thinks I should go with him to his apartment, but Hannah wants me to go with her to her place. I can’t decide what to do. I really just want to go home to sleep in my bed. I can’t wake up somewhere else. The idea, even when wasted is scaring the shit out of me. I need to be home when this hangover hits cause it’s gonna be killer. I need to be home to deal with my fucked up panic brain, I can’t be somewhere else where I might reveal my crazy to someone. And driving while intoxicated doesn’t seem as farfetched to me right now. I can do it, I’m not that drunk. But I can’t tell anyone, so I tell Jared I’m going with Hannah and I tell Hannah I’m going with Jared and soon I’m out on the street, walking back to my car in the dark. Alone. God, what a fuckin liar!!
I’m walking fast, through the darkness, past the MUB, almost breaking into a drunken stumble run and finally my door handle is under my fingertips and my shaking fingers are trying to wiggle the key into the door. It won’t work. I try another key, wiggling it around until it finally slips in and I’m inside with doors locked. Now I start the engine and put on my head lights. Things seem a bit swimmy before my eyes. Watery, blurry and the car when it starts to move startles me, not too much on the gas, betch. Ok, I can do this. Very, very careful, Victoria, I say to myself, easing out of the parking lot, driving slowly away from campus. Soon I’ve left Dunham and am feeling more confident, taking all the back roads I know. I glance at the clock, 4:32 am. Suddenly, I try to remember driving for the past 15 minutes. I can’t remember any of it. I can’t remember parts of the night.
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