Eve's Bathroom

“Well that’s gross.”

Charlotte startled herself by saying it out loud. She was in Eve’s bathroom, looking through the medicine cabinet as one should in their hated rival’s private space. Causing the comment was prescription extra-strength yeast infection cream. It was doled out by Eve’s pharmacist less than a week ago, meaning Charlotte’s host was probably slathered with the medicine while she stood there snooping.

Charlotte continued her wrist-deep explorations into Eve’s personals, realizing she didn’t really hate Eve. Not really. More of a professional dislike; a mild distaste, even. Eve’s collection of workplace awards could lead some to think Charlotte’s animosity sprung from jealousy.

Hardly.

It’s just that Eve was such an apple-polishing hall monitor goody-goody pain in the ass. Who doesn’t do the occasional key bump in the bathroom before work? Not Eve, apparently. And when Eve saw the switchblade Charlotte kept in her purse, she immediately had to tattle like a snitch in need of a stitch.

Her train of thought screeched to a stop, her gaze landing on a half-full pill bottle. Charlotte looked at the label & thought Holy shit! She’d hit the mother lode. Vicodin, 10 mgs & according to the label, Eve had three more refills. Charlotte popped the top, shook out two pills, thought about it, and shook out two more. She tossed them into her mouth & washed them down with water from the sink.

Waiting for the sweet wave of opioid euphoria to kick in, Charlotte began digging in earnest. She glanced past a bottle of 40-mg Prozac & kept going. Charlotte herself was on 80 mgs, one of four SSRIs that prevented her from making the news via a workplace shooting, so she empathized with Eve on that one.

A knock on the door startled Charlotte into knocking over a bottle of rubbing alcohol, which fell into a jar of salve, almost knocking both onto the floor.

“Are you OK?” asked Eve.

Charlotte hoped Eve hadn’t heard the commotion in the cabinet. Thank God I locked the door.

“Uh, yeah, I’m fine. I had a lot of cheese today & I’m pretty bound up. I’ll be done in a minute.”

She’d never been good at spontaneous lying. Plus, the Vikes were taking effect which didn’t help, but did prevent her from caring.

“That’s...that’s fine. Hope everything comes out fine.”

Charlotte could hear Eve turn around to return to the living room. Relief flooded her nervous system along with the soothing joy of hydrocodone. She knew she’d better finish up before Miss Are-You-OK offered her a suppository. And wouldn’t you know it, as she thought it, Charlotte saw a small box of suppositories. Between the cooter cream, the pills & the poop bullets, Eve had a lot going on.

Shutting the cabinet door & flushing the toilet for effect, Charlotte readied herself. Eve’s daughter wasn’t going to get any deader, but Charlotte figured she should extend some kind of condolence, especially after helping herself to the pills that shuffled the deceased off this mortal coil.

Laziness vs. Apathy

Yes, it's this shit again. Bite me.

I'm in a mood. I can't decide if I don't feel like doing anything because I'm lazy or because I don't give a fuck. For the uninitiated, there is definitely a huge difference between the two.

If I don't feel like doing something (say, writing incredibly snarky, witty things on this next-to-impossible-to-find corner of the internet), the reason is either laziness or apathy. Laziness is a strange thing, though. Just because I'm too lazy to sit down and write down some vaguely coherent thoughts doesn't mean I'm too lazy to play Arkham City for 12 straight hours and I'm bleeding from the eyes and my kids are begging for food. It also doesn't mean I'm not so lazy that I wouldn't go get some Chinese takeout and eat it in front of said children, telling them this is MY food. Mine. There's cereal and cold coffee in the kitchen. Knock yourselves out.

Apathy, on the other hand, is a different animal. Also known as soul-crushing despair, apathy pretty much prevents me from wanting to get out of my recliner at any given moment and since society frowns on my driving in the snow after a healthy mixture of Vicodin and Irish whiskey (fuck you, killjoys), there is little to no chance I will have the motivation to do anything.

Chronic, clinical depression is a sad thing and something I've fought since middle school. Unfortunately for me, there was no such thing as Prozac then. In the mid-80s, if you were sad, lonely, outcast, and depressed, the only cure was for the kid in the grade above you with the glandular problem who could grow a full beard at age 12 was to beat some sense into you and make you think, "Gee. Things aren't so bad after all. Thanks, cowardly bully who will go on to die at age 23 after a soda machine you tried to steal falls on you!" OK, thinking about that DOES give me a reason to smile because I won. Take that, squished guy who left a family behind because you're stupid; the fat middle-aged guy whining on a blog no one will read has beat you. The fact it's true is sadder than dead puppies at an orphanage on Christmas.

The fact is, once I actually sit down to write, I begin to pick up some steam and feel good about it. Not this particular piece of writing. No, this is mostly just something to keep my hands busy while a bottle of NyQil and a baggie full of Ambien that I bought from that high school kid for $50 sits in the corner invitingly. But as you can see, I've gone from being completely non-responsive in a worn-out recliner to actually writing something down and stringing together some (sorta) coherent thoughts.

I had planned on writing something about Batman and instead put down a rambling diatribe on depression, alcoholism, and suicidal depression. If you're thinking, "Well, that might be the saddest, most pathetic thing I've heard of all week," you're not too far from wrong. I am, however, in a slightly better mood, so I guess this wasn't a complete waste of time. Well, for me, anyway. You're pretty much fucked if you've read all the way to this point, because it's not only not going to get any better, but it's almost over. So you may as well stick it out.

I guess the point is, if you're lazy, shit's not going to change. You're not going to suddenly become a pillar of society overnight. Enjoy your pretzels and PlayStation 3. If you're apathetic, or depressed, just force yourself to get up and do something. Nothing big, mind you; don't decide to build a deck or reach out to loved ones who have given up on you after years of having their sympathetic attempts to find you help fall on deaf ears. Fuck that. That's WORK. Do something small. Like get out of the chair and walk around the house. Take a shower or at least for God's sake, put on some clean clothes. Kevin Smith appreciates the View Askew shirt you bought from his Web site, it doesn't mean you have to wear it for 15-straight days without bathing.

Or just put some words on a page. Can't hurt.