Baked

I got a voicemail at 3pm yesterday that in a low and paranoid voice goes like this “Hey, it’s me, I’m freaking out right now, I’m scared, I want you here, please come here, please come, I’m scared, and freaking out” I called my friend right away when I hear the voicemail “are you okay??”, “no, I’m freaking out, and very scared”, “what happened?”, “you know how my husband kept telling me to get high with him? Well I’m very high right now, and he got me very high and left, and I’m very scared”, “Man, that’s why you don’t do this shit, so, you’re alone now?”, “yeah, and I don’t want to be, I’m scared”, “I can’t come over, I’m stuck on the other side of town, and it’s snowing really bad outside. Just go lay down and you’ll be fine” , “I’ll never do this again, just tell me what to do to get back to normal, I wanna get back to normal, now, I wanna be normal again”, “well, just go lay down, I’ll call and check on you every little bit”, “why did he get me so high and leave? Do you think he’s up to something? Is my door locked? Where are my keys? Did he take a key? Maybe he’s hiding in the closet, or the bathroom, let me check”, “no one is out to get you, just go lay down now OKAY?”, “Okay” click.
“Hello?”I answered my friend’s call 5 minutes later and she said whispering “can I sleep?”, “what???”, “can I sleep? Am I gonna die if I slept so high?”, “no, you won’t die, go sleep”, my friend started talking to herself while on the phone with me still “I’m very cold, why am I cold? What is this? Snow?? Oh, I opened all the windows for the smell to go out, oh, and the fan is on too, I have snow on my cheek! that’s why I’m cold, I’m sitting with the snow flying in and the fan is on, I’m freezing”, “HONEY, HELLO?”, “yeah?”, “turn the fan off, and close the windows, jees it’s 18 degrees outside”, “Ok, and can I sleep?, “yeah, you can, go to bed and lay down, just close the window, and turn your heat up first”, “okay”, “Ok, you’re gonna close the windows? And go lay down?”, “Yeah”, “Alright, I’ll call you in a bit to check on you, ok?” no reply. “HELLO?? ARE YOU THERE?”, “I’m sorry, I’ll never get high again, if I survive this, I wanna be normal again, I just wanna go back to normal”, “Ok hun, just go to bed and you’ll wake up normal”, “I’m scared, I wanna sleep, I’m very tired and sleepy, but I’m too scared to sleep”, “It’s alright, nothing is gonna happen to you, you’re just paranoid cause you’re too high, just go lay down, where are you now? Are you in bed yet?”, “No, I’m in the corner of my kitchen with my back to the wall, in case someone comes through the door, then I’d see them”, “No one is coming through the door, don’t stand there like a scared mouse, go to bed”, “But if they come..”, “No one is coming, you’re safe”, “I’m so sorry, mom would be so mad, and dad, if I die like this, what will I say?”, “You won’t die, you’re just stoned, go to bed”, “If someone wants to kill me or rob me, they can, I have no power, I’m completely fragile, defenseless, and entirely incapable of defending myself, a knife though..”, “NO, NO, YOU DON’T NEED A KNIFE, JUST GO LAY DOWN, shit, I wish I can drive over there, it’s the freakin' snow! LISTEN, GO LAY DOWN, NO ONE IS COMING, NO ONE WANTS TO KILL YOU, JUST GO TO BED”, I start yelling at my friend cause now I’m scared she might do something to herself. “Okay…” click.
I called my friend a couple more times that evening, but she didn’t pick up, I was mad at her husband, how could he leave her alone like that? He knew she never got high before? How could he leave her like so? I’m sure he too was high, but he’s used to it. I called her again and again the following morning, we were supposed to go back to work after the Christmas holidays that morning, she doesn’t answer, so I drive over there. I knock maybe 4 times, then I hear her footsteps, oh, thank god she’s a live, she opens the door in a bath robe, her hair all messy, her eyes shot red, and looking like she has no idea where she is. “Hey! Are you ok?”, “yeah”, “you feeling better?”, “a little, I’m sorry I scared you last night”, “It’s ok..” I’m looking her deep in the eye to see if she’s really there, but she isn’t, “I’m still high”, “I know, but you’re not paranoid anymore?”, “No, I’m just sick, and mad at myself”, “It’ll be okay, just don’t get high!”, she nods agreeing with me, then walks to the kitchen sink, “I was so hungry, I got half a cake that I had in the fridge, tore it to four pieces with my bare hands, put it in the microwave, then washed it down with tab water! for some reason I didn’t have the time to make tea, so I shoved pieces of cake into my mouth, and swallowed it with water, cause my mouth was so dry I couldn’t chew! It tasted like shit, I almost puked, but I wanted to eat to get better, back to normal” I listened to her trying hard to spell out the words, while her eyes are staring at space. “That wasn’t enough, so I made a hot dog, burned it, then watered it down with stale bread”, “you’re better now?”, “I guess” she didn’t look at me once while talking, just gazing off around the place.
“It felt like I was narrating my own story, I heard my voice narrating all that I was doing, I saw what I was doing as if I watching one of those disturbing, fantasy films. I would forget what I was doing till my eye falls on it, I forgot the food in the microwave till I saw the light flashing, I forgot why I was holding the matches till I saw the candle in my other hand, I forgot why I had the phone to my ear till someone yelled “HELLO” on the other end. It is madness, you feel like you have no control whatsoever. If you’re, by any mean, a control freak, this will fuck you up! You have no power over any of your sense. I was staring at my image in the walking mirror for a good 10 minutes, then realized the white around my eyeballs, was brown, dark brown. I thought this here will be my end. I grabbed my video camera, n shot a video of myself, to remind myself NEVER to do this to myself again. I had nothing to say, just looked at the camera, and cried. I wanted to document the horribleness of it all, I grabbed my pen and wrote every pathetic, weird, paranoid and self destructive word that came to my head. I wrote an apology to my dear ones, a prayer to god, some words that I can’t make out, God I’m still high, I can see and hear everything, I can hear the fan, the light, the snow falling, the next door T.V, everything. I want it to stop, I just wanna be normal again”
I look at my friend with tearful eyes, I felt so bad for her pain, “it’s ok, just don’t do it again” I said, “oh, I won’t, I can’t, see, I forgot to tell you, this whole experience that happened to me last night, was a bad case of OD, a fatal OD.”

Noha Elsewaify,
December 27 2007