Tremors

A/N: This isn’t supposed to be well written. It just kind of accumulated over the course of about a day, and so is one of those self-absorbed, melodramatic, self-pitying stories that people post because…well, actually, I don’t know why I want to post this. You have been warned.


You can’t find the bottle. This worries you for two reasons: one, because it means the parts of last night you don’t remember are more complicated (and therefore much worse) than you’d like, and two, because you may need it again tonight. You’re trembling, your joints are shaking and your fingers beat a staccato rhythm that has nothing to do with pressing these keys. That’s always the worst part of the hangover, isn’t it? The part when you’re trembling inside. On the surface, it’s just a morning tremor but inside it’s an ache, a dull, thick fear that will hold you close all day, staying with you long after the headache is gone, long after your stomach stops trying to crawl up your gullet and out. It’s this trembling that made you consider sticking to coke today, but you know that won’t happen. It never does.

You skim back over that last sentence and realise that it makes you sound like an utter alcoholic, as if you’re badly in need of twenty eight days in some strange facility in Arizona and a handful of AA meetings. That is not the case. You don’t drink all day, you don’t even drink every day, it’s just that when you do get drunk, you do so excessively. You either come home stone cold sober or blind drunk, stumbling through the door and shouting slurred words you won’t remember in the morning. You never remember getting home, no matter how simple the process may have been. You must find the bottle.

Some people drink to become sociable, some people drink to sleep, some people drink to forget and, though you’ve claimed to be drinking for all these reasons, deep down inside you know you drink to do damage. This trembling, this hideous shaking inside is somehow part of the kick – there’s a perverse joy that comes from knowing that you disgraced yourself publicly and are now being punished by your own body for that transgression. You feel safe because even if the students whose flat you ended up in were so sweet, so forgiving, you know that your body will remember your sins and punish you in the morning. And now you sound like some bizarre Catholic sado-masochist. You never expected to like hangovers, because the appeal of the cuts on your arm (only a few of them, honestly) was not that they hurt or bled but that you got away with making them. You like them because people do not know that you made them and that is, in some perverse way, an achievement. Maybe that’s why you like not remembering – you’re keeping secrets from yourself.

There was an interview in a magazine with a rock star. He said he fucking loved cocaine but knew it was very bad for him and so abstained. You don’t really like vodka but you know it’s very bad for you and so drink it all the time. When you stopped getting hangovers you started mixing drinks, started slapping notes down on the bar where they served £1 shots and asking what was strongest. You have been violently sick in that bar, red-brown filth spewing out of you and pooling in the corner of the room. Thinking back now, you like that because it makes you feel clean. All the “filth” was driven out of you, you were purged and fresh and…well, maybe you only think this now because you called it filth, because at the time you just thought it was odd the sick was red, because sambuca is a clear liquid. Mind you, you’d had red wine earlier, three bottles of the good (cheap) kind, and so maybe it was that that was gone. But that would mean that the sambuca, the tequila, the neon cocktails are all still inside you doing unwelcome damage.

You have the sudden urge to be sick. Unfortunately, for you being sick is a long, complex, emotional process and you have your first lecture in thirty minutes. Maybe you should try and have breakfast again? No. No, you tried that this morning and after two spoonfuls you couldn’t stand the sight of it any more. You put it in the communal fridge, where it is slowly turning to mush. Ironically, breakfast was the only meal you ate yesterday. At first it was because you weren’t hungry, but then it was because you were hungry but no-one knew. Like the cuts, an achievement. Plus it meant you couldn’t remember after the tiniest bit of your vodka, which would be a good thing if only you could find the bottle. There’d be lots left.

Wanna get drunk. No bottle.

Wanna get sick. No time.

Cuts? Cuts are quick.

Not proper deep cuts that coat your arms in blood and leave scars, you’re not that fucked up. Just shallow scratches which are turned swollen and red by the dirt on the blades (blades which you refuse to clean specifically because they make the cuts look dramatic). Looking at that sentence, you realise you’re making it sound like a bid for attention. It’s not. You can’t stand people who self-harm as a fashion statement. You hide them away, cover them up so that people don’t see them. But you like to look at them, would take pictures if you had a camera, because they’re pretty and you’re proud. So fucking proud. They’re like your children. And if someone is observant enough to ask, you get to lie to them. You tell them convincing, plausible lies and they believe you. That’s an achievement. That’s control. That’s a cool thing.

So. Cuts.

