Rock Bottom

 

She knew this was the time.   

It was getting worse. Her whole body would shake at any given time and her world would seem to collapse with it. Nights were much, much worse. All alone in her room, very much awake, she would think of almost anything. Her past would haunt her as well as the present. The sight of a simple book or the sound of a certain melody would trigger a sudden urge or incomprehensible anger. The world was gradually shrinking and she was being enveloped in it. This sense of isolation was so overwhelming she would find herself crying at a corner of her small room with nothing but her ever-dependable drug of choice as her only solace.

Reality sank in. She was no longer in control. She would go mad eventually if she continued on this course. Deep within her, she knew it was only a matter of time before insanity takes place. but first, there’s a question that’s been nagging her for a long time which she was terrified to answer knowing fully well what the answer might be. was she an addict? she just could not face the fact that she became one. that she had become one of those scums that used to be the favorite topics of the guys when they were on a laughing trip. those miserable scums addicted to cough syrups and rugby. it’s unbelievable that she became one of them. certainly, she’s got a lot of class than those lowlifes. sometimes, a person would be surprised at the courage that she can muster when faced with such a frightening reality–that she were desperately hanging on to her sanity by the tip of her fingers; and given two options between sanity or insanity, of survival or death, she chose the first option with what’s left of her reason which was really nothing much at that time. She learned the gravity of the situation when she entered this fancy rehab clinic in one of the suburbs south of manila and began to participate in its daily rituals and chores. She had a hard time reading a paragraph from the ‘bible’ aloud and she cannot speak lest she mumble and eat the words. it was much worst later on. writing her daily journal took a lot of effort with a lot of focusing and concentration which before would just flow in naturally and effortlessly from somewhere within her brain. 

her stint in the fancy rehab didn’t have a positive effect on her life. she continued on with her old lifestyle. and somehow, the affliction had worsened. 

She was on the last phase of a downhill ride in her life. the moment that she crashed down to earth, suicide was no longer an abstract and distant thought but more and more of an option. the only way out from all her sins, tortured conscience and crushing guilt. it was the lowest point in her life when all the problems that she can think of , much, much more than she can handle, descended on her in one sweep fall.

it was a process that began with a denial of how deep down the hole she were in; she tried to let fear from creeping inside her and she shifted her thoughts to something more pleasant, even entertaining a false sense of hope, that she can still do something to delay the impact and thus gain precious time; where time is measured as: a moment = eternity. then somewhere along when she was running out of options and groping for more drastic ideas bordering on the ridiculous and the wild, fear gradually entered until it resided in every cell of her body and she found herself sweating hard in an air-conditioned room. having just ran out of options, a state of panic seized her entire body. she then instinctively closed her eyes as if to erase this painful part of her life in her memory’s databank, or more like a child moving his head from side to side wishing that these were all a mistake or a nightmare and that it would go away by itself. meanwhile, her brain was working so hard and at such a frightening pace that something in the remote recesses of her brain automatically and methodically began shutting off the different switches to prevent it from overloading [something like the engine of your car blowing out since the pistons cannot keep up with the rapid pace of its movement]. 

after which she experienced a profound change–more of the divine than of the mundane. the last refuge in a sea of chaos. it was like drowning when the sensation of peace and total solitude and acceptance kicked in after the initial fear. in fact, it was her only refuge. after working her brain so hard and pushing it to its limit, well beyond its imaginary envelope, the sad realization that she was after all just a tiny, finite speck in an infinite space dawns on her; that no matter how advanced and intelligent we have become since the days of the apes and the monkeys, we are just but a minute detail playing a most insignificant part in the history of evolution and lending it with our unnoticeable existence as fast as a shooting star disappearing from our sight into heaven’s bosom. we surrender to something greater than ourselves. just like what our primitive ancestors did when faced with an incomprehensible situation, we kneel to something that’s beyond finite and comprehensible.

it was at this point that she knew she was an addict. was it really that hard to admit to herself that she was one? was it too much of a reality for a woman like her? Maybe.

She instinctively ran out of her bedroom, past the livingroom and into her dad’s little sanctuary — his home office. she pulled open the topmost drawer of her father’s desk and got hold of the cold, uncaring .38 caliber revolver that her father kept.

No tears. No regrets. This is her final escape.