Hell on Heels by Anne Jolin
For Jeff, My big brother.
I know your knuckles are heavy from a lifetime spent beating your demons to the ground.
May you never tire of chasing them away.
May you some day slay the hell that haunts your heart.
You’re my angel, with no halo, and one wing in the fire.
I will always love you.
“I love badly.
That is, too little or too
much. I throw myself over
an unsuitable cliff, only to
reel back in horror from
a simple view out the window.”
- Jeanette Winterson
“Charleston? Are you listening?”
I drag my gaze off the co-eds whose tongues are entangled on the campus lawn and bring my attention to the woman in front of me.
“I'm sorry,” I apologize hollowly.
She scribbles something down on her pad before looking up at me sympathetically. “I asked if you've slept at all since our last session.”
“A little,” I lie.
Dr. Colby continues to stare knowingly, and it doesn't take long for me to cave.
“No, I haven't slept much, I guess.”
“Have you been taking the pills I gave you?”
Shaking my head, I retrieve the container from my purse and then hold it out to her. “I won't use them. You might as well take them back.”
“Charleston, you're depressed. You need sleep, and the pills will help with that,” she urges.
“I won't use drugs as a vice or as some pathetic coping mechanism.”
There is frustration in her eyes as she pulls her reading glasses off, laying them over her notepad. “For starters, they are not illegal street drugs, Charleston. They are prescribed sleeping medication for a clinically diagnosed depression. I know you're scared about what happened to your bro—”
Swallowing against the lump in my throat, I bite back tears. “I don’t want to talk about, Henry.” I wince as his name leaves my lips.
Dr. Colby sees the quiver in my lip—she sees everything. I'm entirely transparent to the woman with the well-earned PhD framed on the pale-pink wall.
“Henry had a severe cocaine addiction coupled with alcoholism for nearly a third of his young life,” she explains.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I breathe in a slow, unsteady breath through my nose, blowing it out dramatically through my mouth. I’ve cried so much this year, and each time, I’m certain I’ll have no more tears left to give. But when the shadow of suffering climbs into my soul and each of its brutally sharp talons grips my heart, the wetness never fails to stain my pillow. I guess that’s the funny thing about pain. It has a consistency in the doling out of surprises that makes your knees buckle and your chest ache.
“His death was tragic, but you are not your brother. Sharing his blood in no way means you share his weakness for addiction or that you long for the same demons.”
Nodding, I flip the bottle over in my hands. I have no irrational, all-consuming lust toward drugs—or even alcohol for that matter. To be honest, I think the luster or shine they mirrored was long gone before I’d even hit high school. The memories that crept into the daylight at even the mere thought of them were enough to extinguish any curiosity I had thought to develop. No, I may not be a drug addict or an alcoholic, but even I am not ignorant to my addictive personality. I’m either black or white, zero or a hundred. I feel either entirely too much or nothing at all. No facet of who I am enables the unclear. My personality harbors no middle ground. I don’t know what grey is; I never did.
“Do you understand the difference, Charleston?” Dr. Colby asks, placing her violet-coloured glasses back onto the bridge of her nose.
“Yes, I understand,” I mimic, carefully resting the bottle on the glass coffee table in front of me. “I still won’t use these.”
“Very well.” She nods. “Are you ready to talk about him?”
There it is. The elephant in the room. The topic that makes me want to bolt from my seat and take off like a bat out of hell. Him. The straw that inevitably broke the camel’s back and subsequently the reason I began seeing Dr. Colby nearly six months into my freshman year of college. The reason that, despite the untimely death of my brother, I continue to seek counseling once a week.
“I drove past his old house yesterday,” I say on a whisper, letting my gaze drift back out the window.
“How did that make you feel?”
After wrestling with the emotions consistently at war inside me, I lose. I’m unable to wrap my head around them for what seems like the umpteenth time.
“I wonder if every emotionally pathetic girl has to seek counselling for a broken heart.” I laugh without humor.
“Charleston,” she warns, “we’ve discussed this. It might feel like a broken heart…”