Leaving the OCD Circus. Kirsten Pagacz

       Photo: Victoria Moran

      Congratulations, You've Arrived at Loser Land

      Because my grades weren't so hot and I was lacking direction, I registered at the local community college, which a local DJ on a popular Chicago radio station had called a “high school with ashtrays.” I felt like I was in Loser Land (or L.L.) big time and was so bummed about it; plus I had credit card debt from being in Europe all summer and completely mishandling my finances. I had to immediately get a shitty waitressing job to start paying off bills and get a shitty used car so I could get to and from all of this shittiness.

      The first car of my own was a light loser-blue Toyota Celica. I bought it with no credit or money down from Cecil and Sammy's Used Car Lot. Of course, it broke down constantly. Just another domino in the domino effect of complete shittiness. That shit stacks up!

      I'm not proud to say that I also started drinking and doing coke with strangers in dimly lit bars around town, like one called the Thirsty Whale. These strangers and I all had one thing in common: none of our lives were going right. The only things that made the bad, poorly mic'd '80s hair bands even close to tolerable were the drugs and the hope for more drugs coming. At the end of an evening, I would step out from behind the dark, heavy wooden doors into what was now ugly daylight. Let me tell you, it was grim and the day ahead was filled with no promise.

      Temporarily, coke—cut with who knows what—would make me feel something, but then there was the other side of it, when the pony pack was licked clean, the coming down, and the head-first CRASH. If Loser Land and my loserish jobs weren't enough to drive home me being a total loser, this sure was. I just couldn't seem to step into the next right moment. I was in total hate with myself and couldn't find my way out.

      I hated college L.L. and partied late almost every night. The hangovers were wicked. My weight was heavier now, too, and I hated myself for getting a little chunky. I didn't dare get on the scale. I thought I would just die if I saw the number staring back at me in electronic red.

      I still believed God was out there somewhere; I just didn't know where. I was convinced that my “real life” hadn't started yet, that this was all some kind of messed-up dress rehearsal. I was looking for my real life everywhere. I never imagined that it was under my two feet.

      I wanted to be invisible. I started wearing layers on top of layers of clothing to cover my body. In the dead of summer, maybe three tops plus a windbreaker. My skin was so white from lack of sunlight it almost glowed.

      I wasn't showering regularly because I was disgusted with my naked body and wanted to see as little of it as possible. When I was on my period, Sergeant would tell me that I was leaving bloody tampons everywhere. This was a new obsession. In fear, I would compulsively go back to the places that I had been and check just to make sure that there was nothing there. “There is no bloody tampon on the tile floor, Kirsten. There is no bloody tampon on the tile floor, Kirsten.” I would say it out loud in hopes that it would sink into my thick skull so that I could move forward.

      I was always wearing sunglasses, even while indoors. I would also wear my Sony Walkman everywhere, frequently with Peter Gabriel's “Red Rain” blasting in my ears. I didn't want to hear or see anything or anybody, and I wanted no reminders that I was there at L.L. with all the other kids who didn't make the cut.

      Then the binge eating started. In the middle of the night, I would wake up and binge eat. The next day, I would always feel as guilty and as ashamed as shit. One time while my mom and the king were out, I ate almost two half-gallon tubs of his rich pecan-filled praline and caramel swirl ice cream in one sitting. I knew I couldn't leave the empty boxes for anyone to see. The king would have gone berserk. So I drove myself and the completely licked-out empty tubs to a nearby forest preserve and dumped them in the trash. I then drove to the grocery store, bought two identical tubs, and sat in the car trying to eat just the exact amounts out of each one so they looked just as he'd left them. Then I went home and stuck them back in the freezer, and by the time my mom and the king got back home, I had covered up another one of my crime scenes.

      Every night for years, I got up and ate. With a lot of effort I could control myself during the day but had no control at night. At some point I tried securing myself to the bed with belts so I couldn't be so bad. That didn't work. My sleepy bad self would just take the belts off and quietly scrounge around the kitchen for something to devour. One time I ate all the chicken pieces out of Richard's chicken casserole and then mushed the noodles, carrots and peas back together. When Richard found out that I had done this, he yelled at my mother about what a “daughter she had.”

      And then there were the episodes of bulimic vomiting.

      One night around this time, I ended the evening at Denny's and ran into one of the two boys from Mind Fuck University (aka high school). Not the one I turned myself inside out for but his bestie. My “sucker light” must have been on BIG TIME. With confidence in his gait, he walked right up to the booth where I was sitting and greeted me, evil delight in his twinkling eyes, “Oh, look at what we have here! A failed anorexic!” I was the moment's entertainment yet again. Although I was feeling like a victim, no fighting-back words came to me. I just felt really hurt and sort of froze in the booth.

      Instead of saying “Fuck off!” as I should have, I said nothing and pulled his words in. Meanwhile, Sergeant grabbed the meanness and ran with it. Nothing had changed. Even after that boy had been such a shit to me over several years, I offered him a ride home and let him fuck me. I felt like dirt and that is what dirt does. He said, “Have a ten-pound bag of shit,” and I said, “Make it twenty pounds.”

      Let It Snow

      Smoking a cigarette was one way to get temporary relief. Smoking helped me check out. I'd get even deeper into my own head and deeper into my own noise, deeper into my own scribble and my own static. That's what the vacant smoking stare was all about—departure and cocooning.

      I became a constant pleasure seeker. And an addict in the constant quest to find something that would make me feel good and take away some of the pain, including but not limited to Sergeant.

       The biggest problem with my addiction was that, like all addictions, it sneaks up on you slowly. You give into it incrementally, in an almost imperceptible way.

       —MIDDLE MEN

      One addiction morphed into the next; in that respect, it had a similar nature to Sergeant.

      The best place to get some cocaine was Austin Avenue. I spent a lot of time there scoring pony packs, an origami-type white paper triangle with the pure white powder dope inside. One night I went to score a pony pack at a different bar than the usual one (where my dealer stashed his coke behind the dartboard). When I walked into the new bar, I didn't know anyone. But I did know very quickly who was selling coke there. I am convinced that drug people share a wavelength. It's like we are tuned to the same channel. Channel W.D.R.U.G.S.

      I scored some blow and did a line of it on the back of the toilet seat in the locked unisex bathroom. Once the high kicked in and my heart and head seemed to turn on, I walked out of the bathroom and felt a blunt object against my head. I turned to the right and looked straight into two barrels of a shotgun. Behind it was this crazy-eyed, unkempt old man I had never seen before. So what did I do? I put my hand up between my head and the barrels. I ducked down beneath the gun