Black Is the Loneliest Color

TW: mental illness, mentions suicide, addiction, language, drug abuse

I arrive at the motel looking for a junkie at about 11 am on a Wednesday. I’m supposed to be working. Instead of getting up with my alarm, brushing my teeth, and making myself decent enough to attend my virtual meetings, I stay in bed for over an hour, cuddling my twelve-year-old pit bull, ignoring texts and work emails. When I feel like it, I get up and take a shower, wash my hair and everything. Citrus shampoo and conditioner, patchouli body lotion.

I text one of the team members that I supervise. Gotta step away for a bit. Please lead the meeting and catch me up when I’m back online. Thanks! Without waiting for the response, I crack a hard seltzer and sit down on the couch in front of the big windows, facing the eight acres of my front yard, and I think. The brain really is the most dangerous weapon, isn’t it? I plan it perfectly: I use my company credit card so that my husband can’t track my bank activity. I rent a car and buy a hotel room. I take $100 out of the ATM. I’ll spend all of it on heroin. Then I’ll take it to my hotel room, chop neat little beige lines, and go to sleep. A rock star, no? I’ll be part of the 27 club, only 12 years too late.

There is one problem – the only problem: I don’t know any heroin dealers. I don’t even know any heroin users anymore. We only moved into our first home in a new town three months ago.

****

The media make it incredibly easy to find drugs. On my work-issued phone, I search local drug busts using my location. The heroin is within reach. It’s possibly only seven miles from the Hertz Rental office. I type Express Motel into the car’s GPS. Filling the new to me SUV with patchouli and citrus, I’m on my way to die.

In just ten minutes I find the Express Motel. Sparce parking lot, every window blocked from the outside world with curtains never before washed, not a person occupying a balcony.

I lap the building, looking for deals being made in cars, visitors coming or going, any clue of foul play. Nothing. I lap again. The unassuming maintenance worker looks more like an addict at second glance.

I park, leave my belongings in the car, and approach the man painting a corner of the building, who, at close proximity exposes parts of the skeletal system that shouldn’t be seen through muscle and fat.

“Excuse me.”

He turns, cigarette stuck to his dry lips, cheekbones like poles holding up a tent. He takes in my face and the shape of my body unashamedly. He removes the smoke with his slim fingers and squints at me, showcasing his incomplete set of teeth.

He knows where to get heroin. In fact, he’s just starting to feel the withdrawal and needs a ride to the dealer’s place. The junkie places his paintbrush in the tray on the ground and wipes his hands on his jeans. He takes a final drag of the cigarette and tosses its remains on the asphalt, cherry glowing. He follows me to my temporary ride. The doors unlock with a click and he helps himself to the front seat. I start the car and strap myself in, turning down Fiona Apple’s angst. “Where are we going?”

“You a cop?” I meet his eyes. We look at each other quizzically for a moment too long.

“Do I look like it?”

“Can I use your phone to call him? Let him know we coming?”

I grab my phone out of the cup holder and look at the screen, waiting for my apps to appear. I hand my property to the stranger. He dials a number he knows by heart and puts the phone to his ear, immediately disconnecting upon hearing the ringing through the car’s speaker. I hold out my hand and stare straight ahead. “Let me disconnect the Bluetooth.”

The addict gets permission to “come through.”

“I got my girl’s car,” he lies.

GPS is forbidden. I take directions from the guy I just met. 

“You got any needles?”

It takes a second to remember that I have a bag of needles left over from the failed IVF attempt. We detour to my house. Driving down the long curvy driveway with our big new house in view, he’s visibly uncomfortable.

“You live here?” I nod. “You sure you ain’t no cop?”

“A cop’s salary couldn’t pay this mortgage.” I leave the rental running and go inside.

Back in the car, I toss an unopened bag of prescription syringes and needles. “How many can I take?”

“All of them. Veins gross me out. I’ll just snort mine.”

