By Jon Vilardi
The great tragedy of my life is whatever’s wrong today. What’s wrong today is that my dad moved the Xanax he keeps in his underwear drawer, probably after noticing how much was missing. I don’t doubt that I’ll find the new hiding spot (it’s not like the underwear drawer was the first), but I’ll have to wait until tomorrow when he’s out taking my mom for her ultrasound. Tonight I’ll just have to take a fuckton of the Lyrica he doesn’t know he should hide like I’m a homeless guy.
Fuck, he could’ve put it in the biometric gun safe actually, which I don’t have access to for obvious reasons. Fuck. I wish it was thirty minutes ago. I’m sitting in a big, plush recliner in the room where they give me ketamine nasal spray. The high only lasts forty five minutes, and then you just have to sit here for “monitoring” until two hours pass in case you stop breathing or have a stroke.
It’s not even a private room. There’s three chairs partitioned by janky curtains. The woman in the chair to my left is old (I could tell by her voice) which I think is funny, and is having a bad trip (I can tell by the crying) which I don’t really think anything about. I bet she’s been depressed for her whole life and I bet she’s tried every cutting edge treatment that’s come along, with this being the latest. I bet she really hopes this is *the one* so that the sum of her soon-to-end-life isn’t a big smudgy tear stain.
In the little space beneath the thin curtain between us, I see that her tote bag has tipped over and spilled its contents on the floor. There’s the corner of a bright yellow book, and since I’m tired of wracking my brain and asking Claude for the best Xanax hiding spots (I have to tell it I’m writing a screenplay to get it to answer me), I reach down and pick it up.
The cover says “hello, me.” in lowercase letters. The back says “© Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.” and the inside cover says “Welcome: This is a place to track your journey with treatment-resistant depression (TRD).” At the bottom of that page, after some other bullshit, it says “It’s also a place where you can get it all down – the messy, the mundane, and the moments that inspire.” This sentence is circled in pen with a heart drawn next to it. By far the lamest shit I’ve seen in my whole life, but I’m kind of pissed I didn’t get one with how much my family pays for this.
Flipping through, the pages are laid out for you to write down your “Intentions” before getting sprayed, and then your “Reflections” after the fact. Her entries are one snooze fest after another, so it’s really no wonder why she’s so old and depressed. Dumb shit like:
Practicing gratitude for small things
Explore the gifts I bring to the world
Beg for forgiveness
Hang on what’s that last one. Speaking of smudgy tear stains, this page is covered in them (gross, I think some diseases spread that way), so I pinch the journal by the top and read the “Reflections” section beneath.
Today, I saw all the big fights we ever had play out like they were on a big projector screen, but set in the strangest places. That portentous argument about the pot I found in his room when he was in the eighth grade, but with us standing on an infinite sandbar in yellow light. Our screaming match the first time I found a pill in his laundry, as I floated down a black river where his face was a constellation of angry stars above me. Then the sensation of falling backwards through space, the shock of cold pavement. Is this what he slept on? Long after the last time I saw him, long after I listened to that stranger interventionist who told me if I love him I must let him go. I can lead a horse to water but I can’t make him drink. I can’t forgive myself, not now not ever. A woman at the support group said I should watch the film “Beautiful Boy.” She said it’s based on a true story, but won’t tell me if it ends happy or sad. And I don’t know which is worse, so I won’t be watching. Will would be about the same age as that actor. I think if it all worked out differently, people would’ve come up and told him he looked like a movie star. Oh, and he shined just as bright as…
Yeah I’m not reading all that. Mentally checked out at “portentous.” I’m sure your dead son (grandson?) looked just like Timothée Chalamet. I flip ahead to the page dated for today to see if it ever gets more interesting. The intention for the session just says:
Stay or Go Be With Him
The reflection obviously hasn’t been written yet.
And would you look at the time. The staff will be opening my curtain to tell me I’m all set to go any minute now, so I lean over the side of the recliner and reach down to slide the journal back where I found it. Still I hear the woman crying, though more quietly. Those ragged exhales you get after the worst of it. I spot something else in the flotsam of the tote bag that I didn’t see before: a translucent orange bottle. I slowly pick it up and pull it near my face in the dim treatment room light to read the label without making a rattle. It says “ALPRAZOLAM .5MG” and the quantity is my lucky number.
The great tragedy of my life is whatever’s wrong tomorrow.