The Pocket-Size Savior

Open your eyes, the sunset is procrastinating and we have another hour to spend. The sun is standing still and I’ve made a compromise with it; an extra hour for my eyes. After all, the sun always wanted to see catastrophic lifestyles. The trees shake from side to side, pounded by the heavy gust of winds telling us to move on. An extra hour to stare at the sky and take note of the blueness. An extra hour to take in the warmth before nightfall, when we become sinister.

The mountains are trembling and dancing with a monotone singing voice. They watch us from their high peaks, watch us through the condensed clouds. The grass blades slowly dig into the bottom of our feet, tickling us with each step. Flowers are growing quicker than we lose our innocence, and their petals watch our every move. The raindrops fall on our foreheads, gently sliding down wrinkles and crashing into our lips.

I’m barefoot and the grass blades are digging into my feet, giving me a sensation I haven’t felt in months. The sun rays are brushing up against my back, like two caring hands comforting a friend. The warmth of the sun is warming me up like an asphalt driveway during a summer afternoon. My walk is slow, yet elegant. My touch is warm, yet inhuman.

My eyes are wide, like the headlights of a moving car. I haven’t slept in two days; sleep is becoming a hidden myth to me that I will never again experience. Insomnia moved in at the beginning of the week and he’s already pressuring me into his routines. Insomnia is my roommate. We stay in the same room, sharing the oxygen and inhaling each others’ habits. I lose interest in sleeping, he becomes an alcoholic and drug addict.

I close my eyes and I see myself as a child, coloring a picture of a pirate and smiling. I reopen my eyes, only to shut them again like curtains at the neighborhood theater. I’m at my fourteenth birthday party with my friends and Dallas just fell off his chair. Everyone erupting in laughter, like the communist domino theory. I try thinking of the moments in my life when I was happy, but everything shuts off after the age of fourteen, like a domestic light switch. It’s as if after my fourteenth birthday, Happiness crossed the highway and got run over by every car going over the speed of sixty-five mph. It crawls to the side of the highway, takes its last breath and dies, never to be seen again.

I remember the first time I took a sip of alcohol; it was during the week I bought a one-way ticket to Hell. Monday came and I already felt as if my heart was facing a shotgun and being blown away. Millions of pieces, too little to pick up. Nothing was going right in my life, even the cereal in the mornings was always soggy . My friends were ignoring me, my parents were fighting, and I wanted to just fall off a cliff into a stream of water and sail away. By Wednesday afternoon, I was a mute to everyone around me and my room transformed into my own personal jail cell, with the key in my hands.

My parents were away on a business trip and the alcohol was in the wooden, burgundy-stained cabinets, unlocked and ready to take over my life with each indulgent sip. I took out everything I saw, even the ones with names I couldn’t pronounce. Lining them up on the coffee table covered with magazines, I took a meditated glance at all the alcohol in front of me. I sat on the sofa in the living room, leaned my head back, and took my first sip.

I drank until numbness ruled over my body, like a psychotic patient in an asylum being injected with a tranquilizer. I took sips of everything. I’m a traveler seeing water after being trapped in Mojave desert for six weeks. It burned my insides, as if lava were being poured down a funnel and straight down my throat. It felt so good though, being able to lose track of all the things that were tearing me apart. It was my fix and my habit for the next eight years.

The first time I was hospitalized was the first time I felt I had accomplished something. I took several hits of LSD and drank half a bottle of vodka. My surroundings changed, as if a painter kept changing his mind and my room was his canvas. I was laying inside a clam and an octopus was at my desk sharpening my pencils to thin, sharp points. My bedroom transfixed into an aquarium and I had gills on the side of my neck. The water impending against my cheek and lessening my vision. I saw a grizzly bear sitting at the end of my bed, with his legs crossed, reading a Chinese newspaper. After two minutes of this illusion, I blacked out. I woke up in a hospital bed inhaling the smell of the deceased. I woke with my parents by my side, crying, and telling me they loved me.

I’ve been hospitalized four times since that instance for overdoses, suicidal attempts, eating disorders, and everything else you can do to harm yourself. I’ve stabbed myself in the leg with a knife found in the kitchen of my parent’s house. I’ve woken up on the side of a street with my pants off and my head laying in a pillow of vomit. I’ve sniffed coke off toilets and taken shots of heroine with used hospital needles. I’m not your prince. I’m not your savior. I’m not your mentor. I’m a walking ghost in a world where everything is a blur and everyone suffers.

