The first time I tried cocaine I found heaven. All the noise in my head, the words I heard from my mom about how stupid and worthless I was, the reprimands from teachers who told me to get with the program yet wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell them the hell I lived in, all that went away. The hole in my heart and soul was filled. I felt beautiful, smart, and capable. These are the things the abusers in my life took away.
Man, I had found my Atlantis and I grabbed onto it for all I was worth. I spent so many weekends higher than a damn kite. Can you blame me? To me this was a magic elixir. To this day, especially as I am writing this, I remember what that first rush of doing a line was like. All my circuits lit up. My brain was on fire; I loved it! And then….when it first hits your muscles and you sink into the chair, letting all the tension you didn’t even know was there seep out onto the floor. I used to imagine all that crap, the hurt and anger, the feelings of being a constant outsider, as a dark sludge that formed a puddle on the floor.
When the effect wore off the sludge would slowly creep back into me. That pissed me off. I wanted all that crap gone! I didn’t want it back, what the hell-get gone and stay gone, I wanted to tell it. Yeah, I wanted to talk to imaginary emotional sludge. I look back now and it’s so tragicomical to me-a pissed off coke head coming down, which makes you edgy anyway. I was an anger cocktail looking for someone to drink me. I would look for a target to direct my rage at, because I noticed real quick I had to ration out the snow. Even then my body wanted more and more. It was never satisfied with a few lines at a party or before going out. Oh no, my brain chemistry was already so corroded at that point I needed 2-3 times what my friends were doing. I realized that I went thru a bag twice as fast as the others. I can’t say that scared me…..it annoyed me more than anything. That stuff is expensive and I didn’t have a lot of money. That was my annoyance-that it cost so much. Not that I was on the edge of falling into the hardcore abyss of addiction or was cruising for an assault charge if I kept my use up. Nah, I was more angry at the thought of being cash strapped.
What began as a fun weekend treat started to creep into the work week. A rigid rule of using only on Friday and Saturday nights went out the window. I started using on Thursdays as soon as I could get my hands on the stuff. Then it was doing a few lines in the morning before going to work. I was using more and more to get the high I loved while I was coming down quicker and harder. I was the junkie that I had made fun only a few years ago. I had sworn I would never be that way. The kids in school told me I was a freak show, my mom made it clear I was nothing to her, and dad buried his head in work. Teachers wrote me off as a psychological loser. But hell no, I would not give them the satisfaction of being a user. Yet I did……..
Not one person ever looked at me, at the totality of my life, and put 2 and 2 together. They knew I had been sexually abused at the ages 4 and 9, that my mom was “off” and had been hospitalized more in a psych ward more than once when I was in elementary school. So many of them saw her in action and either thought she’d never act that way at home or figured if she did act that way at home they didn’t want to get involved. No telling what she’d do to them.
So they turned away because it was too hard for them, as adults, to deal with my mother. No one thought to ask what it did to me or my siblings. Where a mentally ill parent is concerned, the motto other adults live by is “don’t get involved.”
If they don’t ask they don’t have to tell, do they?
I’m not quite sure what gave me the idea it was a good idea to drink a fifth of raspberry flavored vodka AND to put a whole bag of cocaine (that normally lasted me a week) up my nose in one afternoon. I thought I was going to die…………on the one hand I was drunk and laughing my ass off, on the other hand my heart was pounding as if it was Barbaro crossing the finishing line. I was fucked up and fucked up good. I started to cry when I realized I could die.
I couldn’t sit still. The room was spinning. I was sweating all over the place, and kept repeating to myself that this would wear off, it had to wear off, dammit when would THIS WEAR OFF? I either passed out or fell asleep, I am not sure which. I fought sleep for hours, thinking I would die and not wake up. I said my prayers, “now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
God had better take my soul if I die before I wake, was a thought in my head before I blanked out. He owed me. I had withstood His plan for me in the best way I knew how and if it wasn’t good enough, if I hadn’t looked for help hard enough or in the right places, then that was His fault. A blind man can’t cross a street without help. Neither can a child raised with the insanity of a Borderline parent navigate life without some sort of guide dog/therapist or hell, even a friend.
I woke up and looked for the last of my bag. I am not proud of this but…..I cut it open and licked the last of the snow out. I knew I couldn’t keep using and had to quit. I wanted to get every last high I could while I able. Months later I found the mirror I had used for cutting and briefly entertained the idea of licking my finger and running it across the surface so I could pick up whatever was left. I windexed it instead, then threw it after that.
I still crave my fix every now and then. I try to fill the hole in my heart/soul with other things. I really work hard at that, yet every once in a while the urge comes back. I can see what I was, the street junkie trajectory I was on, and I won’t do that. Somewhere, somehow, I was able to get it thru my head that I AM worth more than that.
Some days that knowledge is all I have to hold onto. Maybe I am delusional, I don’t know. But I do know I would rather be delusional than to ever go back to that place I was in where I realized I was punishing myself for what I had no control over. I was abusing myself for what my abusers did to me. How ass backwards is that? I will keep my delusions, thanks.
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