the shakes

ever had the shakes? let me tell you about the shakes.

it's not from heroin. i don't do that. i know that's how the phrase started out--withdrawal and all that nonsense. god. i don't believe in that, don't believe in that. it's the "shakes." i started calling them the shakes when i was twelve and i thought it was humorous. i'd be sitting, watching television during the summer, on the carpet in our family room. cartoon network had good stuff on, back then. loved it. mom and dad wouldn't be home, working and what not. so i'd just be watching television, eating Kraft macaroni and cheese, not be able to finish it though. you know why? shakes. that was the first summer i ever started noticing them. there'd just be times where my heart would race a little faster, and my head would kind of keep itself off track. i could trace a thought for miles like i would later follow cars on lonely, dull nights driving around through the main streets of suburbs. i'd catch it, and like a small insect, a lightning bug, hold it close for inspection, look at every angle of it, examine the glisten of the poor things wings or the way it moved it's arthropod ligaments, and i'd never be able to actually figure out where i was after that, lost in some glade at the center of my mind, and i'd wonder: how the hell did i get here?

usually the shakes led to interesting new thoughts. sometimes, though, they led to nightmare scenario. you don't want those kinds of shakes. you don't want to think about what would happen if a nuclear bomb was dropped within a fifty-mile radius of you. you don't want to think that your mom might add some poison to your food. or that your dad might be having an affair. or that your baby brother might slip in the shower and die and you'd never know until it was too late because of course he locks the door, right? privacy and all that for a little eight year old. how would you attend his funeral? would you cry? you'd have to cry. you'd cry for days. would you ever get over it? your entire life, ruined. you don't want the shakes to end like that.

they rarely did. which is why i like the shakes. still do. always and forever. when i got a little older, they became more complex. i stopped watching as much television--couldn't continue being a cartoon devotee. i started doing more important things. but i'd still lose time and a sense of where i was. where did those two hours go? and i'd be looking at my homework and realize that i had wrote incoherent notes above the quadratic equation. what does dogfish bite moon mean? and why was it funny?

i'd have to sleep after them. if they were really bad, oh god, if they were really bad i'd have to go to sleep and stay asleep for a very long time. weird dreams, i would have, after an episode. the kind of dreams one usually has when they have a fever, or so i'm told, i didn't get a lot of fevers because i was more or less perfect. perfect, except for the addictions.

i got addicted to drinking when i turned eighteen. it was easy to do. well, easy enough. my parents didn't see it as a huge problem--as long as i didn't drive, well then, do whatever. so i'd have a couple of drinks with dinner, a couple of drinks before bed. the shakes stopped. i didn't have enough energy to concentrate on not concentrating long enough to have them. i started to get sad, then, too. i didn't get into the college i had wanted to go to. i could perfectly realize myself walking around campus, looking intelligent, hanging out with cool people. being smart. no. i got into my state's university, which was still a great school, but still. i was fairly disappointed in myself. first year of college i started seeing this guy. we had a lot in common. we both drank a lot. i shouldn't say i started seeing him. that implies, euphemistically of course, that we were dating. no. we weren't dating. but we spent a lot of time together. we drank a lot. we watched tv together in our dorm's lounge. i loved it. but i didn't love him. i came to that conclusion one day when he expressed concern about my drinking habits and i wanted to hit him. i wanted to pin him to the ground and punch him until his nose bled. but i wanted to hit him so much harder than that. you can't love someone in anger. that makes no sense. but at least we were friends. i wanted to express that to him, one day, for no apparent reason. i had been in lab, a silly science requirement course, and i had been thinking, you know, it'd be really nice if this was more official. i deserve a significant other. i'm not the prettiest girl, the funniest, the tallest, or the most intelligent, but i think there is more than one thing anyone could find lovable about me.

so i asked him out. it was a maybe from the get go. the whole situation brought itself into a whole new dimension of weird. i didn't really want things to change between us. i wanted us to hang out, i wanted us to keep watching television together, but maybe i wanted a little more. like, wouldn't it be nice if we could do homework together? or go to dinner and it wouldn't be weird? right, and what if i wanted to make out with him? wouldn't it be fine and normal and fun if none of that felt like i was trying to, i don't know, get closer to him? have you ever asked out someone with the purpose of keeping a safe distance between yourselves? it made sense at the time, and it makes even more sense to me now, but i guess i scared him. he assumed that i was madly in love with him, that i always had been. it freaked him out, i'm sure of it. we kept hanging out, but it just wasn't. going. to. happen.

so now i'm feeling lonely, so lonely that i stop drinking. i want my friend back. i want the shakes back. i'd lie in my bed for hours on weekend mornings. thank god i had a single and could be weird and spaced out all by myself. it took a while, but within a week, the shakes. i didn't need him anymore, not if i had the shakes. but something was missing, they weren't nearly as intense as i had remembered them being when i was younger, when there was so much more adrenaline in my body and so much more excitement in my life.

one night at a party, we were just talking and he started smoking with some other friends. i joined them. i liked it. it was interesting. i went home, once again, alone, and laid in bed and started listening to some music. i had stopped by a convenience store on my way back to the campus, and had bought an entire pack. smoked half of them before i got back to my room. mistake. the shakes. the shakes. oh god. i couldn't breathe, almost. the ash and the nicotine and i couldn't breathe. it was adrenaline, adrenaline out of fear. i started crying. bawling, almost. but not loud enough for anyone to hear me. i hate it when people have a reason to feel bad for you. don't. show. weakness. fucking fuckers. so i sobbed into my pillow, and three hours later i had no idea where i had gone but i was still conscious and holding a lightning bug in my hand, examining its wings.

it was kind of like the first time i had ever had coffee at night. couldn't sleep until four in the morning. shakes then too. but painful shakes. not what i wanted, like i was being blindfolded and dragged through a mental adventure that i didn't find amusing and never could. what did i realize when i finally got out of the half a pack high of nicotine? i didn't love him. he would never know how much i could love someone, or something. i loved inuyasha mangas more then him. i loved the sunrise and i loved my pillows more then him. i loved a good slice of pizza from a good pizza bakery more than i could love him. these were things that were important to me. he was also important to me. but was it love if i felt the same way towards him as i felt about monday night television shows? why would that ever scare someone? how could that ever scare anyone? i can't love you. i couldn't love him. it would be cruel to all the things that make me smile on a regular basis.

and that's why the shakes can replace anyone or anything. i miss him. i miss watching television with him. but being with myself, thinking by myself, that's love.