Coming Undone by Terri White (ebook reader with highlight function .TXT) 📗

body against the brightly lit box which hums from the vibrations of the heartache, loss and pain in their voices.

I twirl the bottle of Vicodin that’s been rolling around the bottom of my handbag between my fingers. The white pills bounce, ricochet off their orange plastic home like a pinball machine. A fellow editor at work has gifted me with the full bottle, telling me that they made her vomit, were too strong. Not me. I have a strong constitution. The first time I swallow one, the stress, worry and thrum of anxiety dissolves and drips out of me. Happy isn’t the word; it’s woefully inadequate to describe the state of perfect bliss I descend into, sinking lower and lower into the floor. It is walking on clouds with hands floating wide; it is singing from an open window as the wind flows through; it is a heart-shuddering, soul-heightening joy that I can never truly describe. A room of wool and twine in which I sit, knowing that I can do anything, everything, all of it, whenever I want. No one can stop me. Ever.

Now I know what real, true happiness feels like, I have to ration it, obviously. I can’t truly begin to cope with what will happen when this happiness ends, is taken from me. This night, however, I know I’m owed it.

As the records end, load and spin underneath my hip, I swallow two tablets, then reach in my bag for a final one, just to be sure, tossing it into the back of my mouth, where it hits my throat, stuttering on the way down. I follow it with two Xanax. Then, almost immediately: nothing.

The next day, I wake up. I can barely open my eyes and keep them open when I do. I’m lying across the bed in yesterday’s dress, ankle socks, shoes, beehive askew, hair grips lodged in the skin in my back, bag still over my shoulder. When I do manage to fully open my eyes I can barely see out of them – I fumble and find my phone: it’s 1.30 p.m. My screen is filled with missed calls. I’m meant to be going to Coney Island with a group of women I know. I text one. Tell her I overslept. Had a big night. She says they are worried about me. About what I was doing, what I’d done. I want to cancel with every bone and breath in my body but I can’t. The shame on top of whatever else I’m feeling would just be too much. We arrange to meet; we’re going to get the train together.

I haul my body off the quilt, my stomach already up in my mouth. I throw up once, twice; there’s no food in my mouth because there’d been none in my stomach (I can’t remember when I last ate). The vomit tastes of whisky, ginger, lime, wine, beer and acid. I get in the shower, counting the new small black bruises on me: my thigh, my arm, the bump on my head. I get out of the shower, vomit once more. I put on a new dress, new ankle socks and my brogues. Comb my matted hair, backcomb again. Spray, pat, spray, tease, smooth. I vomit again. Harder, longer. Blood hitting, splattering the bowl.

I make it to the subway station and onto the train. As it rocks and rolls towards Coney Island, I clutch my stomach, which is cramping and whirling under my fingers, under my skin. My mouth waters – squirts hitting both sides of my throat after being expelled from the glands. Sweat creates a trim the length of my hairline. At each and every stop I consider getting off, running through the doors, convinced I’m about to vomit violently, terrified I’m about to faint.

A little girl and her dad sit directly opposite me. Her pigtails are pulled tight on each side, her face taut. They both stare at me; her hand finds his, nervously. She’s captivated and horrified by my face and I can’t stop picturing hers in my head as I place my hands over my eyes and all I can see is black throbbing around her, framed by fireworks.

Somehow I manage to hold it inside until Coney Island, where I push my way out of the train and to the nearest trash can, which is already, on this boiling hot day, brimming over with discarded hotdogs, burgers, ice creams, sodas, ketchup-smeared fries.

With a primal urge that overtakes me, I grab each side of the can, which is open like a flower reaching for the sun. Food squeezes between my palms and the metal as I grab for my life, my head rearing back just once, snapping my body in half as it flips forwards and I vomit loudly.

As I buck and spew there’s cheering and applause, heckling, from the other subway passengers. When my mouth is empty and my body still, I straighten my back, wipe my face with the back of my hand, spit and spew running between my fingers and down the outside of my hands, collecting at the wrists.

Eat something, I’m told by my kind-of friends, who have looked on in horror. Good idea. I queue for a hotdog and a beer by the beach. The line is thirty-something people deep. They’re in shorts and vests, hugging, laughing and shrieking. I cower in their shadows, sweat running into my hair, down the centre of my back, down both legs into the heels of my shoes. The blue horizon in front of me waves and wobbles. My head swims; my body rocks.

The beer, the hotdog, have barely passed through my mouth and down my throat before they bounce back up, on a fierce wave that has me running, retching, to the most private spot I can find – the other side of a concrete wall. I splatter a new pile of bread roll, sausage and yellow liquid as neatly as possible onto the ground. It’s enough,