But I can’t. I told her to go. I convinced my mother she had to go on this stupid trip, and so I don’t get relief. I don’t get oblivion. I don’t get to fall off a wagon or a skyscraper or anything else because I don’t deserve to feel better.

I killed my mother.

I grab a glass of water and pull myself up the stairs, to where my parents keep the Advil, because maybe that will make my bones shut up for a little while. It’s the strongest thing I can give them. Our Venice bungalow is essentially a sober house. Mom and Dad stopped drinking at home in solidarity, and once I got back from detox and started the outpatient Circle of Sad bullshit, I never smelled Mom’s weed in the backyard late at night, when she thought we were asleep.

I feel like I’m trespassing when I enter the master bathroom. For some reason, I feel them here more than in other places in the house. They were in a rush the morning they left, and so things are scattered on the counter: a tube of lipstick, a bottle of Brut cologne, Dad’s little silver scissors. I run my hand across the dry bar of soap in the shower—who used it last? Probably Dad. Mom likes to take her showers at night. A lump gathers in my throat, and I remember how Cynthia says that, according to Reiki, this means my head and my heart are having problems communicating.

I open the cabinet, grab the bottle of Advil, but I’m crying again, the smell of them all around me, and the bottle slips from my hands and the pills go everywhere.

I get on my knees, start picking them up, when I see it. Wedged under the sink, behind the toilet bowl cleaner.

My mouth waters at the sight of that little orange bottle.

Vicodin from when Dad got his knee surgery a few months ago, hidden so I’d never find it.

My mind—it doesn’t think. It has no say as my body, as my hands, reach for that bottle, twist off the child safety cover: thirty pills—a whole month’s supply.

This is almost like how it all started.

Gram had left some Vicodin at the house after a visit. A year and a half ago. Weed wasn’t doing the trick anymore, making the sad go away, so I grabbed the bottle. Just to see if there was something that could help me feel better. About life. About being me.

Because it feels like the universe keeps telling me to step aside.

Mom’s always saying to read the signs, and I’m telling you, they are loud and fucking clear.

People don’t want me. They don’t see me. Like, literally, I am invisible.