The Lowlights of My Life

After Elliot and I broke up, I tried to decide if it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. I don't know if any of you have ever tried to pinpoint the absolute worst moment of your life, but it's actually more fun than you'd think. For some of you, it may be very easy to pick the one that stands out the most; for me, it took a lot of thought. Since I'm in a sick and twisted mood right now, I think I'll list some of the candidates:

1. When I was 17, I had surgery that left me with three scars in my lower navel region. Waking up from the surgery, I promptly proceeded to dry heave from the anesthesia, and it made me feel like my surgery scars were going to burst open. That is not a good feeling. I had doctors and nurses all around me, and my mother was there as well, and they finally convinced me to take a suppository. That's right, a fun pill that goes up your butt because you can't ingest anything at the moment. The condition that required the surgery was the most emotionally painful thing I had experienced up to that point, and in that moment when it merged with physical pain, I finally understood what the Christian conception of Hell was probably like.

2. One of the incidents surrounding the Elliot breakup, of course, but I don't know which one to pick as the worst of this subset. It might have simply been finding out about it, but I think the unimaginably horrific conversation I had with Laura while she was helping me find Elliot that night might be the winner.

3. When I first moved to Austin, I was completely alone on my birthday. I had no friends, Elliot was traveling, and my family let me know that helping me move to Austin was the only birthday gift I was getting. Kyle and I were arguing at the time, and I told him that I was severely depressed and terrified (lots of stuff was going on then). I begged him to talk to me and be there for me even though he was angry with me. He refused. There have been few moments in my life where my spirit has been that completely broken. We haven't spoken since.

This is fun so far, huh?

4. My roommate freshman year and very dear friend, Jaime, tried to kill herself one night and had to go to the hospital. When I came back to OU from Tulsa the next day, I found her on her bed with her arms wrapped up. That moment was horrifying enough, but it got worse quickly. Her bandages needed to be replaced, and guess who had the first aid kit? I wrapped up her oozing, mangled arms with white gauze before I helped her back into bed. I then walked numbly into the next room with and held our suitemate Amy while she sobbed. Yeah, that was a bad, bad day.

5. I'll stop with this one, since this entry is depressing anyway and I think this story might take the big prize for worst moment of my life. I won't go into all the history, but suffice to say when I lived with Courtney and Claire, we had a lot of roommate troubles near the end. Claire and I had become very close friends while we lived alone, but when Courtney moved back in, we started growing apart. I was in complete denial about it and had been for months; instead of dealing with it, I had started trying to become Super Roommate--cleaning, running errands, buying Court and Claire gifts, etc. I was so nervous and frazzled, however, that I just fucked up at every turn. I would try to do something nice, and it would end in disaster, which would then only strengthen my resolve to try harder, and so on and so forth. One day I actually snapped and went into a full-on panic attack, but even that day I didn't realize why it had happened. Finally, it was near the end of the semester and I went out drinking with Lee, Ingrid, and Stacy. When Lee drove me home at 2:00am, I was drunker than I have ever been in my entire life. He got me in the door and left, and I immediately fell down on the floor and couldn't get back up. The whole room was spinning and I felt terrifyingly alone. I started calling for Claire, Claire, Claire. Both she and Courtney came out and seemed annoyed, which was ironic considering all the insane, vomit-spewing, apartment-destroying pyrotechnics the two of them always pulled after a night of imbibing Muskrat's patented Long Island Iced Teas. I asked for water, and they put a glass in front of me and went back down the hall without a word. I tried to drink the water, but it just wasn't happening. I called for Claire again and she came out alone. At this point, I rose up to my hands and knees and began the most god awful, soul-shaking, gut-wrenching, hysterical weeping that I have ever experienced or seen anyone else experience. I could actually feel myself sobbing in every cell of my body; I was choking, gasping, hiccupping, pleading, wailing like you can only do when alcohol has removed every last inhibition and modicum of restraint you have. As I gripped the rug with my hands and rocked back and forth like the perfect picture of a mental patient, I begged her over and over just to like me again, please be my friend, don't hate me anymore. I literally prostrated myself in front of her and cried that I would do anything, be anything, say anything she wanted if only we could go back to the way things were before. After what seemed like an eternity, my tears dried up and she helped me into bed. The look on her face that night will always be with me; it was the same look my father gave me at the airport when I was 9 years old, just before he had to leave our family to go work in California for another six months. It said, I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do now, so you'll have to do the rest of this alone. I think this has to be the saddest, most pathetic moment of my life; at least it seems so at the moment.

It might surprise you to know that I'm actually in a great mood today. Why I chose to write about this stuff is unclear to me, but it felt right. Hope you like Schadenfreude.