I Don't Feel Well

I’m being sick. Everything comes out in violent, convulsive spurts. It’s all coming out and splattering onto the grey gravel of the roadside. I can feel the burning peer pressure digging away at the back of my skull with drunk sunken eyes on me with comments like ‘you’ll be ok now mate’. I don’t think I will somehow but I soldier on. They all pass my hunched form. I’m back on it, this stage show, this performance of me trying to be a man by guzzling down whatever is available. Some of the calls were right. I did feel much better after losing half my body weight spluttered all over the wall and my trouser leg. I had a sense of relief somehow and now I was able to continue.

Now I’m trying to convince myself that it was just water coming out and not this virus, this torrent of substance abuse or alcohol poisoning my entire soul. It was just meant to be. I tried to shrug the feeling off but my stomach was the dictator orchestrating this sickly performance. If I concentrate solely on the road I’ll be ok I thought. However, I couldn’t ignore the flashing lights and dancing numbers all around me enticing me and raising my senses to cinders with all their merry shapes and flashes. I can see white lines in the corner of my eyes that seem to be in me and inescapable like a dog chasing its own tail. But the moment my eyes flick to something else, my whole body sags, the strong winds easily knock me off balance spinning into parked cars and limp over the bonnet of a Mercedes. I dread entirely what may happen next.

Finally it came into view, I wondered if it ever would seen as though my progress is slow. My stomach is cramping and the prangs will not give up despite my best efforts to coax it into accepting anything less than 45% volume. I make a turn with a wide arc not wanting to subject it to any more torment. The wind is becoming more obvious and sapping. I must endure but I know this is going to hurt.

More sick, water and bile is all I have left but it’s all coming out now. Now there really is nothing left of me. Behind me a St John’s ambulance pulls up just as I wipe my mouth with the sleeve of my already damp cardigan. A nice looking blonde lady marches around the ambulance and comes bounding towards me with each step more purposeful than the one preceding it. Her face is one of pity and sadness. ‘Why don’t you come and sit in the ambulance?’. We then have a argument with me professing to feel better and that I want to join my friends wherever they might be by this time. She insists it will only take five minutes and I stubbornly agree. Eventually, after a matter of seconds her expression changes to worry and very real concern.

I take a sip of water from a kind looking gentleman with greying features who looks like he belongs in a suit and not here with me at 5am on a Tuesday night. After lying on the bed and professing how amazing I feel I’m subjected to a barrage of questions. They take my pulse, blood pressure and continue to ask me ‘what have I taken?’, ‘how much did I drink?’. Bloody hell, leave me alone, I don’t know I’m fine, in my mind I fly through space in-between tiny spacecrafts as though locked in some animated game. I got mad and wanted to escape this cage of a vehicle. ‘I’m going now’, I demanded. The man asked if I was ok to continue my journey into the morning to which I replied ‘continue? I still want to win, I want to be remembered for this night’. If you ever plead and it gets you nowhere always try sarcasm, it invariably works a treat.