Life and the Death of the Party (Essay)

"Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! 
O grave! where is thy victory? O death! where is thy sting?"                                                        

                                           -Alexander Pope

    I felt the sting once and when it hit I didn't see it coming. Awake only in a dream, never knowing that I could have been lost  forever. This was my last and first day in this world. Some might say that one can never be too careful. This statement may hold more water than I once expected. This is the accident that almost killed me and saved me from myself.

            It all begins with a night out at my friend Jimmy's house. Just a typical night but this night in particular he was having a party with some people and I decided to visit as well as possibly stay a day or so.

            "Jimmy you still having that party tonight?" I asked him on the phone

            "Of course girl! You coming?"

            "Yes, we will be there shortly."

So Lori and I went to his house and there were people some of whom we knew and some of who were strangers from previous engagements. This night in retrospect would end for Lori like any other night, but not for me.

            The night continued and there was drinking aplenty and many conversations to be had. Discussing art, philosophy, rudimentary ideas and thoughts. We were in a house where art was a key element for which most of the people I knew there focused their lives upon. As the night progressed the house began to empty but I started feeling a bit odd and out of sorts. I had in fact been drinking but this was different. A slight feeling of disconnection came over me and I found it hard to communicate normally. Then it appeared I wasn't at the party at all.

            I was talking with a geisha in what appeared to be a multi-leveled Japanese dwelling. They were telling me to cleanse myself and the chopsticks that I took from the bowl on the staircase had stuck to my face. Then just as abruptly I was in an office on what appeared to be a phone as if I was a telemarketer, the voice on the phone telling me to breathe. I closed my eyes and opened them to find myself in a dark room, the  walls sheets of metallic material inflating in and out all around me. Hearing nothing but voices discussing bringing "him" out and how "he" could go into shock. I was hence then pulled out by some unseen force as if being born from the womb again.

            Slowly my eyes began to open (this time in a real setting) everything was a bit blurry and there was a lot of white. As my focus returned I started to make the realization of where I was. I was in a hospital! Doctors standing around me and my father's wife Carrie who I guess was allowed in there because she is a registered nurse. I was then informed that I had been drugged at some point and aspirated during the night of the party after passing out, dying once and had been in the hospital comatose for a week. It took a week or two prior to get back to normal body operations and functions.

            All of this as a cohesive whole did nothing short of making me realizing how quickly it could all come to an end. Life is a short game and I wanted to accomplish so much more than I had been at that time. I made it my goal that from then on I would do all that I could to make my life worth more than some party kid statistic ending in a hospital bed at the age of 22.