Looks in the Mirror

I feel my face against the glass; my cheek spreads across it and through hazy eyes I see the mirage that is my own reflection. My hands grip the handle of the car door, I am opening it, it's not the driver's door, I fumble around a bit. Why do I feel this apprehension? I shut my eyes and breathe with the crickets. I'm sure it'll all turn out fine. I slap myself in the face and open my eyes, ready to move the car and park somewhere less obvious, getting in the driver's seat, driving carefully, ready to stop anywhere and toss and turn beneath my blanket for many hours, hours, hours. Song after song, passing light after passing light. I see the policeman drive by, he's probably looking for delinquents with fireworks. He should be looking for me. Breathe, make myself smaller, hope through the shadows he doesn't see me asleep here. I don't know what this means but I know that as day breaks I'm in a parking lot tearing open my car, looking for my weed, knowing it's not there, breathing so fast I can't comprehend my own thoughts, tossing out every little piece of trash and these are the possessions I have that matter to me and there they go on the asphalt. Computer, clothes, on the ground. Make up, cds, on the ground. Notebook 1, notebook 2, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Kesey, Wolfe, all on the ground. And now the car's empty and It's not here and what does this mean? Does this mean it's gone? Does this mean they will think it's his? Does this mean I am lost forever and I'm condemned? Does this mean I'm a horrible person and it's all my fault, all my fault, all my fault? I can't find anything, I'm a terrible searcher, I'm a terrible searcher, I tell myself. Want to scream but can't make myself, want to cry but can't allow that, want to vomit because I feel genuinely sick, but don't do that either. My face looks the same, alterations very slightly around my lips which are trembling. It's seven in the morning and there is no one around to see this mess.

And an hour later in a Shell bathroom I look myself in the mirror where the remnant lines of formerly bloodshot eyes creep away into the corners of my tired eye sockets and I stink of a thousand cigarettes. Really, no, only 8. And I feel the blood poison creep through me, and I look again and I'm repulsed and I don't know why, because it's beyond the usual disgust. It's the same and it's different because it's compounded monotony. This is who I am. It's always the same.

100 bad dreams, 242 cigarettes, 76 shots of alcohol, 107 hits of marijuana, 420 mgs of adderall, and 6,000,000 looks in the mirror later, it's still the same.