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Coco Navarro

Spewed

The longest day of my life began in the bathroom. Nuzzled comfortably on smeared white tiles,

the sour stench of yesterdays lunch (or breakfast, I forget) and the cold drizzles of water was the

mornings wake up call. I left the shower open the previous night, it pushed the all the pink mush to the

corners. At least Im cleaner than I was a few hours back. Weng-weng was it? More like wang-wang.

Everything sounded like sirens drumming on my earsthe rickety wall fan, the trimming of grass and

the cars rummaging through. Why do I only get super-sonic hearing from hangovers?

Like I said, I was lying comfortably, almost numb to the bone, glued to the floor and fixated

blankly on the ceiling for a good ten minutes. Ajolt up my throat propelled me to the toilet seat. Thats

when I felt the pain clutch my stomach, my head feels limp from what felt like a solid punch. Putting my

hand against my forehead was a mistake. The smell of smoked cigarettes between my fingers just

attracted more vomit out of my mouth. I staggered in and out of the bathroom, doing just that, for the

rest of the day.

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Normally, a few glasses of cocktail, even a hoard of beer bottles would hardly get any

drunkenness to kick in. What made this particular incident different? A series of 24 waking hours and a

good amount of missed meals. A little celebration at the end of hell week turned out to be the start of

the hell-estof all days.

Now before I continue, dont get me wrong. This is not a mere story of a hangover or a tell-tale

life of a recovering alcoholic. True, I would speak of a vice but not induced by ingesting or sniffing, in

fact, I have no idea how it even enters the system. I am a workaholic. Im a workaholic, as diagnosed

by friends who hardly see me, parents I neglect talking to and guys I forget even exist (okay, perhaps

thats an overstatement). And in spite of THE story-to-tell of my life, be warned that no clichd happy

ending of successful transformations are in place. As I write this, my near-death experience is simply an

old friend I expect to come knocking back at the door.

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I am not very talented at building momentum, arent I? Yes, as I have mentioned, I almost died

that day. The saddest possible way I could have ever died (I would have been a blessing to have been

shot or got mixed up in an accident instead). My body rejected every piece of food, medicine, evenwater! By the afternoon, the whites in my eyes were a faint shade of yellow, my lips a pale tinge of

purple and grey. By the evening, I finally took in my first meal of the daydextrose (pardon me for

excluding the in-betweensa courageous phone call to my parents, awkward conversation with my

aunt and uncle, a long drive to Medical City, and some instrument up my ass). What was the doctors

diagnosis? Severe hyperacidity. Though it triggered it, this was not merely alcohol poisoning. My

problem was, aside from terrible eating habits is stress and overwork. Forgetting to eat is one thing,

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forgetting to sleep is another. Choosing to risk going through the same thing again is something

different. Within my last year of college, how can I not? Resume fillers collect titles, I find fulfillment in

escaping idle timethe abyss of long hours of spewing un-chewed, un-digestible histories.