MY VEINS ARE BLACK

-What seems to be wrong?
-I can’t sleep.
-Why do you think that is?
-Why do you think that is?
-I’m here to help Jessica, and I can’t help you unless you answer my questions
-I’m dying.
-You’re dying? Why do you say that?
-Because I can see it.
-How do you see it?
-I see it in my hands, my veins are turning black.
-Interesting, (scribble scribble) black…hmm. Why do you feel like you’re dying?
-I can’t remember.
-Are you sure? Try to remember.
-I’ve lost my memory.
-How did you lose it?
-I left it at home and now I can’t find it.
-(sigh) Jessica, that’s all the time I have. I think we will need to continue our discussion next week. Please try to get some rest.

I can’t rest. The suburbs are killing me. The doctors are killing me. I’m killing me. My life is meant to be killed.
What I is a need a map. I always feel lost. My mother says it’s depression. I just stare at her with dead eyes. She hates that look, it makes her cry. She drives me to the doctor every Monday and waits patiently outside of Dr. Holly’s office like a lonely dog. And she makes me feel like I’m crazy.
I’m not crazy. I see the world the way it is.
Dr. Holly says that I can’t sleep because I’m paranoid and depressed. I say that I can’t sleep because it seems silly. Why do I have to sleep at night? Why can’t I stay awake? Why do people need to go to bed every night from nine to six and wake up and start it all over again? Predictability is an epidemic.
I will never be predictable. I can say that much right now. I have no desire to ever have a schedule. Life isn’t meant to be written on a piece of paper cut up into little blocks with numbers. Each day is its own jail cell. Wednesday is trapped inside of box 24. Saturday is in box 27. I’ll set them free somehow. No one else seems to understand their liberation. That’s why my mom looked at me the way she did when I ripped up my desk calendar with all of the little inspirational quotes on it for every new day.
I hate inspirational quotes. They only inspire me to hate inspiration.


One day I took my car and drove and drove and drove until I couldn’t remember when or why I had left my house. I parked off to the side of the road and slept. I thought about getting up and driving somewhere else. Somewhere out of my life. Out of my mind. But my hands and feet found their way to the ignition and pedals, and before I knew it I was on auto-pilot back to my house. So I slipped inside and went straight to my room. I looked around at the desk and the chair and the bureau and the photo frames. The skeleton of a girl I can’t recognize anymore. She used to smile, but I know she was faking. I could see it in her eyes and her smile and her shoulders. She hated those people she mechanically hugged. They were poison. And now she’s dying.
I wanted to suck the poison out; it coursed through my black veins. I grabbed every photo off my wall and ripped them up, first furiously and then tenderly as I lay each small piece in a pile. It was beautiful. So I cried and put it in a bag and laid it on my pillow. I slept on the floor while the confetti of that old life and that smiling girl slept soundly on my pink pillowcase.

-My life hurts.
-Where does it hurt?
-Everywhere. But mostly in my eyes.
-Why does it hurt more in your eyes?
-I don’t remember.
-Try Jessica, try to remember.
-I am, but it hurts my eyes.
-(sigh) Have you slept this week?
-No.
-Have you eaten anything recently?
-Maybe.
-Why do you say ‘maybe’?
-Because I don’t know what I did yesterday.
-You don’t know? Why is that?
-I stopped watching myself for a second and then my self wandered off.
-So you lost yourself?
-Yes. In the woods.
-How do you know it was in the woods?
-Because that’s where I’d go if I wandered off.


-Jessica’s progress is not where I would like it to be after two months of sessions. I think that she requires a more involved treatment regimen. I’m going to recommend that you increase her dosage.


When I was in fifth grade, every single one of my friends moved away. So I cut them loose. I didn’t speak to them and I didn’t write to a single one. I just let them die. I’ve never been happy since.


The blackness of my veins scares me. I can’t seem to make my blood turn the right color. I think it’s black because I know it’s black. So I try to know that it’s red and blue instead, but deep down I still know that it’s black. My mind plays tricks on me like that. It won’t let me fool myself. And it always wins arguments. And it always decides what I’ll do. Sometimes I wish it would die, but then it makes me think of something else.
I’ve heard of people who cut themselves to see if their bodies bleed. That seems dumb to me. Of course your body will bleed if you cut it. Why would you need to do it to make sure? It’s written in a million science books. I’ve personally seen it a million times. All you need to do is turn on the television and watch a surgery show. You’ll bleed just like that, is what I would tell those cutters if I could. So don’t waste your time. But I wouldn’t bleed like that. My blood is black. I don’t need to cut myself to know that, though.



One night I stayed up all night to see what it would feel like. I could hardly walk the next day. Now I go days without sleeping and manage to talk and eat and drive. I think that sleep is an illusion of the mind. You don’t really need it. Parents only tell their children to sleep so that they can get rid of them after seven o’clock.
If I had children I wouldn’t make them go to sleep. I’d let them stay up all night and decide for themselves if they needed to sleep or not. They would be geniuses. Smart and beautiful and full of surprises and they would make millions of dollars and buy me a huge dog and a huge house on a huge island.
Or maybe I’ll just own a bunch of cats. Then they won’t inherit my black veins.


I haven’t done homework in two years.
I’m the queen of bullshitting. I bullshit everything.
School is bullshit. I heard somewhere that the only reason why they keep kids in school is so they don’t take over the job market. They must think they’re so smart with that one. A government-approved prison for adolescents. Or a jungle in the middle of suburbia. Or a prison camp in Cambodia. Or a coffin with no air.


-My life smells.
-What does it smell like?
-Black lemons.
-And what do black lemons smell like?
-Black lemons.
- (sigh) Why does your life smell?
-I need to wash it.
-Wash your life?
-Yes.
-How are you going to wash your life?
-With rubbing alcohol.
-I don’t think you should do that, Jessica.
-I don’t think you should tell me what to do with my smelly life.
-(scribble scribble) Your mother tells me that you have moved out of your bedroom. Why did you do that?
-I couldn’t sleep there. And it had too many windows.
-Why do the windows bother you?
-They don’t.
-You just said that they did.
-That was a speech typo.


My dog used to wink at me. If I stared at her long enough she would always wink. No one else seemed to notice this except for me. No one else seemed to be bothered by this except for me. I used to yell at her for winking. I told her that it wasn’t natural for a dog, as if she could understand. Now she’s dead and all I can think about is how I miss her damn winking eyes.


-Jessica seems to be responding poorly to her medication. I suggest discontinuing her current prescription immediately. I have provided a prescription for a different, and stronger, medication.


All my life people have thought that I was strong. I never got that. Maybe it’s because I’m tall. That seems to throw people. But strength isn’t height.
I’m the weakest person I know.
My hands are weak. It’s my black veins. My inky black blood in my thin pathetic veins. It’s aching to break free and stain my clean white skin. I can feel it surging.
It mocks me. It knows that it is my life and death and I have to keep it. I have to let it rot and pound through my hopeless heart and seethe out of imaginary wounds. I would replace it in a heartbeat if I could spare that long.


-I’m cold.
-Would you like a jacket?
-No. I’m not that kind of cold.
-What kind of cold are you?
-My soul is cold.
-Why do you say that?
-It shivers and shakes.
-Shivers and shakes? How so?
-It won’t warm up. I think it needs mittens.
-Mittens. So your soul has hands?
-Hands that strangle me and rip my heart out.
-Violent hands then?
-Yes.
-So, your soul has violent hands that strangle you?
-Yes. And rip my heart out – the bastards.