By Amelia Wright
I can’t be the only one who lives this, right?—this tendency towards disappearance…
I want to be the backside of an eclipse: I am what you cannot see, what you must believe is there.
A craving – I wish to be wearing away, wish obscurity was something I could claim.
I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep and so my doctor gave me a piece of paper that had a list of things to help me sleep. I couldn’t sleep so I stopped eating and reading and watching tv in bed. I couldn’t sleep so when I woke up in the middle of the night, I would switch rooms and read something boring. I couldn’t sleep so my doctor told me to take melatonin – 1 mg at sunset every night. I couldn’t sleep. I still couldn’t sleep, so my doctor prescribed me Ambien.
I used to want to make a ghost of myself.
Not a ghost; not yet;
an echo.
An almost invisibility, a kind that carries the promise of a vague sort of presence.
I used to need to know that I do indeed exist: confirmation that I was something when I felt vacant.
Things have changed.
My mom says I live under a rock, but it’s not enough
I wouldn’t say I had a substance abuse problem, but I would say that if you gave me something to crush up and snort, I probably would. Anyways, I still couldn’t sleep. Two Ambien pills and I still couldn’t shake consciousness.
There’s this relief I feel when I no longer have to enforce my identity.
Sometimes, rarely, this is a result of someone knowing me so very well that I don’t need to perform.
Sometimes, usually, this is a result of me backing away, down, increasing the apartness between myself and another so that they never seem to think of me at all.
That’s the way I like it. (Is it?)
The ways I begged to shake consciousness were diverse and depressed: sample suicide notes and snorting and smoking and razor blades and a deep-sea silence. They never mentioned how exhausting silence is. This deliberate tempering of self in the hopes that no one would notice me ever again: it took me away from myself, and I didn’t know how to get back. But then: what was there to go back to?
I am tired of making myself up.
I am tired of putting puzzle pieces of experience together for others, others who are playing with their own, different pieces, different interpretations of me, anyway.
How can I be myself to others in the same way that I can be myself to my self?
The easy answer: I can’t. We can’t.
Easy to pick up these words with a fork, a much bigger deal trying to swallow them.
How well can you really know yourself when everyone knows you differently?
red wine in mugs, (always red wine and mugs together), scrolling through Instagram filters, underwear photo shoot (was that the same night?), texting jon and him expressing concern and me doing it anyway, it was her idea, I don’t think I really wanted to until everyone told me not to, tati says I texted her too, though I dont remember,snorted with a dollar bill, 1 pill each?, then I felt very far away and wasgetting out the tattoo stuff from the gable , it was izzy’s but she said I could use it, did I ask?,
Ipseity given away; an eager relent; a softening before an evaporation.
far away and tired and very very numb in a very very good way like if someone injected my amygdala with lidocaine and it felt like my breath was still water, maybe a bathtub (ujjayi breath is an ocean and my normal breath is at least a river and i can’t tell you if ) and my room was glowing bright even though it was lit by only two golden, dim lamps. My room was orange like October. And my eyes wouldn’t open all the way but my actions (every stick of the needle) felt purposeful and honest and perfect and I wasn’t paying attention when she did mine because I wanted to go to sleep. Eventually it moved from dreamlike to sleepy, though I have no concept of how fast that happened because I had no concept of time.
I would like to live in a void.
Nowadays, I would like my self to stop echoing, and I would like to embrace an anti-becoming.
thinking “I can’t believe they just gave me ambien.” it all smelled like red wine and ink, I can’t remember what we were listening to?, my mouth was dry dry dry from wine and no water and possibly the ambien, too, my back was sore from slouching
“If…” — some delusion of an anything-is-possible future.
Dreamlike,
liminal,
numerous.
These futures were imagined, they existed only in my head.
A “what if” kind of mentality, one that I had only under the influence.
The dreams diminished, and I was left with a reality I didn’t want, and so I dipped my toes into the pool of withdrawal.
I went back to quiet.
the sheer embarrassment, maybe shame? (but not guilt), swollen swelling wrist, do I remember waking up the next morning? she spilled ink on my favorite sheets; I spilled ink on my favorite sheets?; we spilled ink on my favorite sheets, but that was never something I cared too much about. I felt bad for spilling izzy’s ink though.
I don’t know where my self begins or ends anymore.
I don’t know where I am, and I never knew where I wanted to be.
I want to say goodbye, but I do not know where I’m going.
About the author:
Amelia Clare Wright is a recent graduate of Columbia’s MFA program in nonfiction creative writing. She has work appearing in Variant Lit and The McNeese Review, among others. She grew up in Baltimore City and now lives in Los Angeles. She is currently working on a memoir about pain and trying to decide if she wants to be a coral reef or a tree when she dies.