We drive back roads only, well into the country. We pass miles of cotton, tobacco, soybean, Angus cattle, and long chicken sheds, fans on full speed.

“What brings you to the dark side?”

I don’t have the bandwidth to recite the entirety of my “cons of living” list, so I find the latest disappointment in the archives and hand it over like a relic in a museum. “I just found out that my husband has been lying to me about who he is for… well, as long as we’ve been together. And there have been other women, plural.”

My peripheral vision caught the addict nodding. Then, as if finally placing the final cardboard piece in the jigsaw, he whips his head around to look me up and down again. “He cheated on you?! What the fuck?”

“Yep. And you should see the one he’s supposedly in love with – ass like an ironing board, busted ass face, baby weight having cunt.”

“Dumb ass.” He looks out the window briefly then returns his attention to our conversation. “You crazy or somethin’?”

“Hmm,” I think while looking at the two lanes in front of me.

“Crazy enough to pull this shit, I guess.” He shakes his head and turns his gaze to the countryside. “Still don’t explain it. Sounds like an entitled prick.”

I nod. He may just want to fuck me, but he speaks more genuinely to me in that moment than my own husband has in years. He asks if he can smoke in the rental. Why would I care?

After an hour we arrive at the drug dealer’s apartment. I wait in the rental while the junkie strategically walks around to the other side of the building. In less than ten minutes he’s back, casually letting himself into my rental car. “Let’s go.”

“Did you get it?”

Frustrated, making large arm gestures, “Yeah. Let’s go, damnit.”

I back out of my parking space and drive the speed limit politely out of the apartment complex. “I’m the only reason you got here, so you can chill with your bossy ass attitude.”

“Dude. Do you not know how this works?”

“No! I don’t. Remember?”

“You can’t sit at a drug dealers house. They won’t never let you back.”

He insists on directing me instead of using the car’s GPS. Driving back through the country, he pulls out of his pocket a spoon and sits it on the center console. He then takes a fresh cigarette from his pack and pinches at the filter, carefully placing a pea-sized bit of cotton looking material in the spoon. Curious, I continue watching. He removes his lighter and a toothpick from his pocket and places them next to the spoon. Then, he opens my glovebox, where he stored the needles that I gave him, takes one out, removes the cap with his teeth and spits it out of the window, and again places the instrument next to the spoon. I love the ceremony of it. Next, he takes out a folded piece of foil and opens it slowly.

“Drive easy, now.”

With the foil in a long V, he tips it over the spoon, pouring out an amount of drugs he deems acceptable. Carefully refolding the foil, he places it back into his pocket.

“Oh, before I forget,” he digs into the other pocket. “This is yours.”

I take the foil and shove it deep into my own right pocket. Am I getting my money’s worth?

He takes the spoon to his face and spits an incredibly smooth stream of saliva into it, picks up the toothpick and swirls the ingredients around. Keeping his toothpick, he takes his lighter and ignites the flame. The liquid in the spoon bubbles. When he’s happy he rehomes the lighter and toothpick to his pocket, picks up my IVF needle, and withdraws all the liquid drug from the cigarette filter. Like magic, the liquid is gone from the spoon. He flicks the remnants of the filter out of the window and puts the spoon back where it belongs, in his pocket. With the syringe in his mouth, he straightens one arm and slaps the forearm and the inside of his elbow with the opposite hand.

Bringing the needle towards his arm I ask, “I thought you had to tie it off?”

“I ain’t that fancy.”

With that, he stabs at a vein and pushes down on the plunger. Blood swirls into the syringe like a tiny ballerina, before being pushed back into his wanting body, lovesick for a dance.

He lets his head fall backwards to the comfort of my temporary front seat.

After a minute I slap his thigh, and he’s alert.

“This is good,” he says. “Be careful.”

“Is it the kind with fentanyl in it?”

“Ah, hell nah,” he says with lazy contentment. “Turn on some music, man.”

