Until Death Do Us Part

i. the look on your parents’ faces when your room smells like pot and you don’t know how to tell them it’s the only thing that makes you feel okay anymore and you don’t know how to explain why you have two empty fifths and six wine bottles in your closet and how your adderall prescription disappeared from the drawer in your mom’s nightstand overnight. ii. your heart feels bolted shut and you don’t love the people you should love anymore. you ask your boyfriend of two years if this is all just a sick joke and the harshness of his voice is enough to send you into a panic attack. he doesn’t understand why you don't look at him like you used to and why you never initiate sex and you don’t know how to tell him that your hands clawing his back is just a way to fill the emptiness. iii. so you stay silent. you stay silent because when you don’t, you words are throwing themselves off the tip of your tongue like a suicide mission and you’re saying anything you can to ignore the fact that you have nothing to say. iv. waiting rooms make you anxious but you always end up in them so you bum a cigarette from the guy next to you and lie when you tell him you forgot your pack at home. your nail beds are disgusting and you did your make-up in the car and you don’t think you match, but at least you woke up today; that’s what they say, right? they still stare. no one congratulates you on that. v. staring people right in the face, trying so hard to grip their words like a safety net, but you have no idea what they are saying because you are drowning in your thoughts. they don’t know how difficult it is to uncover memories accurately when you are living in a haze. vi. eating mac & cheese in a wawa parking lot at one in the morning and telling your friends you made it home safe as you cover your backseat in trash. fluctuating between eating so much you nearly throw up and eating nothing but a freezer-burned ellios pizza in two days. vii. forgetting to take your medication and screaming at your dad until your voice no longer carries. running up to your room and slamming the door so hard, your house shakes. collapsing into your covers crying for no reason at all. listening to him threatening to take all of your privileges away from beneath the stairwell. viii. feeling lazy, unmotivated, sneaking drugs in the bathroom instead of going to class. feeling like a burden, a bad kid, nothing but an outcast.