A Beautiful Poison

Palo Alto
April 1997

I treasured alcohol in every form. I drank when I was sad, when I was happy and when I was bored. I drank when I was at a party, I drank when I was at school, and I drank when I was alone. Whenever alcohol was available I indulged.

I am torn from my restless sleep by thunderous sobs coming from the TV room. A familiar feeling of panic fills my 13-year-old body as I leap out of bed and race down the stairs, as fast as my skinny legs can carry me. I peer into our gigantic TV room and see my older sister curled up, a cocoon on the couch. She is wrapped in thick blankets and is trembling with tears. I lean over her and ask in a small quivering voice “what is wrong?”

“Everything.” It is the only word she speaks, and it is a familiar one. I do not understand how I can make her happy and how I can chase this depression far away. Though I am almost two years younger than my sister, I still feel that it is my job to take care of her. Protecting her has become my world, and it is all I know. I’ve become a light sleeper, easily awakening to her cries. I have learned how to lie in order cover up for her and keep her out of trouble. I would do anything for my sister; I live and breathe for her alone.

This depression has intruded into my sister’s life for as long as I can remember, and it appears to have no intentions of leaving. My parents have tried, as well as numerous doctors, but it seems no one is capable of driving it away. The evil thing has dug its way into her brain and refuses to leave its newfound home. It seems to me that at this point there is little anyone can do.

I find a face hidden within the massive covers. “Don’t tell mom and dad.” The sullen face whispers to me. I am only 13 but I know the kinds of stuff that she does to escape her sadness. While my parents and their doctors are looking for an answer, my sister has taken the matter into her own hands and has used drugs as a method of self-medication.

-Nicole Hodges

It was alone at three in the morning when I finished all the gin. I was numb, feeling only a pleasant tingling that misted my pale skin. I felt like a queen as I sat on the roof outside my window smoking a cigarette. There were no flashbacks, no panic attacks and no fears - there was only warmth which raced through my body making me feel like the world was mine.
But deep within the locked corridors of my soul that feeling was still there. It was a feeling that I had always known – a feeling that had followed me through my life and was slowly corroding the spirit of my existence. The longer I lived – the longer the empty universe within me expanded. “You are nothing,” is what I would hear and I am nothing is what I believed.

At night, when the day’s drugs were fading, the wretched realities of my life crept into my consciousness. So I often drank at night hoping the magical beverage would disinfect the oozing sores of sadness that years of shame had exposed. While alcohol suppressed my physical senses, it sensitized my oozing sores, thus throwing me into the swamps of self-pity and depression where the murky water reflected desperation. And even though alcohol never succeeded in completely easing the pain of my pussing sores, I remained convinced that it was the miraculous remedy.

I still however could not sleep. The earlier day’s amphetamines were still working my mind awake. Pills were the next step – Seconal, Valium, Klonopin – they were all prescribed to me. So I would pop anywhere from five to fifteen of the various medications and would either get sick or go to sleep. I had taken a bunch of pills and was lying on the couch the night my sister interrupted my nighttime routine.

“I drank too much.” A feeling of nausea creeps into my stomach as I spot a bottle of painkillers on the floor below her. Now it is me who is trembling. I tell my weak, noodle-like body to stay calm.
“Michelle,” I say trying to be stern, “how many of those have you taken?” Before I am given an answer I snatch up the bottle and am relieved to see that the bottle is still almost completely full.
“I drank too much.” She repeats.
“I know that,” I say taking in gasps of breath. “But how many pills did you take?”
“Don’t tell mom and dad,” is her only response. I painfully suck in gulps of air. In these times I must remind myself to breathe and tell my trembling heart to keep on pumping.
I rock back and forth, my body trembling with panic for I am struck with my decision. Do I wake up mom and dad or do I listen to my sister? What if this time she really has drunken too much and guzzled too many pills. I wonder if the amount of her intake tonight is enough to kill. My 13-year-old brain does not know what to do. I decide that I have no choice but to sit all night by this little cocoon to make sure that she doesn’t die. I figure as long as I am next to her she cannot slip away.
Uncontrollable sobs begin to tumble out of my mouth as I stare at the cocoon on the couch wanting, more than anything that I have wanted in my 13 years, to believe that she will be okay. I want to be able to march upstairs, wake up my parents and announce, “Michelle is going to be okay.” And this time really mean it.
Everyday I hear the same sad songs. I do not know what I can do to help or when it will ever stop. All I know is how to listen and how to stay by my sister’s side. I know that if I am next to her she cannot die. I fear that someday when I am not around she will take her own life, and that the threats she makes will someday become reality. My sister is my life and therefore losing hers means losing my own. That is why I must always stay with her and make sure this fear of mine never comes true. This constant worry seeps deeper into my heart, with each breath that choose to take.
-Nicole Hodges

