Dextromethorphan & Other Thoughts

Years ago, a doctor prescribed me a high dosage of cough medicine at a L.A. walk-in clinic. I told him I was sensitive to medicine. He probably should have known that by just looking at me. (I am tiny.) The walls were cinder blocks painted a puke green. They listened better than he did. They reasoned better than I did. I took the full dosage later that evening. My days-long, high fever had broken, but a small cough remained. I just wanted to feel better. I swallowed the prescribed dosage and went to class.

We had class in a large conference room a few buildings down from our apartments. The complex held more people and buildings than our campus. The rug was a rich chocolate brown that matched the leather chairs. I learned about L.A. architecture and L.A. history. Until I realized I could not feel my legs. I found this hilarious.

We went out to L.A. as only a handful of students. I went to learn about grass-roots, urban policy campaigns until the lead professor switched the program around and then I went to learn about writing in the entertainment industry. I didn't learn a whole lot about that, or perhaps I did and didn't like what I learned, but either way, the semester wasn't anything like we thought it would be. We had a grad student teaching us about architecture, and pretty much everything else we learned that semester, and I didn't want to make him uncomfortable by laughing too hard at the fact that I could no longer feel my legs. I counted to thirty over and over again until class ended.

When it finally ended, I used both hands to move my legs from their cross-legged position onto the ground. I worried that I would not be able to walk - I worried more about how I would explain that I could not walk than I worried about not knowing why I could not walk - but found that my legs still moved my body forward easily. I found this hilarious and burst out laughing by the time I got to the back of the room. A few people shot me uncomfortable glances. My best friend asked, "What is wrong with you?" This was not the usual way she responded to my bouts of laughter.

I managed to somewhat hold it together until we got out of the building and onto the sidewalk. I laughed so hard I cried and she kept asking, "Are you OK?" "What is so funny?" I couldn't answer. I thought my abs were on fire. I could hardly walk; I doubled over with laughter. "You don't sound like yourself," she finally commented. This sombered me enough to tell her I could not feel my legs during class, which prompted a new round of laughter. She didn't join.

When we finally got back to our apartment, I knew I had to pull myself together. I went into the bathroom as a precautionary to avoid wetting my pants and to take a few deep breaths. It took about thirty seconds before I realized I could not stop laughing. Which finally scared me. I promptly burst into tears. Lots and lots of tears. Hot rivers flowing down my face and heaving sobs.

I emerged from the bathroom almost hysterically crying. "What is wrong?!?!" She flew to my side. "I.. I... can't stop... laughing." I choked the words out and upon hearing them - burst into laughter. Again. The tears still streaming.

The next hour went on exactly like this. She finally figured out it was the cough medication I took before class. I finally figured out that going through my cell phone contacts was a bad idea. But not before she took the phone away from me. I don't remember exactly who I talked to that evening. I do remember a hushed conversation in the other room with our other roommates on the merits of an ER trip. I remember the bread she tried to feed me and spitting it back into her hand. (She shall be deemed a Saint, yes.) The glass of water got more laughs than I usually offer to a stand-up comedian. She, the brilliant thinker she is, grabbed a photo album full of our college friends and sat down on the bed with me. She spent the next twenty minutes having me identify each face in every picture, which calmed me down, focused me, and eventually lulled me to sleep.

I didn't take another pill and, miraculously (note: sarcasm), I didn't cough again for the rest of my time in L.A.

A few years later, we identified the crazy in the cough medicine as dextromethorphan. A common active ingredient in cough suppressants.

My second year of law school, I ended up sick again. (Two, maybe three, significant illnesses in a four year time span isn't too bad, right? Go-go gadget immune system.) I had a cough this time. A real cough. That disrupted my real professors and my real learning. So, I bought a children's bottle of cough medicine and took a children's dose one evening - just to be on the safe side - and took a nap.

