I Don't Want to Be Crazy Read Online Free PDF Page B

rather, an annoying pressure.
Not quite a throb, more of a twinge,
but more than a twinge.
Not quite pain, more like an uncomfortability.
Not sure exactly where, though.
Every time I try to pinpoint it,
it disappears.
I can’t stand the mystery of it.
I hate the unknown and the ambiguous.
    Sitting in the doctor’s waiting room,
I wonder what has taken root in my belly.
Maybe it’s a cyst on my ovaries.
I’ve heard they can grow to the size of a grapefruit.
    The doctor looks like a grandfather
and I am embarrassed to have to spread my legs for him.
He pushes down on my belly from the outside,
reaches inside me and pushes up.
At the end of the exam
the doctor reports that I am fine.
    Around two A.M. Nate is on top of me
and the phone is ringing.
Nate picks up and passes the phone to me.
It’s my dad.
All he says is I better be home in ten minutes.
Nate makes a joke about not wanting to drive me home,
says my dad will be at the door with a shotgun.
At first I am scared of what my parents are going to say,
but by the time I get my clothes on I am furious.
    My parents and I have the same fight we’ve had for years.
When I stay out late, it keeps my father up,
which keeps my mother up.
Then I have to hear from my mother
how tired it makes my father
and how he has to get up for work at six A.M.
I am eighteen.
What do they expect me to do?
To not go out?
To be home at midnight?
    Why is it my fault if they can’t sleep?
Plenty of parents manage to fall asleep
while their children are out of the house.
I can’t live like this.
I will never live at home again.
    I go upstairs and get ready for bed.
I wash my face,
take out my contacts,
put on my glasses,
and pick up my pills.
I’ve been taking Klonopin for more than six months.
I wonder if it still helps,
or if I have gotten better on my own,
or if it is a combination of the two.
    Being with Nate is hard.
There is no accountability.
He pours himself into me—
tells me about his family, his fears,
how depressed he was before we knew each other.
He expects me to hold the weight
and then disappears for days.
    I call Claire every morning
even though I know she’s already left for work.
I like leaving her long messages
that she’ll hear when she gets home.
    Today Claire picks up after only two rings.
Everything she says sounds rehearsed.
    “Joelle went into cardiac arrest yesterday afternoon.
Her boyfriend found her.
I woke up at 6:45 this morning,
the same time she died.
I just knew.
The doctors don’t know why she died.
The police think she overdosed,
so they took her journals.
    The doctors think it was meningitis
so they made us take some pills.
No one has any answers.”
    I ask her if she wants me
to come into the city right now.
She says, only if I need to.
I tell her, that’s not the point,
Joelle was one of her best friends
and if she needs me now
I’ll leave work and get on the next train.
I cannot believe that she is worried about my feelings.
I don’t ask again.
I tell her I’m walking out the door
and will be there in forty minutes.
    Walking to the train station,
I do not feel my feet hit the sidewalk.
It is just after noon and the sun is so strong
that there are sweat stains spreading under my arms.
Time isn’t moving normally.
I feel like it takes forever to lift one foot off the ground,
bend my knee, and place my foot down again.
    On the train, I sit with my cheek pressed against the cool
window.
    Long Island races past me, then Queens,
then the web of black cables that leads to the train yards.
When the train descends into the tunnels of Penn Station,
the windows become mirrors
and I can see how swollen and red my face is.
    Days later, at the funeral,
Claire and I laugh through tears.
Joelle would have never worn the white ruffled blouse
and gold cross that her parents dressed her in.
Claire says this is not how she will remember Joelle.
Her face isn’t the right shape or color.
But Claire insists that it’s better this way—
that seeing Joelle like