Free One Way or Another by Nikki McWatters Page A

sex with me the way another star might give an autograph? The more I analysed my two Poetic adventures, the lower my self-esteem sank. An inner voice taunted that I was about as meaningful to the Poet as a used condom – useful for a time but then distasteful, good for nothing but the rubbish bin. I began to hate him with a strange intensity, laced with passion and desire and deep, cancerous pain.
    By the July school holidays, an uneasy anaesthesia had settled upon me. Nothing felt good anymore. There was nothing to look forward to or hope for. Sleep was my only escape and yet I would wake in the silence of the early morning and stare at nothing for hours on end. Once my sleepless hours had been filled with fantasies about sex, travel and fame. Now I spent them wading through brain fog.
    Tiny sores like mosquito bites had appeared on my arms and legs and I picked at them relentlessly, digging at my flesh until they became infected and puss-filled. I stopped teasing my hair and walked with the hunched shoulders of a chronic asthmatic. Acne decorated my face and my eyes were hemmed with red. The smallest thing would bring on tears – a snap from my mother, a sigh from my father, a jibe from my sister or a concerned question from friends, all of whom I tried to hide from. Food bored me and I began sneaking cigarettes from my parents and smoking them behind the house when they were out. I detested smoking but I detested not smoking more. I moped about, showering only when it became absolutely necessary and picking at dry toast instead of real food. I think my parents assumed it was all some histrionic teenage nonsense.
    I tried to slice through my numbness by cutting myself deeply. A dull sensation radiated up my arm and I watched a rivulet of blood slide down over my wrist. There was still no pain.
    *
    Not with a bang but a whimper. Perhaps the most pivotal decisions are made, not in the heat of the moment or during a profound epiphany, but from a place of simple surrender. One day I woke up and the sludge just seemed a little sludgier. The heavy sense of foreboding had become an ounce too burdensome and so I raised my hands to heaven and said, ‘Enough.’
    There was no cry for help, no adolescent bravado, just a submissive acceptance of what was for the best. I did not beat my chest and demand to be released from my suffering. I simply determined one Friday evening that my lack of élan was no longer tolerable and I decided to die.
    While my mother bathed the two youngest children and Dad sat in the family room, ears plugged into Billy Joel, I undertook a stealth mission to my parents’ medicine cabinet. It was a pharmaceutical treasure chest, holding all manner of anti-depressants and sleeping tablets. Many had never been opened, as though somebody had filled prescriptions but never taken the drugs. Perhaps they were someone else’s back-up plan.
    I pocketed about twenty pills, a cocktail of Serepax and Valium and something else that started with the letter S. I took them to my room with a jug of water and a glass. A soft feeling of serenity washed over me and I smiled. For the first time since Tweed Heads I felt at peace.
    My desk was buried under a mountain of schoolwork. The exams were approaching that would supposedly set the course of my future. I was happy to let all that go.
    One by one, I swallowed the bitter little dots. Goodbye, Oscar. Bon voyage, Hollywood and New York, New York. Arrivederci, rock stars. Blurred and hazy. Mum walking in. Getting me to my feet. I fell heavily to the bed. Voice. Mum. Angry. Trouble. Dark in the city. Night is a wire. Oblivion.
    *
    Two days later, I came back from the dead. As Lazarus I had one hell of a headache. Dragging my heavy carcass from the sweat-soaked bed, I opened my curtains and could not tell what time of day it was. Pale blue haloed the gum trees beyond the neighbour’s fence. Dawn or dusk? My tongue was swollen and limped about my mouth,