For a long time I resented my sister. Nicole cried about everything, was close to my mom and never broke the rules – so I thought her weak and pathetic. Nicole had had the same group of friends from preschool – friends whose parents were also friends. In my opinion she had everything easy. Why was it fair that I should be filled with so much pain while she knows only happiness? She never got in arguments with mom and dad and so even though I thought she was weak I also saw her as perfect. I hated her out of my self-pity; I hated her because I thought for her everything had bee so easy, and for me everything had been so hard.

Earlier this afternoon I invited a friend over to my house. As the two of us are on our way to my room, a thick evil smell leaps out at us from the hallway as we walk passed. It is the ring of smoke that follows my sister everywhere. The smell itself is different from the stench of a cigarette, and the fact that it is the smell of drugs terrifies me. It is an odd sweet smell that I had never known before. It tears its way into my stomach wrenching apart my ribs and sinking deep into my abdominal.
The smell made its first appearance when Michelle began her road of self-medication. It works day and night to destroy my sister, hiding her underneath its dark thick cloud. It dances around our house laughing and singing about how it has taken over my sister. The evil smell creeps under the crack in my door and haunts me as I tried to sleep. When I feel the smell at night I know that my sister is home, and that she is busy destroying herself in the other room. I lay in bed helplessly covering my nose, hating a world that would taunt me with such a smell.
This afternoon my sister happened to have passed through the house. Though my sister was nowhere to be found, the thick evil smell was evidently present. “Sorry about the smell,” I remark to my friend, Anna. “My sister’s just burning incense, you know, air freshener stuff.” I lie and pray that she does not know the truth about the smell that is in my house. “Sorry, it smells absolutely horrible.” I apologize again.
“Actually a kind of like it.” Anna takes me by surprise, and I spin around to let out a breath of relief. My 7th grade friend has no idea as to what she just admitted to liking and I thank god for that. My friend fell for my lie and therefore to her, I remain just another 7th grade girl like herself.

-Nicole Hodges


It was not possible for me to imagine that my actions could cause my sister pain. But if I knew at the time that she was suffering because of me I would probably have been happy. Not only did I not want Nicole to be happy, I didn’t want anyone to be happy. If I have to suffer so much unhappiness, why should anyone else be happy? If they could only feel the way that I felt for just one moment they would understand why true happiness for people like me doesn’t exist. Nicole, being what I believed to be a “happy person,” was only happy because she had never felt pain like mine.

“Don’t tell mom and dad.” The cocoon on the couch repeats. “They’ll send me away.” Her fierce words knock from my thoughts and unto the ground. What does she mean they’ll send her away? My mind begins to race and tries to take in the information that was just given. I had heard of torturous, lock-down schools for kids who had drug problems. My parents would never send her to such a place, or would they? The thought of my parents sending her away sent long shots of pain through my already weakened body. My sister was all I had and I could not loose her.
-Nicole Hodges

What I can see now, which I could have never understood then, was that Nicole was not happy and she was not weak. It was her who would hold me when I came home drunk and depressed, she would comfort me as if I were her daughter - a poor helpless baby. She would listen to my life, even when I could see in her eyes that every word I spoke brought terror and fear to her life. And yet I saw her as the weakling. Everything about Nicole that I believed made her weak actually made her strong; and it was because of my own weaknesses that I could see none of this.

