Drugs Or Me.

Drugs Or Me.

For Delena.

A girl slouches into the corner drugstore one blistering summer morning. The artificially chilled air hits her bare legs with a blast as sliding doors close mechanically behind her. Passing the counter, a clerk cracks gum loudly and shrugs off her potential customer’s existence, occupied with a speck on her nails. The girl doesn’t take offense, however, as she files silently through a thick forest of cardboard display advertisements. Of course she doesn’t take offense—she’s been regarded as invisible for the past sixteen years of her life, as her poor posture and lack of personal hygiene would indicate. She’s alone today, and, without a sense of identity or glimmer of self-assurance, she’s swallowed whole into a vast beauty product wasteland.

Aisle 9: hair care products. A black security camera follows the girl’s awkward frame past hairspray shelving. Its intense red light blinks on, blinks off—steadily watching. The concave lens reflects the girl’s filthy exterior. Dirty brown locks frame a round, pale face; desolate gray eyes flitter emptily over a gaudy shampoo display. It’s seen her here before, the camera has. Like clockwork: Monday afternoons she stops in, pockets stuffed with fresh cut coupons from the Sunday paper.

However, today is not Monday afternoon. It’s Thursday, and her pockets aren’t bulky with crinkled paper coupons. Instead, a solitary ten-dollar bill fills the void in their absence. She allows her hollow eyes to wander over name brand, nutrient rich shampoos before pulling a generic sixty-nine cent bottle off the wall. It smells like oil, has the consistency of water, lathers not. She sets the bottle down. This isn’t what she came here for. Air in, air out. Breathe, child.

Aisle 12: magazines, office supplies & other assorted miscellany. Glitter-coated lies radiating from magazine covers wrench the girl from the imitation coconut and lilac effluvium of aisle 9. A fluorescent ‘20% off’ sign buzzes over popular titles such as Teen, People, and merger label, Teen People. Two-dimensional Celebs flash perfect white teeth, courtesy of Orthodontia International. Brad Pitt’s lopsided grin, paired with majestic oiled abs and blonde stylized hair, is particularly convincing. Sincere, paper-thin eyes—so reassuring—radiate knowing optimism. The girl picks up the magazine and fingers her way through with chewed, bloody nail stubs.

SWIMSUIT SEASON, an article screams.

Crap. Air in. Air out. Breathechild.

Pictures of beautiful anorexic girls in skimpy bikinis flood the girl’s vision. Happy beautiful anorexic girls.

And she remembers. Crap. She had successfully blocked this remembrance out all week, but now it comes. Naturally, painfully, unbridled. The memory crashes, crushes her head in, beating her nauseous. KAUFMANNS’ SWIMSUIT SALE, WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, the ad had read. Coupons were clipped, mother and daughter climbed into the car, and the pair was consumed by the large crowd gathered for the sale in the Kaufmanns building.

The girl had pulled a few modest size 10 swimsuits off the rack and retreated to the changing rooms. Mother had insisted on—stop! it’s too–seeing her daughter in the pieces before she invested any money into them, and when she did—painful…

“Good God. How could you let yourself pork out like this? You used to be so gorgeous; it’s a shame. Here, turn around and let me look at you from behi—dear Lord. I hate to see you like this, honey. Please, you need to lose some weight. You used to be so beautiful…”

And so the slaughter of self-esteem went, as the girl stood half naked and fully defenseless against her mother’s scathing blows. Clenching her jaw on a trembling bottom lip so to keep the tears pricking her eyes from running, she waited, humiliated, for her mother to leave the small changing room. And when Mommy Dearest had finally made her exit, the girl collapsed, defeated, onto the cold tile dressing room floor.

Aisle 5: diet & nutrition. Greasy chocolate ringlets fly through the air as salty precipitate streams from the girl’s eye sockets. She grabs a bottle off the shelf almost rabidly, hungrily, furiously. Diet pills. Weight loss pills. She knows they’re harmful, but it’s not enough to stop her now. Better to be dead than trapped in this size 10 body, incessantly being pushed by mother to be beautiful, constantly being shunned by classmates and peers. All because why, exactly? Her weight. There’s no other explanation for it, really.

Aisle 2: stomach care. And now the memories are pounding at her temples, rushing, laughing, mocking her—the countless starvation diets, late night binges, the agony of over exercise. Laxatives. Damn it, where the heck are they? Her eyes are coated red with angerpain and tears; they dart violently about the shelving until—

“Here they are.”

Cash register: thank you for shopping at drug depot! The bored cashier rings up the products without speaking. Her face is emotionless—a hard expression chiseled in granite. “That’ll be nine-thirty-five.” The girl hands over her money and waits patiently. No coupons this time. The hum of the air conditioning and snap of the clerk’s gum are calming to the girl; the silence terrifies her. As long as she can discern even the slightest noise, she will have no reason to fear. The filling and collapsing of her own lungs is enough--a constant reminder that she, indeed, is alive and is a survivor.

Air. In air. Outbreathe—woman.