All Night, Every Night

Welcome to the coldest night of the year.

Actually, at 5:49 a.m. as I type this, it's now morning. Another all-nighter.

What began a month or so ago as a fun and productive excuse to abuse aderall for one last time has progressed. This may be my fourth or fifth all-nighter since. I don't quite know.

Unlike that first time, with Amanda in tow, working on Patch stuff as we dreamed about our next big adventure in South Korea, I am alone at the kitchen table in her parent's house, while she sleeps for her third hour. She said to wake her at 6 – I think I'll give her a little more time.

The "day," if we are going to call it that, began for us at 12:30 p.m. It wasn't that aderall event that caused my sleep schedule to fall out of whack. It may have been in November, when the several months of success with Cymbalta turned. When I began to get lazy or forgetful with dosages, had one-too-many fun night outs, when the effects of aderall still swam over me like a brilliant wave of well. When I could sit on the couch and talk with friends in Korea on Facebook as if it was the most beautiful thing I could possibly have done short of giving birth to pure joy straight out of my ass. I apologize, that was the best line I could come up with at this late/early hour.

That day in November, with the pressures of Patch work mounting, with the feeling that the whole world (never mind even fewer people knew what Patch was then than now) was watching my every post and wondering why I didn't write this or why I wrote that. With the feeling to run building inside me in the Atlanta Bread Company parking lot in Morris Plains. And feeling lower than dirt, because yet another opportunity to quit smoking went up in cigarette smoke.

And, I crashed. I called Lou, my boss, whom I was supposed to meet shortly there with several other Patch editors for our weekly meeting. I told him I needed to take a few days off. I needed to "get my head back on straight." He'd known about my medication, my "depression," which I don't throw around lightly. I don't just want to announce, "hey, pity me! Give me a break! I'm depressed!" Regardless of whether or not their degrees and their titles essentially mean they just went through more school than I did, it does hold some weight when a "professional" hands you the coveted label. And, they have not done so yet, at least, not officially.

So, I left the parking lot. Drove home, packed my things in a rush as if I was being chased by the police. I still had one more thing to attend. I had to attend it, the whole world was watching. What if I wasn't there when all the other news outlets were? What then?

And, I went. And, it was fine. But, that didn't matter. I was already packed. I headed south, to Long Branch.

Amanda and I spent several days at her parent's house while I "got my head on straight." On one of those days, I can't remember now, we slept on the couch until 2:30 p.m.

We kind of laughed about it then, joking that her sister would be home from school pretty soon and we were still under covers, with sleep boogers still sticking to the sides of our eyes. But, it's escalated.

On Friday, I slept until 2:30 p.m., after dousing myself with a Percocet and three ibuoprofen PMs. Even now, it doesn't seem like a lot, which in itself is telling. Two PMs have made me groggy when waking at a more sane time of 10 a.m. Add to that another, and a very powerful painkiller. What the hell was I thinking?

That's another story, one involving pulled wisdom teeth and a subsequent emergency room visit earlier in the week for what turned out to be a highly-infected abscess on my tonsil that had already swelled my mouth nearly shut and turned my voice, when I could gather the strength to speak, into a muppet's. The only time I drank liquids were to try and choke down more PM's, some of my roommate's Lunesta, more Percocets, anything that might knock me out after basically being awake for two days. It's funny. One Percocet and three PM's put me into a 14-hour coma, but on that most painful night before we went to the ER, I must have downed half-a-dozen PM's, three or four Lunesta's, three Percocets and several prescription-strength ibuprofen tabs and I may have slept about 45 minutes spaced over eight hours. What kind of shit is that?

This has turned into quite the tangent. Well, what did you expect from someone who has been up all night, on aderall, cigarettes and grape juice? It feels kind of good to purge. It's something I seem to be getting good at.

So, yeah, where were we? Right, I threw up today. Right there, as Amanda was taking photos of a school for the Middletown Patch directory, my stomach gave that calling card shimmy and shake that comes right before the storm. Instinctively, I went for the door lock to open it, holding onto my stomach and closing my eyes.

"Are you OK," Amanda asked. "Are you OK?"

I just kept my eyes closed and shook my head, slowly. A minute. "I think I'll be OK."

She said maybe I should stand outside anyway while she drove up and took some more photos of the building. As I stepped out, the wave came across again, and a little stream of vomit crossed my lips. Small.

And then, more came. Right there in the parking lot of some innocent elementary school. What did it ever do to me?

Amanda immediately turned off the car and got outside. She was obviously scared. I was, too. Well, shit, that never happened before.

The day continued. I spoke a lot about my feelings, about my fears, about how, essentially, it comes down to not liking myself very much, which sounds incredibly damaging and irrational now, 14 hours later. All of this comes off as very irrational. It doesn't make any sense. And, it's what I have dealt with, on and off, for a long time. Something happens, I crash. But then, I get up. And, I move on. And, that's a good thing. That's what you're supposed to do. But, maybe, I should have spoken up about it sooner than now, before the all-nighters, before the pills, before all the self-loathing that right now does not make any sense to the point I don't want to even write it here for fear of embarrassment and for fear of not telling the truth. For fear of being a drama queen. But, it happened. And, I know how I felt. It's worse.

I don't want to bring this feeling to Korea. I don't want to wallow in it, or ignore it like I think many of my lineage has ignored it and laid their burden of shit onto my head. If I were to break up with you, Amanda, it would be on my terms and for my reasons, not because something in my head that does not for some reason want me to be happy says it's time to run again. I'd ask you only to do the same.

I have stayed up all night this time not just because I like popping pills. I am meeting a new psychologist at 9 a.m. in Morristown, and I know our track record. We've woken up too late too many times, and left things to the last minute too many times to assume if we both slept, that one of us would have the wherewithal to scrape ourselves out of the bed or off the couch, drag our partners forth, and make our ways to our appointments. This shrink may not be the ultimate answer, but something in me tells me if I find a reason not to attend, this is all going to start over again. And again. And again. And again.

Maybe that's why the aderall doesn't seem to be working anymore. I know the high is always followed by a low. And, I just don't know how many more lows I can take.