“Don’t tell mom and dad.” The voice whispers again, tearing me from my thoughts. I am reminded of my situation. I was used to covering up for her but this time is different, because I truly do not know what to do. What is this time she really did go too far? My trembling body continues to rock back and forth in an indecisive panic. Hours pass and I remain in the same state. It all comes down to one question. Can I take care of her alone? By now my tired heart is still racing and my body is trembling out of control. I look down and see frail shaking hands. The sight of my weakened body knocks the wind out of my system as I am hit with the reality that I cannot take it any longer. There is no denying that this time I must get help from my parents. My skinny legs then take me racing back up the stairs in the same way that I had came.
-Nicole Hodges

My dad suddenly threw open the door to the family room and grabbed from the carpet the bottle of pills. "How many have you taken?" He roared ripping the quilted blanket from my undernourished body.
"Only one." I lied refusing to look at him. For a couple of minutes he just stared at me. "What?" I yelled impatiently at him.
"Michelle… what are you going to do with yourself?" He spoke in a helpless tone and walked out of the room. Fuck you. You don’t know what it’s like being me. But somewhere deep down his words terrified me. If only I had more gin. But before I knew it the sandman had come and temporarily relieved my pain.

The Rorschach instrument reveals that his young lady sees the environment as a threatening and potentially dangerous place in which to operate. She often builds considerable anxiety and, at such points, will "disengage" from it is any way possible… The Rorschach further reveals internalized anger, which Michelle seems hard-put to more directly express. She also may feel "singled out" by others and "under scrutiny" (albeit in a somewhat negative manner).

-Richard Arnold Komm, Ed. D. 07/08/97. From Psycheducational Evaluation: Interpretation of results.


My parents were going to be out of town the next weekend. While my sister spent the weekend at the house of her best-friend, my cousin Lisa would stay with me.

"Hey, do you mind if I have a couple of friends over?" I asked Lisa innocently.

"As long as it is just a couple…" She replied with an understanding grin on her face.

That was how it began. I called up random friends and told them that my parents were away and they could come over. Around seven that evening I went over to my favorite Safeway store and stole four bottles of Absolute Citron and two bottles of gin. When I got back to my house I started drinking and, as usual, I was drunk before the party began.

I liked hard alcohol the best and I liked it strait. I loved the warm burning sensation that tickled my esophagus as it flowed down my throat. The problem was that most of the time when I drank liquor strait I would end up consuming so much that I would make myself sick. It was my friends that suggested I drink only mixed cocktails so that I wouldn’t drink so fast. Some of my friends even told me I should stop drinking since I just didn’t seem to be able to handle myself.
I loved being drunk. When I was drunk I wasn't myself, and I loved it. All of my insecurities and flaws seemed to disappear, and I would become a fearless party animal. I wasn't afraid of anything when I was drunk, and I wasn't shy. I was able to talk to guys, or rather throw myself onto guys, without my shy and doubtful qualities getting into the way. Drinking allowed me to feel free – free from some part of me that I hated.

I never thought that I would ever throw a party. If you had asked me earlier that week if I was going to have a party because my parents were out of town, I would have said no. But this was the instantaneous moment that represented my life. I called all of my best girl friends and invited them all to spend the night - they could invite whoever they wanted. I set the pool table up and opened the garage door - it was only eight - and I was already completely trashed.

I can remember the first couple of people arriving, and then the rest of the night is pretty hazy. The party had been a real "hit" because that night all of the local dealers and gotten lots of drugs so my house was the perfect place to sell, make deals, and smoke up. At one point I can remember being in my back yard, surrounded crowds of people, and then feeling sick. I fell off the lawn chair that I had been sitting in, and was picked up by Erin's older sister, Megan, and her boyfriend, Jeff. I can remember them holding me over a bush as I threw up all of the alcohol that I had consumed that night. They then carried me back to the lawn chair that I had fallen off and told me that they would keep an eye on the party for me. Whatever. I lit a cigarette and starred up into the starry night.

