The DAA

365 Days of Creativity

day ninety one

the DAA

Have you ever heard of a damage addiction?
Also known as a mutilation vortex
A dramatic chain
The circle of self-destruction

Have you ever met someone so totally addicted to their own problems, they are beyond the reach of help?

Take for example, someone who tells you they have a secret, but they never tell you what the secret is. Though whatever it is, it's terrible, it makes them tremble and glisten and stutter out "I can't." as a refusal to letting you in. And you get this feeling that it's not for your sake, but for theirs. Because they need this secret. It makes them mysterious. Interesting. Special. This secret is the only thing they have.

Yes, you've met someone like this. Someone in love with never being loved. The princess in the tower who cuts down her own rope. The boy in the well who never calls for help. The girl who leaves behind drawings on her desk at school, but never explains what the graphite tears mean. Oh yes, we've met them, lived with them, tried to save them. But they will not be saved.

They can, but they choose pain over pleasure. Their pain is their pleasure.

Now imagine how hard it must be to always be so successfully misunderstood. No one will ever congratulate your depressive achievements. You're sweet isolation is bitterly unrewarding. Maybe once in a while it would be nice to hear how well you're doing at keeping everyone at bay. At letting the audience hang in the dark while they wonder at your dramatics from a far. All you need sometimes is an appreciative nod, or a pat on the back. 

That's where DAA comes in.

Damage Addicts Anonymous.

This is where every wednesday, all the cutters and bulimics, dumpees and artists (oh god, the misunderstood artists!), the narcissists and rape victims come to debate on regurgitation tactics and where to cut themselves, (where is too obvious and where is too risky). The narcissists discuss how to simultaneously keep a conversation on themselves while letting others know their lack of worth.

Meetings start at seven and can run all night.

Lucy, she's been eating lunch alone since she was fifteen, and tasting it twice since she was sixteen.

Meet Sid, he wears his sleeves rolled up until people ask about his scars. He wears his hair over his face to hide his smile when they do.

Charles is an online poet. Only he posts his work half-finished so people think he's self-loathing and gives up on everything. Charles doesn't even like poetry.

Genevieve has been dumped twenty-six times this year, four of which were caused by the abortions.

Jacob loosens the bolts on his bike to get in harsh wipe outs. He reopens his wounds so they leave disfiguring scars.

"Hi I'm Phil, I've been a damage addict for thirteen years. I've burned down three houses, all of which were mine."

"My name is Cherry and I always bet on the sure thing to lose."

"I'm Dylan and I've tried drowning in the ocean four times. I don't want to be saved."

"Hey, Mike here. I've jumped off the wagon again. I'm drunk, and I don't want to be saved."

"It's my first time here after my second time being raped. I didn't call for help."

Meet Megan, an orphaned girl who started DAA when she was eighteen. Megan was not born an orphan - no one is- but she became one just weeks after leaving the womb. It turns out shotgun weddings don't usually hold up past the accident's first birthday. Every time the orphanage would set up an interview for her, Megan would sabotage the meeting. She would spit or cry or insult the lovely, lonely couple.

The orphanage sent her to a private school in the next city where being abandoned made her unique. Kids looked at her with wonder, boys tried to save her and girls tried to comfort her. Megan realized if she ever got adopted, all of this attention would stop. So she kept spitting and crying her way out of being loved.

Once she graduated from school she realized she was so alone, there was no one to be amazed by her pain. So she posted a notice at the community center for 'Damage Addicts Anonymous; a place where we may be alone, together'.

The first week brought in only two. One woman who mistook the hall for the bathroom, and Lyle, a twenty-eight year old who had been faking seizures for over a decade.

Two people this fragmented often think the other can complete them, no matter how rough the fit of the pieces. The couple fell into a dangerous love, the kind where all of your messy weights find a precarious place of balance together. The rocky, turbulent seas of their relationship were calmed only by the gravity of the group they lead. Two tornadoes tied together with a leash. 

Megan and Lyle, the earthquakes that rocked a coastal city to its knees.

The wounded wolves that circled the edges, never accepting assistance, never giving anyone more than a beautiful view of a terrible creature.

Megan and Lyle, they loved each other because their conditions were complementary. Lyle was abusive because of his constant experiments with different medication, and Megan used makeup to make her bruises look, not better, but worse.

Every meeting started with Megan giving her own testimony. As she talked about how her old orphanage Director urged her to leave Lyle, a gloating glower would hang on her face, a satisfied smile sneaking over her cheeks. "The Director says I'm losing control. She offered to pay for my plane ticket home this week." Megan's grin cracks open her scabbed lips. "Mommy thinks I'm broken."

This is when she blows a kiss to Lyle at the back of the room.

Megan and Lyle

sitting in a tree

K-I-L-L-I-N-G

first comes drugs,

then miscarriage

then comes the day they jumped off a bridge

Can you tell she used to be beautiful?

It's hard through all of the bone.

The only reason they died together

Is because they lived alone.