Sam Paul - Why I Committed Suicide

I’ve been calling Negro and Fats again lately. Jenifer is still in the hospital, progressing by leaps and bounds physically, but the doctors say the surgery they had to do on her neck is going to keep her from ever walking again. She can’t fucking feel anything from the stomach down and the mental shit between us is not connecting. But I really don’t care about any of that as long as she remembers us. It’s been an eternity though. I’ve taken as many trips out to Tyler as I can. My parents won’t drive me out there anymore and they won’t let me stay there with her. The most they’ll do is drop me off at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Dallas and get me a ticket. I’ve gotten on and off at the small smelly station more times than I can count now and there’s not really a perceptible pattern of people that actually want to go to Tyler. It’s usually just me and a few military personnel on leave going home for a few days. From the bus stop I walk a couple of miles in the heat to Mother Francis Hospital. Sometimes I can hitchhike; having a broken arm induces sympathy from strangers at least.

I watch Jen in physical therapy and realize that there is just so much I am not a part of now, but I honestly want to learn. I still can’t quite come to grips with being responsible for hurting her this badly and I’m getting more suicidal everyday even though seeing her mend is rewarding. God, she’s still so beautiful. I shouldn’t start with the dope again but it makes me feel a little better and Jenifer understands.

I felt so lonely that I called my ex-girlfriend Melanie the other night so I could have someone to talk to. I think I might have been secretly hoping she would hang up on me and make me feel even worse but she came right over and I snuck out of the house to sit in her car and talk. It made me feel better but I felt like I was cheating on Jenifer. I hope she can forgive me, I just needed to talk to someone.

“Sam, you must be feeling better, so you have to get a job.”

I only agreed because I need something to do besides dope to make myself feel better. No one in my family sees the depression. I’m either an Oscar-caliber actor or they are ignoring it. It’s pathetic really; I’m feeling so much worse. I didn’t write about the experience of moving our stuff out of the apartment in Denton because it hurt too much. All the stuff that was ours for so many years is now separated again and it just feels wrong to me on so many levels.

I’ve been hanging out with Melanie some but she’s not a good substitute for Jenifer. Nobody is. I talked about the accident with her some more and cried again. It’s embarrassing but therapeutic. None of my other friends know how to act around me now. Dammit, we were friends, remember!

Everything I do reminds me of what has happened. My refuge is doing smack, which takes all the bad away but it ends up leaving me more depressed later. I got a job working as a chef’s assistant, a sous chef, at the Doubletree Hotel. I didn’t want to have anything more to do with food service ever again but it was an easy gig to get since Melanie works there as a cocktail waitress. Thankfully I work mostly the earlier shifts back in the depths of their huge kitchen and I don’t have to see her too often.

Jenifer is supposed to be moved to Dallas for therapy soon.

Isn’t life supposed to change in incrementally inconsequential ways? I hate my job, I’ve been working the early morning shift which starts at 5 a.m. and it’s the only shift I specifically requested not to be on. Everything is fucked up, the only thing to do with my paychecks is spend them on more H, so I do.

There’s nobody to go out with, and my best friend is in the hospital. At least she’s closer now, doing physical therapy at Baylor Hospital in Dallas, so I should get to visit more. Since my cast came off it’s hard for her to be so weak and see me relatively uninjured. I get to visit more now. Sometimes we’re actually alone for a while, which is nice. She’s worried about me and I think she’s worried I won’t love her anymore but I hope I’ve allayed those fears. I can finally see her starting to have to cope with the reality of the situation she’s in, now that the doctors are decreasing the big mind numbing meds she’s been on. I don’t know how to help her with this, hopefully there will be more of a support system in the rehab facility where she’s at than I had. She asks me to bring her smack now, sometimes begs me, and I guess I will. How can I be a hypocrite when it’s my own escape from reality and it’s likely been the only thing keeping me going for the past few months? I brought her the sequel to Jurassic Park to read, I’m never allowed to be in there with her enough to get to read to her like I want to, like I need to, but maybe her mom will read it to her. I often show up late to visit her and I can tell she’s getting a lot of flak from her folks about it.

There’s probably nothing worse for her than having to defend me to her parents when they can all tell I’m fucking up again. The dopeman makes me late sometimes, but usually I just get lost trying to find her building in Dallas. There’s only one good way to get down there and the ever-changing road construction adds so many detours and delays that by the time I find the newest route to the hospital everyone usually looks on me with disappointed eyes. “Don’t you see Jenifer, I want to be there with you? I want to sleep there every night and take care of you in your hour of need like I should but I can’t. I’m fucking pathetic.” Really though, what will her family let me do? With her mom there 24/7 I’ve been nothing morethan an outside casual visitor since this all happened.

I got fired for fucking up my time card at work one day when I tried to use my lunch hour to cash my check and buy some H. It didn’t even work, but I don’t fucking care. I’m tired of waking up at 4 in the morning to chop endless mounds of vegetables and prepare gourmet meals for other people to eat. I wasn’t doing very well there anyway; I would fall asleep while cutting vegetables and all the Mexican ladies who work in the bakery section of the kitchen would giggle, probably betting on how long it would take before I lost a finger.

One day I didn’t have a needle so I tracked down a diabetic and asked her if she had a spare. She was nice, about it, but after I left she called security and I had to get into this big ordeal and tell my boss I was a diabetic. Did you know there are two types of diabetes and only one uses needles? I think I guessed the right type but later on that week the messed up time card was enough of a third strike to get me canned.

Melanie’s pissed off because someone broke into her apartment and stole some buckets of change from her brother, but I won’t comment on that. She was starting to think that my loneliness for company was a prelude to a re-romance, despite my direct insistence to the contrary. I honestly never wanted to, but we ended up having awkward sex in her closet late one night and I came after only about two seconds, so whatever image she had of me as being a good lover went out the window along with any romantic intentions. So now I’m technically a cheating junkie fuckhead bastard, but it really didn’t mean anything. I hadn’t even masturbated since the accident so I wasn’t sure if my equipment still worked. I guess it didn’t, so I have another reason to feel just super great about myself. I’m sorry, but the woman I love is in the hospital, I need her more than anyone and it has nothing to do with sex.

I still manage to make it down to see Jen about every day but it’s hard. Sometimes I get too fucked up and embarrass her in front of her parents. I don’t want them there, I just want to lay down by the bed and put my head in her lap without having to worry about the delicacies of conversation. I’ve also managed to bring her heroin a few times, she’s got this tube in her arm that is permanently stuck in the vein so whenever the nurses need to give her meds they can inject whatever into the end of the tube instead of having to stick her again. It works out nicely to inject a little cooked H in the tube and it even makes Jen feel better for a while.