Living Dead Girl
Is it a blessing or a curse to become a zombie if all your friends become ghosts?
All language is metaphor. The subtitle above is no exception: a rhetorical hyperbole, inquisitive introspect that began an omnipresent thought and was the genesis of writing this story—big emphasis on this.
This is a true story: a product of cognitive disruption that arrived hard and stayed fast—an anomaly in an Error 404 mind; an auto-delete from memory upon download mind; a haunted house mind. That question—interpret and answer at your own leisurely risk, please—would linger in my courtroom mind, overwhelming any other discourse or argument until addressed with actionable acknowledgment.
Blessing or curse, zombie née ghost—on a feedback loop until I answered, wrote it down, recounted, revised. Layer after layer, draft after draft, until I found my truth; until my truth aligned with the truth. Layer after layer, lie after lie, draft after draft. Each rectification hurt—mentally and emotionally. Physically, no, though the process turned me into a serpent of perpetually shedding skin.
Somehow, I emerged—this emerged: naked, raw, honest, vulnerable, metamorphic.
I almost gave you so many stories that were not this story. Initially, I penned a tale of survivor's guilt and dead friends—a compound topic only half accurate. While it seems irrational to me the number of friends I lost to overdose, I don't feel any remorse for defeating the same killer they fell victim to.
I should probably feel something: blessed, cursed? Ashamed, perhaps, but not guilty.
Liner noteworthy: those two emotions are not as similar as some think.
My mind has funhouse mirrors and paranormal heavinesses: ghostly friends and staggering shame. Best I can do is a zombie, a real living dead girl—savage, sadistic, hungry.
If I eat my own brain, will that free the ghosts?
Friday, June 22nd of 2018, I docked on the other side of life—three times. The final flatline happened after midnight, so I should say early that Saturday, I died. Time of death called. Nearly ten minutes later, I woke up screaming, gasping, furious.
When you return from a trip like that, the people expect a story. Acquaintances probed circuitously, inaudibly sometimes. Friends skirted around their questions, knowing me an addict; knowing me reckless; knowing me exaggerative, brazen, crass. Apparently, even unhinged and menacing.
But, no one asked what they really wanted to know—not directly, anyway. Few inquired about life after death. No tunnel to white light inquisition, either. Their curiosity was all for cause, no effect. Good thing, too, because I don't remember shit from the ten minutes I spent in the other realm. Nor can I explain why I lived to see another day.
People do not care about zombies, ghosts, or any symbolic wordplay. Yes, I am aware.
They have only one question:
How did a thirty-one-year-old, healthy woman claiming sobriety drop dead on her bathroom floor during her bedtime routine, and under what toxicology results?
Heart attack—the short answer, anyway. The term my mother used when flooding social media with cries for prayer, tagged with the very worst kind of photographic evidence of poor life choices, too.
To paraphrase the attending cardiologist in the ICU at Fort Sanders Hospital in Knoxville, Tennessee, upon my awakening from the coma he'd induced four days prior:
Congestive heart failure and upper respiratory depression: Cause is unknown, as is any medical explanation of human survival of a ten-minute-long cessation of blood circulation and breathing. You are beyond blessed to be alive—a miracle.
You mean curse?
No doubt, an excellent cue for a narrative memoirist with a story she's been living to tell you, but it's a dire hell for a hypocrite.
The toxicology results showed no trace of alcohol; thirty days sober. The opioid detection was low: two 20mg tablets of oxycodone all day. No mention of the methylphenidate, maybe because my name marked the bottle: take two tablets daily.
I pulled ten from the bottle that fatal Friday. But, no one mentioned that; just talk of energy drinks, miracles, blessings—no talk of ADHD meds gone terribly unmanaged.
Six years later, I feel brilliantly—remarkably—alive, like never before. Seasons change quicker now. Today, gratuitous thoughts outweigh obsessive contemplation of the gift, the contingencies, the shame, and the ghosts.
Six years later, more and more friends faded to nothingness—overdosing, overdoing, over it altogether, overtly haunting my head.
