I wanted to spontaneously combust at work earlier, standing behind the cash register, time ticking too slow out there and too fast in the system, stress crushed me under it's heel and was proceeding to rub me out. Every customer was slowing me down more than the last, and I was cutting them off mid sentence as they spelled out their first names--"3 letters is all I need" felt like my mantra, all I need to find you in my system, all I need to sell you the pills and get the fuck out of here.
Everyone always wants to tell me their life story. I was more than not in the mood. It seems like anyone outside the plexiglass partition has all the time in the world, and assumes that I do too. But the company times every activity I do there, from how fast I fill an RX, pick up a phone call, scan your rewards card, have your meds in stock, and how many more Rxs I can get you to fill--even if you don't need them. It boggles my mind that each person who calls in starts the conversation with a huge prologue before ever giving me his name or date of birth; he is always inevitably offended once I ask, as if my interruption had ruined his tale of woe and shitty doctors offices, mazes of insurance, transferring pharmacies, or some combination of all 3. Other people call in immediately on the attack, ready to curse out whoever picks up, until it becomes apparent whichever one of us who picks up has no idea what she is talking about. Usually, our confusion doesn't faze any of them, they enjoy a chance to fuck with someone who has no choice but to listen.
I felt my tears welling up as I sold some impotent 35 year old guy his medication to help him produce more sperm; his eyes looked straight through me, I had forgotten to act less like a human and more like a placid, Hindu cow.
Now I'm safe with a cigarette in hand, leaning back in a chair in front of my apartment, looking down at the courtyard below. My mind is left to crave only oxy and opana, forget food or sleep, all I need are drugs. Like my customers, I'm hooked on each new rx you give me, doc, and all I want are more.
I know I'm only supposed to take 3 oxys a day, I'm doing better at following instructions so that the bottle lasts me the full month this time around. That way I'm not wasting hundreds of dollars on some poor old ladies pills.
I was on the phone with insurance for 3 hours today for 3 different patients. For one of them, I was trying to get his suboxone to go through for free like it did last week when we didn't have any. Once it finally came in, he needed to pay his deductible which he hadn't done yet. Well, fuck, it went round and round, until finally the lady on the other side of the phone told him. I don't want any more calls today, any more people to talk to; once I get off work I become a misanthrope.
The opana is dissolving into a gelatinous blob of oxymorphone, that my stomach slowly eats away at over the next 12 hours. It takes 2 hours before the effects begin to peak, which is too long to wait today--please let it start sooner, and take me anywhere but here.
Without drugs, I'd be another miserable 26 year old punk--working my ass off during the week, going to shows on the weekends, and drinking my anger away. The constant need fills that void and gives me a way to fill my time, lying in wait for the moment euphoria to rush over me. When there are no pills, when withdrawal looms over me, then the void is filled with the hunt for relief and pills and to return to nothingness of opiate's embrace.
Texas is getting hotter by the day, but right now the breeze is perfectly warm. The burning menthol tasted in my mouth almost satiates me while I wait for the high to begin.
It seems like I have all the time in the world to wait now that I'm on the other side of the pharmacy, just like the rest of them.
Until next time...
Love,
Lucy
P.S. comment if you read this... let me know there is someone else out there...
