The entire twelfth grade tasted of coffee, sugar, milk. I remember little else, other than the fact that I was trying to detach painlessly from every person I'd ever interacted with. I'd had such high hopes. Carline, my sister, was the only one I could talk to. Her hair smelled like home, and my heart stubbornly refused to leave her. She needed me, and I needed to be needed. Twelfth grade tasted precisely the same as every other grade, except for the faint air of finality, the sense that I was going down for good.
The summer before my last year, I started drinking coffee every day; I'd had nothing better to do. I had no plans and too much time; I'd a brief abundance of money after saving all of the last year for a plan that fell through. Bitter, I spent every dime on coffee. Bitter. Just like me. Coffee in the sun, nothing tasted better.
Carline introduced me to caffeine early that July, the same way she introduced me to freedom, intoxication, denial and heartache. To say I fell in love would be an understatement; I found a long lost satisfaction. The four years prior had been spent in a sort of haze, unable to touch anything. A sort of paralysis had overtaken me, weighed on me, slept in my spine. Caffeine brought on a forgotten alertness, the stealth and strength of childhood.
By the twelfth grade, my life had been simplified immensely. Twelfth grade had no qualms. The only ill I suffered was the pounding in my head that would be silenced by my love, each morning. I nursed a pot in the morning and a pot in the evening, I had no alternative. My life was a series of half filled coffee mugs, absent were my uncertainties and usual terrified morning thoughts. Any unhappiness suddenly had a cure; physical withdrawal was urgent, I completely forgot what I was missing emotionally. I was grateful.
Sometimes I would get angry, and I wouldn't drink any at all, in order to prove to myself that I could. Those mornings were the worst. I suffered a fog much worse than the years before, I would become frantic and feverish. My mind was absent; I would forget tasks in the middle, leave the stove on and the door wide on its hinges. The dog would bark, and run circles in the yard, the neighbors complained. I couldn't produce any art; no writing, nothing. I couldn't work. I couldn't breathe.
My madness was intensified by my newfound toxic clarity. I still recollect my dad's face, alarmed, telling me I was shooting my nervous system to shit. I couldn't care less; my whole life felt like it was shot to shit. He was telling me to fill out college applications, I was peering at him empty eyed over my coffee mug. He was telling me to finish the dishes I had started, I was nodding but I wasn't listening.
The year passed like that: slow, steady. Push pulling everything to the extreme was something I couldn't stop. One cup wouldn't suffice. One hour wasn't enough to get anything done. I'd stay out all night, eating candy on curbs, listening to the rush of traffic, watching the people. I didn't understand anything; I couldn't comprehend why everyone was rushing around, where they were going, or why.
The whole year was lost. Wasted.