Six years of asking God, Mother Nature, Quantum Physics, and Astral Projections:
Why me?
And the people still prey and pay for a story with their gentle but pressing interrogation.
Six fucking years of dodging the truth: 200mg of speed, 40mg of dope; pharmaceutical weapons of mass destruction, mass appeal, mass hysteria.
Six years of a nagging voice in my head that whispers, Come on—you need it; your doctor prescribed it; meds help you; just don't take too many from the bottle; that's all you gotta do.
Six years of dancing on death's doorstep, wearing my heart on my sleeve, and chanting: If two is good, four is better.
Six is a relative number, especially when considering cumulative years in one's lifespan—a Master's Degree, half a dozen summers, a year shy of a Jubilee. At six years old, my son knew it all. At four, however, he still believed he could fly.
Four is a scary number here, now—in my sixth season of Summer Zombie. My tired heart is a song out of rhythm with approximately four years left of ticking, pumping life through veins paper-thin. Four is my numerative heart balance as of 2024. No, seriously. Two months after we first met in the ICU, the cardiologist examined, concluding:
You've got at least ten years left on that heart, but be careful!
Despicable bedside mannerisms aside, he was, and perhaps still is, a doctor ill-informed. And, ten—simply a nice round number, an easy choice, a lazy choice, a guesstimate. Screw that guy. I will live forever. Which reminds me—while I lament the sudden trendiness of Mary Oliver's work amongst the provincial bagatelles, I'm reminded of her poesy line I treasure most:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Fuck if I know, Mary. But I know this—it will all be okay in the end.
I hope you didn't expect revelation, an answer to the question in the subtitle; some Rob Zombie fan fiction; friendly ghosts memorialized in black and white; a thank you card to the God of your understanding. I’m still seeking, learning, evolving, wild.
This is not a hero's journey, friend; I am not a walking, talking billboard for overdose awareness, no living amends, though I finally realized this year that my mind is not my brain. I am alive by no miracle; not ghost, zombie, blessing, or curse. I cannot find the answer in the layers, the dead skin, the revision cuts that sting because I am the answer—the ambulance siren, the rattle of breath, the defibrillator pads, the electric current, the swan song, my mother's prayer circle plea, a junkie flushing death down the toilet.
The other day, I saw a cry for help in an online forum for sobriety advocates:
No child dreams of becoming an addict when they grow up!
Bold font, social media sans.
I reread it, and suddenly, the contrasting neon pink background became the wallpaper of her living room. I don't know the post's author, but I know her tireless desperation. And I know she can ignore a Philistine jackass from Nebraska wielding caps lock like a semi-automatic rifle. Execution style, four rounds—ADDICTION IS A CHOICE.
Hiding behind his pixelated patriotism, he knows not, nor does he care if her adult child survives another overdose or how much money she owes to rehabilitation centers. Her heart is covered in track marks, asleep on her sofa, but at least that means we caught her on one of the rare nights her hands cease tremoring enough to cry in bold font, social media sans.
Here's the thing: As a child, I did dream of growing up to be an addict. I fantasized about it. Formative years with life goals a la Di Caprio. Yes, Leo—young, hot, sweaty, high as all fuck—portraying Jim Carroll (Poet Laureate of my state of mind) in the film adaptation of his memoir, The Basketball Diaries. There lies the spark of my thirty-year romance with getting fucked up. Burning, fiery. Every bridge I crossed, flame-thrower in hand. Conflagrate numbness. Escape. That was the beginning of a cold, dead-end. A damn film adaptation; then the story, then the lifestyle, even the tragic death.
I glamorized my friends' becoming ghosts, but only because I fantasized about becoming a ghost—a real genesis, my inauguration to the chaos wheel, all stemming from a desire for emotional connection and attention to details beyond a child’s grade-appropriate reading level.
Why me?
Why a zombie?
What if all of this is a dream?
Do all of adolescence's outcasts become weirdos, who become addicts, who become either zombie or ghost then become memories?
Does it even fucking matter when the world is a vampire—savage, sadistic, thirsty?