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this is the first piece I have put on the internet so please tell me if you love it, hate it, or any suggestions for improvement!
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I sit in the middle of my apartment and look at the space around me. The walls are filled with the artwork I have created throughout the years and the snippets and fragments of my thoughts I had the intelligence to write down on paper. Going into it I knew art was just going to lead me straight down the path of unemployment. But being 18 and determined I thought that there was no way that could happen to me. I thought I would force myself into the art world and make it, or die trying.
“An art degree? That’s fucking stupid. With your brains you could be anything. Be an engineer, they’re practically begging for engineers. Didn’t you see all those commercials telling people to be them? It’d be much more rewarding than art.”
Gee, thanks for the support dad.
“Are you sure you really want to do art? I mean you’re good at it, but you would earn more money doing anything else.”
Love you too, mom.
Aren’t these parents supposed to support my decisions? Tell me to follow my heart and all that shit? Where’s the support? Where’s the “dream big” bullshit attitude?
‘Well if they weren’t going to support me,’ I thought, ‘I’ll just do it myself.’ So, I did. I spent four years of college trying to get a degree in art, got it, then didn’t find a single fucking job once I graduated. The money I had saved up from all my high school jobs quickly got spent and I found myself working 2 jobs just to try to pay rent.
And then I found the drugs.
Let me tell you, if there was a God like my parents insisted there was, then he makes himself into the form of drugs. The first time I look the LSD it blew my mind. It was like everything bad that was happening in my life was quickly forgotten and replaced with a bliss I have never known. Yeah, once I found the drugs, whatever money I did make went to feed the addiction, causing me to fall behind on my bills and everything else in my life.
This is my last night in the apartment and then I am officially homeless. You must understand that after choosing art over a more “practical career” my parents told me, and I quote, “Get out of our fucking house and don’t even come back if you’re dying.” Those rays of fucking sunshine.
So now I’m here, in the middle of my empty apartment save for my art, the bottle of vodka, three shot glasses, and the last strip of my LSD in the bowl in front of me. I poured vodka into each of the three glasses and lifted the first one to my lips.
“In the name of the father.”
With that I kicked the shot back down my throat. I closed my eyes and savored the taste for a bit, already being so far down the path of drunkenness that the alcohol stopped burning and you could actually pick out the different flavors in it. I took up the second glass.
“The son.”
I down this one as well and start to feel the tears well up. I take up the third and final glass.
“And the holy motherfucking ghost,” I choke out, dumping the third glass straight down my throat. I’m pathetic. I’m a washed up “artist” who thought they’d be the difference in the world but never actually made it past the school art fair. The girl who peaked in college and everyone thought had the brightest future but who will actually be found dead on a street corner because she overdosed on alcohol, drugs, and broken dreams.
I sob a few times before I compose myself so that I can finish the rest of the Eucharist. I take up the bowl and whisper to myself, “Do you accept the body of Christ?...Yes…Amen…” and put the square of that precious drug on my tongue. I close my eyes and hope I never need to open them again.
---
I sit in the middle of my apartment and look at the space around me. The walls are filled with the artwork I have created throughout the years and the snippets and fragments of my thoughts I had the intelligence to write down on paper. Going into it I knew art was just going to lead me straight down the path of unemployment. But being 18 and determined I thought that there was no way that could happen to me. I thought I would force myself into the art world and make it, or die trying.
“An art degree? That’s fucking stupid. With your brains you could be anything. Be an engineer, they’re practically begging for engineers. Didn’t you see all those commercials telling people to be them? It’d be much more rewarding than art.”
Gee, thanks for the support dad.
“Are you sure you really want to do art? I mean you’re good at it, but you would earn more money doing anything else.”
Love you too, mom.
Aren’t these parents supposed to support my decisions? Tell me to follow my heart and all that shit? Where’s the support? Where’s the “dream big” bullshit attitude?
‘Well if they weren’t going to support me,’ I thought, ‘I’ll just do it myself.’ So, I did. I spent four years of college trying to get a degree in art, got it, then didn’t find a single fucking job once I graduated. The money I had saved up from all my high school jobs quickly got spent and I found myself working 2 jobs just to try to pay rent.
And then I found the drugs.
Let me tell you, if there was a God like my parents insisted there was, then he makes himself into the form of drugs. The first time I look the LSD it blew my mind. It was like everything bad that was happening in my life was quickly forgotten and replaced with a bliss I have never known. Yeah, once I found the drugs, whatever money I did make went to feed the addiction, causing me to fall behind on my bills and everything else in my life.
This is my last night in the apartment and then I am officially homeless. You must understand that after choosing art over a more “practical career” my parents told me, and I quote, “Get out of our fucking house and don’t even come back if you’re dying.” Those rays of fucking sunshine.
So now I’m here, in the middle of my empty apartment save for my art, the bottle of vodka, three shot glasses, and the last strip of my LSD in the bowl in front of me. I poured vodka into each of the three glasses and lifted the first one to my lips.
“In the name of the father.”
With that I kicked the shot back down my throat. I closed my eyes and savored the taste for a bit, already being so far down the path of drunkenness that the alcohol stopped burning and you could actually pick out the different flavors in it. I took up the second glass.
“The son.”
I down this one as well and start to feel the tears well up. I take up the third and final glass.
“And the holy motherfucking ghost,” I choke out, dumping the third glass straight down my throat. I’m pathetic. I’m a washed up “artist” who thought they’d be the difference in the world but never actually made it past the school art fair. The girl who peaked in college and everyone thought had the brightest future but who will actually be found dead on a street corner because she overdosed on alcohol, drugs, and broken dreams.
I sob a few times before I compose myself so that I can finish the rest of the Eucharist. I take up the bowl and whisper to myself, “Do you accept the body of Christ?...Yes…Amen…” and put the square of that precious drug on my tongue. I close my eyes and hope I never need to open them again.