Ooops. At first it just looked like you were denting the skin, turning it white and scratched, so you did more. But then you realised that the first ones were bleeding, that they were thin but really quite deep and people are gonna ask because there are so many, but you won’t have a convincing lie. You’re beginning to panic now, because the lecture’s in ten minutes and you have to get there - have to work out where “there” is – but this fucking cut, the fucking tiniest, ugliest fucking cut won’t stop bleeding and you hate it, you hate the look of your blood and the feel of it on you. They’re so much better when they’re drying up and healing. A row of neat brown lines with red edges, that’s what you want. Neat little lines to look at and conceal and be secretly proud of. But it won’t stop bleeding, so you stick a plaster on it and roll down your sleeves, keep your hands cradled in your lap all day so nobody sees them. Leave your coat on, even in the seminar room where there are twenty of you crammed together, roasting in each other’s heat before you found out it was a Physics lecture and you were in the wrong place (fucking embarrassing ‘cos you walk out red looking like a stupid bitch).

You try not to talk too much because you talk as if you’re directing everyone around you, great sweeping, flapping puppet-gestures and sketches on the air that accompany and explain the convoluted stories you’re trying to tell. You can’t talk without moving your arms. It’s a physical impossibility. And if you don’t want the world and his wife to ask “How did you do that?”, then you have to keep your sleeves down and your arms still. You’ve been very quiet recently. Not that anyone’s noticed, because you’re at Uni with Uni people who don’t know you. They went to other schools, schools that taught them how to be confident and privileged and not ashamed of their intelligence (they were all there, discussing fucking plays and admitting they knew answers. What kind of person does that comfortably? You never admit you know what you’re talking about, you just don’t, it’s an utter no and you don’t understand how any of the minds behind these new faces work).

Mind you, if you were at home you wouldn’t tell anyone because you’re always the one who is told. You’re the one who listens and comforts and cradles as they cry into the fabric of your shirt, so you can’t tell them because then they’ll stop telling you and you’ll have nothing to offer any more. But it’s okay, because you’re only a bit bad and everything will be fine.

You think you’d like to do it on the back of your neck, a row of neat brown lines that you could run your fingertips over and appreciate who indentical and perfect they were without having to see the bloody parts. Of course, you have no co-ordination so the vertical row of horizontal lines you see in your mind’s eye would turn out as some crooked, zig-zagged mess. You don’t like it when they’re messy, then they make you feel sick and stupid and strange and you can’t wait for them to go away. It’s strange, but you look at them more when they’re ugly, even though you can’t stand the sight of them. So the neck is out, but you still feel like doing more. After all, it’s been all day and you didn’t make any cuts yesterday (though you did get don’t-remember drunk, which you may again tonight because there’s a party where drinks are free and a cupboard full of food you have neglected to eat). But making more’s just silly because you’re going to post this, you feel the need, and doing the whole real-time-cutting thing is disgustingly melodramatic and makes it look like you’re crying for help, which you’re not, you’re fine, you’re perfectly fine it’s just sometimes words have to come out and sometimes things happen to stop them, so you won’t need to do this if you get drunk. And you want to get drunk because really posting this is just stupid, it makes you no better than the friend who rang you in the night and counted pills down the phone to you. It’s the same selfishness, and it bothers you that it’s in you. Alas, you are not deluded enough to think that cutting will magically get that out of you, that all your troubles will just bleed away and float up into the ether where they can do no harm. Bullshit. You don’t have any troubles. You have no reason to complain and besides, you only do cuts ‘cos they’re pretty.

You’re debating food. Well, you’re contemplating going to get some because you are hungry and cold and think if you curled on the sofa with a big plate of microcrap then you might feel better. You might have to, y’know, interact with people though, which really isn’t something you want to do. You can hear someone moving about down there, and someone further along moving into their room, and you so don’t want to talk. You will get food if the kitchen’s empty. You’ll make an excuse to go out and check, and if it’s empty (which you know it’s not) you’ll go get food. Or not. You can hear them talking and you’re scared. Bollocks. You should do it. You should so go down and talk and make friends and have social skills (which you can fake but do not really possess). You could do that if you wanted, for sure. It wouldn’t be so hard.

Your mum just rang, and she’s been saying all these things, all these “look after yourself”s and “make sure you eat”s and you were all, “yeah I am, will do, yeah…” while you tried not to laugh because you have no intention of looking after yourself. It’s fun to do damage, to be shaking inside even though it makes you miserable it seems the right thing to do because that’s what’s right, it’s fitting, it works and oh my God, the shaking inside that you’ll do when you see your friends and don’t speak to them of this. Oh my God, the shaking inside.