I woke up panicked. I knew Nicole wasn't home, but I wasn't sure where she was. It became imperative that I find out immediately. I grabbed my phone and called her. She answered, told me she was running errands, would be back in a couple of hours, how was I feeling? I burst into tears. I sobbed into the phone, "It isn't fair! I have been sick for days. I am never, ever getting better. What if something is really wrong with me?" The panic in my voice prompted her to turned around, drive home, and bring me to the prompt-care at the end of the street. The intern working at the clinic diagnosed me with a bad cold and I went home and swore off cold medicine for the rest of my life. A child's dose of a child's medicine should not result in tears. Even I knew that.

I recounted this tale to a friend recently, who happens to have some knowledge of medicine etc. Apparently a high dosage of dxm is similar to an acid trip - it bonds to the brain and creates a dissociative sensation. Not being able to feel my legs? Check. I more or less knew this. But he also said a bad experience with dxm is like a bad acid trip. The brain remembers dxm and each time it enters the body, the brain will flashback to the first initial experience.* 

Oh. So that is why I was a hot mess after just the small children's dosage.

The brain remembers and acts according to the past rather than the present.

A fascinating concept until I realized, even without dxm,

I do this all the time.




*Please don't quote me on this because I have no real knowledge on anything related to biology, chemistry, psychology, etc. at all. 

The Ones

"Why do you always fall for the bad guys?" he asked me. I didn't answer for a while. I had the cover of the 3am sky and the last drink descreetly ordered without alcohol. I could say anything. We stopped at a light and I rolled down the window, waited for the car move forward again and for the wind to hit my face. We sat in silence until the light turned green.

 

I said it on an inhale, facing the window, the darkness, with a mouth full of air. "I don't."

 

He made a noise. As though he could release the air in my cheeks. It came out with a swoosh, a pffffffft, a disapproval, and a dismissal. And we were quiet again. The night air turned damp and heavy. The web of disappointment I spun hung in the space between us. Except. I wasn't disappointed.

 

"I don't." I pointed my words at him this time. "He isn't a bad guy."

 

His eyes were on the road but I'm sure he rolled them. We dropped the conversation.

 

It has been years.

 

I didn't. I don't.

 

I can say that now and point to data, charts, graphs, powerpoint presentations. Of sorts. A collander of years strain the the marrow from the bone. I have evidence.

 

Now.

 

Promises kept. Goals persued. Values upheld. All whispered secrets I always held under the ticking clock, while the crowds critiqued armor and swords.

 

I fall for the best listeners. I fall for the ones who tell the truth, who act the truth - the messy, complex-simple truths. The ones who face the peaks and the valleys with open eyes. And a sturdy hand on the center of my back. I fall for the ones who see me. Years ago and years ahead. This point in time will always be a just point in time.

 

The ones who know time folds in on itself.  

 

For all of us.

Thanksgiving 2012

This has been a year of gratitude.

"Thank you thank you thank you for this job."

Expelled into the morning air every single day I walk to the metro. Every single morning. I am so grateful for a job. In this field. Health insurance, grocery money, and student loan payments. A beginning and a place to stand with steady footing. And there wasn't a morning that went by that gratitude did not bubble up and out. I am so thankful.

"I still can't believe I actually live here. Thank you."

Murmered each night as I crawled into bed. They dissolve the long days and brighten the ones without enough hours. They fill the hours with laughter and comfort. Melodies and harmonies - we have both.They let me be me. Whole and undefined. These four walls and a roof - they are so much more. So much more than I could have hoped for. I am so thankful for these people. For these friends.

I am grateful I found some balance this year. I somehow managed to work, sleep, write, socialize, plan, travel, and spend time with friends and family with only twenty four hours each day. Without stress, anxiety, or adrenaline. That is a first for me. A first for which to be grateful. I am.

I am grateful to have found someone here, everyday, who is precisely where I am in life right now. I am grateful to have found someone to share the moments of the day, big and small.

I am grateful for the people who stand next to me from miles away. Hold me up, lift me up, let me stand on my own. I am grateful for the constant of friends and family. Always.