I choose Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon. I had tripped to that album with success as a teenager, so maybe he’ll feel peace and comfort from the chaotic lullabies sung by literary and musical geniuses. He smokes a cigarette and provides direction, otherwise remains quiet. Breathe, breathe in the air…

I drop him off at the gas station beside the motel and leave before he gets inside. I say thanks. That’s all that needs to be said. I won’t be seeing him again. I drive back to the nicer part of town and park my rental in the hotel parking lot. I find my room on the third floor. After kicking off my shoes and placing my purse on the desk, I put the folded foil on the bedside table, remembering I need more items from the purse. I cross the carpeted room and gather a five-dollar bill and license from my wallet. I ceremoniously place all the items in a row, just like the drug addict did.

I find the remote and click the television on. Clicking, clicking, clicking. Can I find anything that’s not political, sci-fi, or reality? I finally find the channel that plays nonstop reruns of America’s most popular comedies. I’m watching Seinfeld. Serenity now!  

After snorting a small amount           of the drug, I sit on the floor and look at the TV. I feel good. Real good. I chop another one and inhale, feeling each spec of powder catch a ride with my saliva and find its way down the slide of my throat. Swallowing, I sit back. I don’t want TV anymore. I want music. I find the Pink Floyd album on my phone again and press play. I pause the show and stare at the stiff comedians. And all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be. Run, rabbit run!

I snort another line.

Black.

Golden…No, blue. Both golden and blue. Mom?  

She says yes. She tells me to shhh. She rocks me. I’m once again a baby in her arms. I hear music. Dad?

He laughs and strums his guitar, serenading me. Noise. Beautiful, nonsensical noise. I hear screaming. Is it me? I don’t know, I can’t seem to feel my body anymore. The screams are getting louder, so familiar. I open my mouth but I’m not making a sound. I feel the hurt leaving with each scream, as if the screams are mine. So many colors, so many experiences, so many thoughts, so many doubts, so many hurts. The screams turn into long, guttural sounds, like birthing a child. But I can’t imagine that because I’m not worthy of the pain and joy of childbirth. Forever is still ahead. Terrifying forever. Lonely forever. I snort another line.

Calmer now. The child has been birthed. I take a breath.

Black.

Warm on my chest. Bitter in my mouth.

What did I do? It’s what I wanted but not what I want. I finally engage every eyelid muscle to open them a sliver. Still can’t see. I feel around and I find it. My phone. I see only blurs, streams of bitter liquid helping themselves to the exit of my lips. I feel a vertical spongy appendage along the side of the sleek smartphone.

“Siri. Text ‘My Love.’”

“What would you like to say?”

“Help. I need you. 911 now. Room 322. Hampton.”

Did I say those words or dream them? Maybe it’s too late. Listen to the music then.

The lunatic is in my head.  

Yes. Of course it is, always lives there.

There’s someone in my head and it’s not me.

I know.

I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.

Bye. Bye mom. Bye dad. Bye everybody. I’ll see you there.

Black.

****

Flashes of white. Flashes of blue. Beeping sounds. Pain.

No! No pain! But I can’t say it. Something in my throat. I can’t swallow. A woman. Scrubs. She’s saving me.

***

The diagnosis is depression. I’m told I have it severely. My brain is wired to feel things differently. To feel things more. A sunny day is blinding. A rainbow is overwhelming. Storm clouds aren’t grey, they’re black. Hard isn’t hard. It’s the white snowcapped mountain that I can’t cross. Blue in the eyes of loved ones is the sadness that I feel. I love too much. I hurt too much. It’s all too much.

White. It’s the color of all colors and it will kill me.

Black. It’s the absence of all colors and it will kill me.

The time is gone, the song is over. Thought I’d something more to say.

I do. I have plenty more to say. Each word painting the world around me, creating a vivid and unique mural that’s mine. And mine to share.