Surprisingly enough after I threw up that night I only drank a little more, and so as things wound down - about fifteen people were in the family room watching a movie or passed out, others were sleeping in my room or my sister's - I was able to clean up a little. I went around the house collecting beer cans and Vodka bottles, cigarette butts and drug paraphernalia. After collecting three giant garbage bags of party trash I went into the park and threw the bags away in a trash can. Then I went to sleep.

When I woke the next morning one of the girls told me that I cousin had gone to the hospital because she was having a severe migraine. All the while my party had been underway Lisa had been up in my parents room - probably overcome with a combination of guilt that she was allowing the party to go on when her aunt and uncle had put trust in her, as well as not wanting to seem "uncool" to her younger cousin. A pang of guilt washed over me when I thought that it was my fault for her migraine, but I quickly shook it off.

It was Sunday morning and my parents would be home in the late afternoon. The house reeked of cigarette and pot smoke, and there were tons of beer cans and stuff still lying around. I lit incense all over the house and did a second round of trash pick-up. About two in the afternoon I was tired of cleaning, and kicked everyone who hadn't already gotten up out of the house. The house looked good enough to me and so I left with Marisa to go tag up some creeks downtown. After drinking a twelve-pack that I had gotten a bum to buy me, I sat, drunk in an underpass, as Marisa threw up a piece.

My pager vibrated, and I saw my phone number. Shit! But I ignored it. I wasn't near a phone, and wasn't in the mood to walk eight blocks just to be bitched at. An hour and ten pages later I was on the phone with my dad. He knew I had thrown a party, and he was really mad.
"What are you talking about…" I screamed into the phone, "I didn't throw a fucking party!"

My dad was very angry and yelled back, "First: Don't swear at me. Second: Michelle you threw a party and we know it. So get back here NOW!"

I was in serious trouble. My parents knew that I was not doing well, but had basically given up trying to punish me for just drinking or smoking. But now that my actions had affected their house they were really made, and I knew it. I knew that my parents were close to sending me away somewhere, to a boarding school or something like that, so I was somewhat afraid to go home. "I'm not gonna go." I told Marisa as I leaned on the payphone, nervous and drunk, smoking a cigarette.

"Michelle you have to, don't be even more stupid." I haven't been stupid. What the hell does she know? But I went home anyway. Something in my gut told me to, so I did.

I got home and my parents were right. It was obvious I had thrown a party. It now smelt of a combination of incense and cigarette smoke, and still there were beer cans laying around. "So what." I shrugged to my parents.

"SO WHAT? SO WHAT?" My dad bellowed. "Michelle, you're going to clean this house up, and then we are taking you somewhere to talk to someone."

No. No. I'm not going away… gotta go, go, go Michelle. I ran around to the side yard, grabbed my bike, and rode away as my parents stood on the porch yelling for me to come back. I'll go to Thomas'. Thomas and I had not been on the best of terms over the last couple of months since my drinking had become so frequent. He was tired of me showing up at his door, drunk and wanting to drink more. I got to his house and he was home. But he didn't invite me in.
"What's the matter?" Thomas asked me in a monotone.

I told him how my parents were angry that I had thrown a party and that I had run away from the house because they said that they wanted me to go "talk to someone."

"What the hell did you expect Michelle? You threw a fucking party, of coarse they're gonna be angry. You can't just expect that you're never gonna get consequences."

Thanks for the intelligent bullshit Mr. Hillard. "Well, can I at least come in for a little bit, I think they are gonna be out looking for me soon." I spoke to him annoyed that he was not more on my side.