It’s a Sunday afternoon and I have an hour till the sun sets. I’m wearing ripped jeans and a white t-shirt, both recently taken out of the laundry and smelling fresh as a field of sunflowers (or so the detergent bottle claims). I want my clothes to appear clean when they find my body; stainless and appropriate. The sun is staring straight into my eyes. I raise my pale fist to the sky while yelling, “Stare at me for too long and you’ll surely go blind.”

I walk for five miles, with a destination mapped out and the ending playing on a loop, like football fans replying a touchdown. I’ve been sober for twenty-four hours. I didn’t want take something and end up getting lost to my grand finale, and end up more depressed than I already am. People say that your entire life flashes before your eyes when you are close to the end. My entire life has been spent intoxicated and blacked out.

Cars are speeding past me like horses racing through an open field being chased by greedy, possessing Native Americans. Except the people in these cars are only being chased by themselves. They wake up and think about the last person they had sex with. They live their lives trying to build up their reputation, never knowing that it doesn’t matter. They make their choices by how much they will benefit from it and how much money they will gain. They are blind and their eyes are glued together. They are zombies with robotic hearts, never caring for another soul except themselves.

I set my feet on the bridge, walking on the narrow walkway made for sightseeing. I place my hand on the steel railing and the coldness gives me chills. The sun is watching me, having front row seats to closing night. The cars are silent. I can see them chasing each other, but someone pressed the “mute“ button. I can only hear my lungs expanding and contracting inside of my chest. I can only hear my heart beating faster and faster.

I reach the midway point and I face the railing, looking underneath me and seeing waves crashing against razor sharp rocks. This is where everything led to. Every shot, every hit, every hospital, every suicide note, every mistake. I’m not doing this to gain attention, I’m not doing this for anyone. Suffering is a virus I loathe, taking over my body. I wish I could love humanity, I wish I could love myself. As many drugs and as many beers I can take, I will never be able to love. Everything in this world has been a carbon copy of everything else. There is nothing to give me hope, nothing for me to latch my arms around and simply cry. Everyone is too busy. Everyone has somewhere to be, someone to see that isn’t me.

I step up and throw my legs over the railing, stretching my arms behind my back and grabbing on. This railing is the last thing I will touch and it isn’t even human. I hear voices, but I push them away. I hear birds, but I pretend the vocal box has been ripped out of their throats. I close my eyes, seeing the darkness of my eyelids. I take a deep breathe and open my eyes.

**********

“Mommy, what is that man doing?” a little girl with the voice of an angel says to her mother. The mother glances over at the man on the other side of the railing, the side facing the vastness of the river. She grabs the hand of her child, “Don’t look at him, honey. He is a man with a lot of issues. Just hold my hand and look forward.”

The little girl can’t help but continue to stare at the man. She sees his blank stare into emptiness, and she can read his emotions better than anyone ever did. “He looks sad, maybe we should give him something.”

The mother gets impatient. To her, he is a melting pot of the worst aspects of this world . He is a ghost carrying a casket filled with everything she wants to keep her daughter away from. She molds his entire existence as the murderer of thousands, the rapist of millions, even if he isn’t either one. “Just look forward, we are almost off the bridge.”

The little girl shakes loose of her mother’s grip and starts running. She runs as fast as an Olympic athlete going for the gold medal. She is running towards the man on the other side of the railing. The man with no hope, no chance for survival. The mother chases after her, dreading the contact between the suicidal drug addict and her innocent daughter.

The girl stops directly behind the man and tugs on the back of his jeans like a little puppy. He turns with bloodshot eyes and no pigment left in his skin. She reaches her petite hand into her pocket and takes something out. She extends her hand, and speaks in a gentle, angelic voice. “Mister, this is for you. I hope it can cheer you up and make you happy.”

She handed him a sticker reading “Love is everything” with a bear holding up a sign with a big smile across this face. The sticker was given to her by her mother two weeks ago, on Valentine’s day. The man smiles, grabs the sticker, and squints his eyes to read the lettering. Tears run down his face. He throws his legs over the railing, like a thief running away from the police. He gets on his knees and hugs the little girl, as tight as he can. Her mother catches up, standing besides her daughter and glaring at the man, as if he was the murderer set to roam free. The man looks at the little girl and says “Thank you.”

He gets up, and walks in the direction he came from. This time, he isn’t mapping out a route to his end, but a route to a new beginning. The voice and kindness of a five year old changed his life. She saw the hope in a man that society had cast out of their own Garden of Eden and left for the vultures to eat. This man saw compassion, beauty, and love in her eyes. He saw the three things he had never encountered during his fight with drug addiction and depression. He was given a new hope when everyone else had abandoned him. He encounter the three things that cured his disease, and they didn’t come from over the counter medicine or a paid professional.