I am grateful for you. For the time you spend reading my sometimes too long, almost nonsensical (but I hope not quite) strings of words. For the support, encouragement, and love you leave in comments. For coming back time and time again.

Thank you.

All That Binds

That last year, I drove to Nicole's on Thursday nights. The week in the rearview mirror, I finally learned how to drive away without looking back. (It helped that Friday mornings promised to be gentle.) Some Thursday nights it was us three; some Thursday nights it was just us two. I'll always remember it as three though, no matter how inaccurately that memory paints itself.

Curled up in a pile of pillows, we watched Grey's Anatomy each Thursday night. I through finger tips and squinted eyes - ears plugged on occasion. Graphic medical scenes too often end with someone standing over me and my uncertainty as to why the room stands at a different angle. (Ask any of my high school peers whose laps I have landed in during science class.) Yet, I watched Grey's each week though my fingers (it has been a while since medical graphics have cause me to pass out) because they watched and they and I were a we. We watched.

The same we that talked each other out of hyperventilating in the bathroom before oral arguments and spent Friday nights in Whole Foods trying to decipher the federal tax code. The same we that plastered index cards with UCC clauses scribbled across them to her blank apartment wall, typically reserved for movie projections. The we that rotated seats in during our study groups when the hours in one place grew too long. The we that delivered coffee and cookies, breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the carrels we shared and didn't share and weren't ours but we sat in anyway. The we that learned to give each other pep talks in our sleep.

We were the same we that bore witness to each other falling in love and out of love and out of fear. We were the same we that crawled into each other's arms in tears at the end of trying days and flew into each other's arms at the end of best days. We danced and sang - with a band in front of us or just us around the dining room table. We laughed until we had to make a run for the bathroom and held each other when the tears wouldn't stop. We held each other up. We helped each other fly.

And we were a part of a larger we. The we of heavy books, multi-colored highlighters, complicated codes, socratic method anxieties, bloodshot eyes, late nights, early mornings, pots of coffee, briefs too long and too short, homes made in the library - the we of dream chasers. The we of sordid secrets, inside jokes, times of sheer insanity, moments of brilliance. All that binds.

We watched Grey's Anatomy on Thursday nights. We watched their we; the ties that bind - professional and personal, interwoven, desired or despised - they don't let go.

I only watched Grey's that season - that last year.

The we dissipated after that year. I dissipated the we after that year. Passive and active. A critical need to relocate the I, the first person singular. But those ties that bind don't let go.

Now, on occasion, a roommate will put on Grey's Anatomy. I watch with caution, but for reasons other than not wanting to witness the insides of a human being prodded with metal instruments. There is a pull and a dull ache and a reminder that even if I never tell another person that I went to law school, I will always be a part of that we, a part of all the we-s from those three years. There is a heart-cry for Nicole and those Thursday evenings when we lost our week in the cushions of the couch. Those Thursday nights when I felt a part of a larger whole. Like it or not, they had me and I had them.

I wonder these days, if I could make that identity all disappear entirely. I think I could. And then I wonder if I want to. Perhaps not.

But then what?


Related Post: Thursday Night Drives

{ Photo of the Day }

Stolen Summer Night

It reached at least 70 degrees today. I was a brat about it all day, "I don't think fall actually exists in DC." On the way home from work, I forgot to get off at my metro stop, hopped off at the next one, and walked home in the dark. My coat unnecessarily buttoned. Unnecessarily on. I had been distracted - all day. Unsettled. Off-balance. And I thought fall always meant crisp air and warm clothing. 

I crossed my street and started up the walkway to my front porch. They were sitting under the porch light with a guitar, a book, a bottle of wine. I changed, located dinner, a wine glass, and joined them. Recently, Monday nights have guitar strings and melodic voices. A glass of wine. Harmony. Tonight we shared a few hours of a stolen summer night on a mid-November evening. I always thought fall meant crisp air and warm clothing. Tonight, I'm so glad it doesn't.

