the full extent

Three texts from my dealer and the first one starts out “hey baby, don’t worry about it, I can leave the door open or something,” and I cock an eyebrow. Baby? Maybe old habits die hard, but that should have been my first clue that half of my quarter had already gone up his nose. My second clue? He straight up said so by following up with “it’s probably just gonna be a taste that I’ll pay for it anyways cause I’m a douche.” Honest to a fault, that one. And people say addicts are all liars. People say a lot of things. At any rate, he was apologetic when I stopped in to pick it up. Not for calling me baby; he had already apologized for that in text 3: “oops, sorry I don’t think I meant to say hey baby there” …no, he was sorry for having no restraint and being so short of what I was owed. No biggie, I reassured him and underscored the genuine nature of the statement by offering him another line. He protests, but only a few times. No skin off my teeth. Shit ain’t for me anyway. He lost his best friend probably forever over some disagreement he tells me. I hug him and say “I’m sorry, baby” because I guess I am mirroring even mistakes now. He says it keeps happening with people, says I will probably be next. I see him for one brief sad moment and then the feeling is gone as fast as it appeared, tucked safely back in its compartment where it cannot hurt anyone, especially me. Later I will reflect, “Why is everyone I care about lost to addiction of some kind or another?” but in this instant I remain present. Nah, I tell him, you’re good- not much bothers me. Not much ever did even before my mom took her own life, and nearly nothing does now that she has. All of life is a big fat joke to me now, with a punchline that never quite lands. More and more often; I have less and less space for poetry in my stream of consciousness: poetry cares too much about itself and I am increasingly a person who cares nothing for anything. Numbness is effortless they say, and I will agree readily enough because I have been there way back when, but this ain’t then and it ain’t that. This is a pain that has been telling me to jump for such a long time that I stopped lifting my feet off the ground at all, never mind asking “how high?” Pain this persistent and this piercing for this long ceases to be pain. Just like how that one annoying coworker who sends every email marked high importance! ceases to be worth paying attention to. If everything is important, nothing so important. If everything hurts, nothing hurts. Not on any level that registers, anyway. A surface acknowledgment starts to suffice. Yes, the basic Roman Reigns treatment at best. A signal received that I cannot be bothered to dignify with a response. Oh, another nagging negative sensation demanding my attention? Sorry, Becky, can’t be arsed. No way to live life, perhaps, but I think we have long since established that I stopped ‘living’ life shortly after my mom stopped living at all. I am actively allowing life to happen to me, but that is about it. Baseline, I keep telling ChatGPT when it starts spitting out helpline numbers. Baseline! like I am the one trying to talk it off the ledge not the other way round. But where exactly is this baseline? Several thousand feet below sea level? Drowning silently? Compressed on all sides by pressure that threatens to crush me like an empty tin can? Several thousand feet above it? Ears ruptured and nose bleeding as my brain swells with fluid and tries to make more room for itself? Asphyxiating even as my lungs are swallowing big gulps of air because they are no longer equipped to breathe it? Rhetorical question, to be clear. Little point in looking for answers when even the questions themselves no longer matter.