Metamorphosis is painful for most species.  I suppose humans should be no different.  Worms, our slimy shells only seem to age and grow, but inside with five broken hearts, I realized some time ago that progress needed to be made to delay my deterioration.  My largest flaw, my lack of social skills, Needed to be sewn and mended, presented as a new charisma.

Optimism is another mental game.  So often I've come into those that graded me at sight, told me all my life that I'm strange or creepy.  I truly wanted to find a world that I could belong in.  To my delight, I found comfort in the world of heavy metal, and wound up a sweet companion in the world of horror.  With my new productivity, my shell became only more appealing, my mind only became stronger.  Horror continued to celebrate my accomplishments, heavy metal continued to keep my mind away from the negativity that had bled me silent all my life.

I tried too hard, I suppose.  In metal, I learned that the people may listen and speak as if they understand brutality, but it's all fiction.  In this group of individuals grasping for the handles of success, I saw more and more greed.  Greed is negativity.  When I severed the bond, it was my reputation that was soiled.  Over time, energy, and wasted hearts, the worm in me found herself deep beneath the soil, failures piled on me far above my vision.  I still can't understand what I did wrong, but only acknowledge that it was something great.  Alone as a metal fan, a ghost as I once was, the broken hearts don't beat quite so loud.  It's amazingly painful to hear the sounds I loved so honestly and only feel the betrayal and disappointment of loving the individuals I gave my hearts to.

When reality took the giant crap in my mouth, I hated my insides.  Rationality was gone and there was no chance that I wanted to exist in a world that would never understand my attempts.  I love being a murderer, and seldom does it bother me that my acts will never be confessed- but when I'm rejected constantly just for being "creepy" it's another nursery rhyme of the damned.  I returned home from Milwaukee the last time I spent time trying to help a musician, and I was beyond down and hungover.  My knives were too good for me, and I always hated guns.  Lazy and cowardly, I resorted to my least favorite cause of homicide and swallowed pill after pill until I felt my brain scream.  I only remember smiling like a moron as I lay on my dirty green couch.

It had been such a beautiful night.

I'd planned for months to do this, go over to Tommy "The Gunner" Lodwick's house and shoot an interview.  My dear friend Sarah told me that she planned to leave FireWalk and start a chapter of The Plastics to promote musicians.  Tommy was always willing to be my test cookie.  I prepared forever, it seemed.  I even called into work because our days off never paralelled.  All the way to his house I was nervous- half worried about my productivity and half terrified of my lack of social skills.  I kept reminding myself that Sarah really wanted to promote musicians, and I'd be a great accomplice. 

She let me down, naturally.  We spent hours laying out the specifics to the interview, but she wouldn't so much as answer her phone.

My stomach gargled in disgust, my eyes felt like puddles of slime.

Tommy's guitar was my nurse, soothing my discomfort with the sounds of optimism and celebrated scars of metal.  I listened to him forever, loving each moment that I could observe it first hand.  Obsessed with the millions of ways I wanted to get attention to his skills, I recorded some of his drumming with care and consideration.  Therapy to the psychopath, each rhythm another paragraph, each paragraph another step into the story and the end of the tale left me scared and hopeful that there'd never be another moment.

I couldn't even feel the paramedics.  I didn't wake up screaming in the ambulance as I have done a dozen times before.

When I die, I want to die happy.  I don't want to take the gun and blow out my mind simply because I can't figure out a solution.  I don't want to cut myself to relieve the pain.  Maybe I was too critical on myself for overdosing?  The white wavelengths of my brain painted the ghosts of my memory.  Slight moments I could see my flaws for what they were, my crimes for what they meant to me, and it was a journal that no one could ever read, with paints and strands of mental thread.

I puked.

He took such good care of me, like I was his big sister and he was my little brother.  It was so sad that I'd spent my time wanting so badly a friendship exactly like this, and being too inept to maintain my composure when some self centered woman had let me down.  Tommy's a good person, and all I really want for him is anything that man wants for himself. 

My throat hurt as if I'd screamed for hours, but apparently it was just the tube in my esophagus.  "Elizabeth?"

I fucking hate how no one ever gets my name right.

"Elizabeth, can you remember how you got here?  Squeeze my hand if you can?" the stupid doctor said.  I wouldn't touch him.  My mind awoke and I saw three medical officials waiting for my response.  I picked up my hand, and it was attached to an intravenous tube. 

"Ah fuck, I got saved again," I said to myself mentally.  "What the fuck can I do to get out of here without pity?"  Kindly and patiently I tapped the tube in my mouth.

Minutes later, the tube was removed, and instantly, I puked again.  The nurse held some stupid pink elbow shaped bucket and yellow stomach fluid laced the bottom.  "Can you tell us what happened?"

"I was drinking last night," I confessed honestly.  "I hurt so I took some pills and went to bed."

"Nine hydrocodone?  Those pills?" the nurse revealed.

"No, one tylenol with codiene I had leftover from my last surgery.  Nine mentos to relieve the hangover breath," I conspired.  The doctors looked at each other nervously, but it had to work.  Worst case scenario now was that they'd send me to counseling, which, quite frankly, I probably need.

"You overdosed, Elizabeth," the nurse said kindly.  "Your husband is very worried."  Vance entered the hospital room, his face clearly a mess over my unpredictable ideas.  "I'll leave you two alone."  The doctors left the room and Vance held my hand gently.

He didn't have to say anything.  Bloodshot eyes and completely tired, I could see how much it was killing me to have so much love for metal just to find that my poor shell could only handle so much abuse.  One person is all it takes to assault, and those that come to your aid when your down are the only ones worth considering battle for.  I love my husband.  He didn't talk to me, he knew my head hurt.  But he made me love him even when all my hearts were already broken.

Sometimes, though, I do wish that I died that day.

Goodbye metal.