Lessons in Honesty

My phone buzzes twice; I pull it out of my pocket. Breath held as I long-await a response of no significance and too much significance, with too much space in the between. "Hey I love you," the screen reads. Tears well up and threaten to spill. Amid these strangers and their casual conversations.

"It must be more than an interest," he comments, "you must have a devotion." I think of the years wrapped up in, held by, rocked by, steadied by this quiet love. This quiet love that holds my hand and leads the way when all I see is the chaos of my life swirling, when I close my eyes and wait to collapse. Should I, I should, shout this from the mountain tops.? Or at least, these days, to myself in a strong whisper: I love I want I care I am devoted. Honest declaration. If only in a strong whisper. Begin here.

After years, this is, perhaps, the only place I can begin. This is, perhaps, the safest place to begin.

It had been lifetimes since cologne-crushed tears fell. Burning, hot and acidic. A litmus test that would read: eyes diverted and hands dropped, the heart that has clawed its way into the throat plummets - falls into vast empty space.

To be shocked by these acid tears, this unexpected litmus test result - I have been eagerly dishonest with myself. A self-preservation method with an acidity level that eats away faster than realized. I didn't realize. Any of it.

She, too many miles away, practiced in letting me cry until the red rash appears on the tops of my cheeks and supporting my weight and my head on her shoulder, feels just that - too many miles away. A seasoned expert on me, she knows it is coming before I do. She holds my honesty when I am not strong enough to carry it.

I'll announce in a strong whisper to an empty room that I am building a career in a field I love. I love I want I care I am devoted. Honestly. Tangled or purposefully intertwined, the rest I cannot claim in a whisper to an empty room. I'm drowning in the divide between no significance and too much significance, filled with my own tears, into which I tripped and fell because I wasn't paying close enough attention. To my heart as it squeezed up and out of my rib cage trying to get to his. To how high it had climbed. To how far down of a drop it faced.

"Hey I love you," she texted me because she knew and she knows. And now, at least I know.  All of it.

{ Photo of the Day }

Untitled, a photo by Emily_Katherine on Flickr.

Just Caught

It feels familiar now. The grooves of the metro platform, the greeting each day "Good morning, Miss Emily," the strumming guitars before bed. I have less to prove now. To myself, to this city. Four seasons passed and more. A life lived here. I, too, walk by my old buildings and old memories. From years ago and days past. What we once were. And what we still are.

Slam dunk and strike out. This balance never seems to change. What I chase and what I catch. How much I wish to be, just caught.

Things Forgotten

 I forgot my camera. My moleskine. My pajamas.

*

I walked through the doorway and slung a string of expletives against the back wall. They shattered and crashed. Landed among the piles of life I suddenly, and not so suddenly, wanted to shred. Midway through a sigh, I returned to my day-long chant, "Universe, give me a sign. Please, a sign." I finished the sigh still not sure I believed in signs. I looked around and over my shoulder, at the anger and frustration piled and dripping down the back wall, like raw eggs slammed and cracked and dripping yolks on pristine white paint. What more of a sign did I want?

I decided not to decide. Too soon, too risky, too scary. But. I arrived with questions. Questions they couldn't answer. So I began to walk. Too hard and too fast, I ticked off blocks, climbed stairs, flashed smiles I could never stand behind, wrote down names and addresses, covered 80 city blocks; my feet slamming the ground. You must want this, I noted as though I could make an objective observation.

I arrived as the sun set. I turned the corner to a forgotten building, suddenly remembered and familiar. I was 16. I had already decided this. Declared this. Expected this. Entirely different yet the same. This building entirely different yet the same. It washed over me quickly: here's my sign. Undeniable. My feet slowed.

I'll look back and see them arriving all at once: the sign I wasn't sure I believed in, the answers, and the decision. Life is too short to decide not to decide, I finally acknowledged. And I made the decision I should have made the moment I realized I had forgotten my camera, my moleskine, my pajamas. Myself.