Somewhere in the time we became friends, Michelle moved more towards alcohol. For all our buddies it was a common poison, but Michelle’s choice of places and times to drink made her look more out of control than the rest of us. She would bring water or Sprite bottles to school filled with Vodka or Gin to her classes. Our group would chill at many places to get stoned. Some would drink, but Michelle was almost always already drunk.
Michelle and I reestablished, somewhat, the friendship that had ended abruptly over the summer some time during freshman year. Sometimes the time spent with her was fun, but other times it seemed like she was just doing her own thing and it just happened to be in my house or presence. Her thing being: working on random projects, stroking a satin blanket and holding a bottle with some sort of alcohol in it. She would tell me how she never made it to school because she had gotten so drunk earlier that morning she had passed out on her porch. The conversations I had with her friends often entailed the most recent story that displayed how drunk she had been getting. No one drank as much as Michelle and no one thought it possible for this craze of Michelle’s to ever be interrupted.
-Thomas Hillard

"Sorry Michelle, I am in the middle of doing a lot of homework… if you're here I will just get distracted."

Are you fucking kidding me? And I thought you were one of my best friends. Well, Fuck you then. "Come on, pleeeeeaaaassse…" I begged flashing a huge beg-ridden smile.

"No Michelle." Thomas shut the door and I could not believe it.

Where am I gonna go? What an asshole. Can't even help a friend in need, well, I hope he never wants anything from me again. And then, just as I was getting back onto my bike I saw my mom's car driving up the street. SHIT! I started biking away as fast as I could, but being that she was in a car, she caught up to me fast. I kept riding as she yelled to me through an open passenger window. It felt as if everything had fallen apart. Why does this always happen to me. I didn't know what to do. If I stopped and talked to her I would surely be brought back to the house to face what I had done, but if I kept riding then she would just follow me.

So I stopped. She told me to just leave the bike and to get in the car. Hell no I'm not just gonna leave my bike lying on the sidewalk for someone to take. I rode to Seale Park, just a block away as my mom continued yelling, thinking that I was just trying to escape again. I quickly locked my bike and got into her car. She tried to talk to me like a friend, trying desperately to show the love she had for me. And then she told me that she wanted to take me to a drug rehabilitation center. Oh no I will not go away somewhere. I'm getting out of here. It was a quick ride my mother and I had. As we drove through a residential area I opened the car door and jumped out, being still somewhat drunk, I felt little of the fall. I ran quickly away and hid; for a week my parents would not hear from me.

The reality of Michelle’s drinking grew worse and worse until one day I saw her making a mess and fool of herself at Seven Eleven with some of my friends. They were all laughing at her belligerent loud mouth and I asked Michelle if she was drunk. She said no, but in the few years of knowing her and alcohol, I could tell she was again a drunkard by the hazed look in her eyes and the bright red cheeks on her face. I realized then that I couldn’t do a thing.
I finally cut my ties to her through avoidance. I hoped she might find the loss of my attention as a sign that she had to change. So much of the time I spent learning and exploring my life since junior high to that day had been shared with her. And suddenly there was none.
-Thomas Hillard

When Thomas told me that until I stopped drinking he did not want to be around me I just thought he was the biggest asshole in the world. I mean, if he truly was my friend then he would not just ditch me, right? So I forgot about Thomas over a bottle of Gin and my life continued on. I just did not understand how my friends, who they themselves enjoyed their share of alcohol and drugs, could tell me that I had a problem. I saw myself as having no greater problem than any of my other friends. I was lonely and losing friends over alcohol, but as long as I was numb it didn't matter.

I am suddenly reminded of the dream I had been having that night, before I had been woken up. I had had this dream before, and it seemed to be recurring every now and then over the past few weeks. I come to school and enter my 7th grade classroom just like another day. But today when I reach for my pencil I realize that my right arm is gone and my entire other half is missing. I look around the room to see if anyone else has noticed, but I seem to be the only one. A feeling of panic feels my body and I am paralyzed with the fear of living without this other half.
-Nicole Hodges