I can fix you.
I bet you could fix me but it's never for very long and never in a way I want to be fixed.
Caleb stares at me, holding his whole coffee mug in his hand, ignoring the handle part in a way that makes me think he's about to throw it.
We used to be able to block out the world. Easily.
Ah. He's looking to reminisce about the good old days when happiness came in a needle or a vial or a baggie and he would sound out the name of what it was and while I couldn't get my brain or my mouth around that word (phen-cyc-li-dine) I fell in love with the nickname for it. I thought it would solve all my problems. But instead of that happening I would get almost two days of real live Disney birds around my head and an unwillingness to say much, because I just wanted to enjoy the happiness and not worry about everything but then it would all come rushing back far too soon.
Caleb decided eventually that it was time for a change and switched to cocaine or heroin or whatever looked like fun and moreover, could keep Bridget dancing all night every night until the party stopped (or Caleb said it did) without creating any permanent problems (but it did). He wanted a machine to match his own but I'm not a robot and he would give me the same hit he'd give himself in spite of the close to a one-hundred-pound weight difference between us.
And he couldn't understand why it hit me different, and to this day he thinks it would be fun to revisit the past, as if we had such good times instead of what it actually was, including whatever permanent brain damage I suffered being given so many drugs for so long. I still stare off into space. I still have weird cravings for bad things, and I still have debilitating depression. Apparently half of that is from the drug use and the other half? His abuse of me. One cancels the other out but honestly, I'll take the latter because at least it's now predictable behaviour. Sex addiction and the fears borne out of that pivotal time period are far easier to manage than the holes in my memory and the ridiculous sadness because of the fucked up chemicals, burned off on a street paved with gold, snorted up the holes in my head with a holler of recklessness and abandon.
Angel dust, I would point out, fingers in my own mouth, eyes wild.
Touched by the heavens, he would whisper and I would laugh and laugh.
Not true, I shake my head, fingers still against my lips. Touched by hell. No one's laughing now but my worries have disappeared and left pink clouds behind for me to sail through.
It didn't happen like that, Bridge-
Let's go dancing.
I never let him finish because I know he's trying to revise our history as we make it and I don't plan to let him. I wouldn't then, and I won't now.
You want more coffee?
Yes, please. He knows the subject's closed. I know he'll bring it up again.