Deathwish 012: Stephen
“aspirin and Sominex; it’s all there was”
+++
Seventeen. Living in base housing at yet another Air Force base. A few weeks before senior year, at yet another school where I knew no one. I was miserable and angry. Mostly because of the much-more-than-a-hundred pounds I'd gained back since the summer before when I'd been thin.
The summer I was sixteen and thin. For the first time. I had nice clothes, I was baby-face handsome, and people talked to me differently. At the end of the summer I went to a different new school, and people talked to me differently. I loved that new school.
But slowly, not noticing, trying not to notice, I started gaining the weight back. Then school ended with news that we'd be moving again, and I gained more. We moved, I gained more. The summer ran down, a new school about to start and, bigger than I'd ever been, miserable and angry and desperate, I couldn't face it. And I just wanted not to… not to.
One day when everyone was out, I gathered all the small things from around the house, things that meant something to me, whatever they were: a dead grandmother's brooch, my books about Versailles, old blue glass candlesticks. In that last moment I wanted to be surrounded by what was beautiful to me. I took a bunch of aspirin and Sominex; it's all there was.
When my mother and sister came home, I wasn't dead. I wasn't even asleep. I was just confused. And I'm vague about what happened next. I know there was a lot of crying. I know my father came home. He got me to throw up. And throw up. Then, for a long time he walked with me. Around the flat, treeless, fenceless yards of our base housing. My father, usually so distant, held me gently, his arm around my shoulders as we walked, his loud voice soft.
"Wake up, Stevie. Come on, you have to stay awake, Stevie…"
+ + +
Stephen was born in Everett, Washington, and lives in Portland, OR.