The Death of Small Creatures Read Online Free PDF Page A

stuff of which I am comprised. What I thought was decreased stress has perhaps manifested from medically induced self-distortion. Who the hell am I now? Who was I before? Do I risk becoming so medicated through both prescription drugs and DXM that I may never find my way back again?
    On another note, I took that job earlier this week, working weekends at the library up at Royal Roads University, but I called and retracted my acceptance of the position today. Leigh is going to kill me. I am so completely fucked financially. But I simply cannot go back to that kind of work, anything resembling office administration. After seven years of it I have reached my saturation point, even though circumstances are dire, desperate even.
    I have a student loan payment due on the very near horizon and other bills pending. There are still those parking tickets. I just bounced a cheque for twenty-eight dollars. Sorry
Prism
magazine. And I turned down a job?
    But I am not well enough to work.
    What would happen if I just fell silent, if I became dumb and mute for the remainder of my life? Would this be a perfect defence or a life wasted?
    I am tired of talking, tired of trying to prove myself, tired of feeling like a complete zero.
    I had the weirdest epiphany the other day; it was so ordinary and obvious that it can scarcely be called an epiphany, but it was.
    I thought,
Maybe I can just choose to be happy
.
    November 4, 2008
    I saw the neurologist today, Dr. Barale. Nice guy. It was kind of pointless. He mentioned the abnormality on my frontal lobe. I keep meaning to ask if it’s the left or the right lobe. I asked him what the spot on my brain means, what it means to me?
    He said, “That’s a good question.”
    But the question went unanswered. He said it was inconclusive, but again asked me if I’d had any seizures. I said no, couldn’t help feeling that everyone is completely off-track where my mental health is concerned. I have never had a seizure in my life. Why are we talking about seizures? I just want to be happy.
    He has scheduled me to have an MRI. I will have to wait for three months. And he’s going to do another EEG to further understand the spot on my frontal lobe.
    It was all so unsatisfactory.
    November 11, 2008
    Sometimes when I hear a car screech to a halt, I have this urge to know the exact pressure between the tires and the road, to understand precisely the force applied, the resistance created, everything working together to make the car stop. I crave it, to understand the friction.
    My desire to know these various unknowable frictions, forces, interactions and so on is ultimately rooted in and aggravated by the unknowable dimensions of death, or rather of what happens after death. I search for evidence of some ultimate consequence at the end of the line, of some ultimate consequence (Is there a God?) that makes the randomness relevant.

    I mean, I’m getting high on cough medicine. I take it in order to feel altered, as I’ve said so many times, because the ordinary quality of my sober living environment is intolerable. The early signs that you are overdosing on DXM is in fact the getting-high part. In other words, if you are high from DXM, you are overdosing. A common short-term effect from using DXM, for me, is disassociation, that out-of-body sensation. Someone described this feeling as having her soul ripped from her body. It’s not a relaxing experience, so it is in essence counterproductive to my desire to feel positively altered. But it is preferable to the horror of this depression. It’s a cycle. I get high. It terrifies me. I come down. I sober up. I get depressed. So I get high again.
    DXM is also a depressant (and yet it is described as an opiate, similar to morphine). It can suppress the central nervous system, you can stop breathing, your heart races, your temperature spikes. Long-term effects include brain damage. I’ll stop there because, well, it’s