Lapping At My Heels

I cook it up and shoot it up and make an attempt to live it up, but fighting death gets tiring. So I suck it up and turn it up and make an attempt to sing it up, but screaming lyrics gets old. And so I turn around and look around and make an attempt to live this down, but stereotypes are stronger than I am. So I fuck it up and shake things up and make an attempt to change it up, but wasted days just bleed into wasted nights and form endless wasted years.

I sit beneath the streetlight for hours before I look up and see only darkness, some kind of metaphor for the reality of my mode of living. The truth does battle with my self-convinced mind full of lies, and up sure looks like down these days. Black looks white and darkness is blinding, and I know I have become the embodiment of urban blight. Self-imposed isolation is the hardest kind to overcome, when only shattered glass and missed cues keep me company. If you ask me to lie, I'll always tell the truth, but ask me for the truth and it's bound to be a lie.

This lifestyle weakens me physically and hardens me mentally and tears away my ability to trust the human race, because I've seen the desperation of various human conditions that have no place in this world. I've seen the aftermath of a cold shoulder, the loss of hope that dulls the eyes and steals away all light. I've seen 15-year-old kids who held more pain and weariness and distrust within their souls than prisoners of war, than battered police brutality victims, than New Yorkers on 9/11. I've stared down the barrel of a dealer's gun with no fear, only a longing for whatever rides on the butt of the bullet. I've felt cold, sharp steel against my back and felt no regret, only longing for whatever hangs on the dull side of the blade. I've felt violent hands around my throat and felt no need for air, only longing for whatever floats on the other side of the darkness. I've seen the impact incoming and stood to face it because really, what could be worse than what I've already seen?

Frostbite steals skin off my toes I won't miss, and I steal stereos and moments of euphoria, knowing always I'm only ripping off myself. Leaving smashed car windows and crushed hearts in my wake, destruction and blatant criminal acts only mask my fear of what's around the bend. If you look me in the eye I'll always look away, because to face you would mean facing myself. I run from confrontation and always crack under pressure. I'll spill guts to the masses from the tallest buildings and spill blood into empty streets and desolate alleyways, fighting with staggering violence against all that I am, all that I have become. And every time I look over my shoulder I see less and less of who I used to be, as the dust grows thicker, as the lights grow dimmer, as the wreckage piles higher. And every time I look ahead the path is drastically shorter, as I further batter my body, as the pains in my liver grow sharper, as the hours I spend asleep grow longer and longer while my body gives out. I know how it feels when my mind is no longer mine, when loss of control is so complete it leaves me questioning whether control ever existed to begin with.

I dream the dreams of the dying, so starkly clear, those that don't fade a bit after I wake. I'm dancing life's razor's edge, pushing the limits of even this addict's endurance, feeling pieces slip away as the walls close in. I don't just take chances, I take major risks, putting my life at stake by constantly seeking that once-in-a-lifetime high, shooting as much at once as I can fit into the syringe, regardless of whether it's heroin, coke, or whatever else I've decided to use to blot out my thoughts. And even when I scramble and get up on my feet for brief periods, my body still lives with the aftermath, constant physical pain and weakness that doesn't fade anymore. After I've been running the streets for months seeking dope, I finally become so sick that I sleep solid 72 hour periods as my body tries desperately to heal. To rest for the next week's inevitable torment. And yet, I just can't stop.

So I spend my life searching, while my wasted days bleed into wasted nights and form endless wasted years. And I spend most hours face down on the pavement, cursing the moon and stars while I grasp at straws that only get shorter and shorter. There's interference in the clouds and my satellite dish fails to pick up transmissions from the future, and the static is the perfect place to stage an ambush.

And as the edges blur and the sun becomes reluctant to rise, I grow tired of waiting for the storm to pass and make another attempt at learning to dance in the rain, water rolling off my shoulders, washing away a decade's worth of dried blood and city dust. And though I dance alone these days, my neck is gaining strength, almost powerful enough to lift my head again to salute the world as it passes me by, our parades marching opposite directions on the same crowded street. And in these moments, if you tell me the end is near I'll just laugh and live on forever, with flames always lapping at my heels, the hounds of hell bounding circles all around me, rain pounding my back and elusive hope slipping in and out of my grasp.

(Written by me in 2008. Still had five years of living in hell left ahead of me. And elusive hope was a lie- I had no hope left.)

Rebuilding Begins When My Arson Ends

I've spent so many years circling in the clouds, searching for life as it is meant to be lived, soaring on false wings given by heroin. But it turns out that all along, the life I was searching for was never one I could see from the air. I needed to land and breathe sober air and take sober steps before I could see that life? Life IS that pain I run from. Life is that sadness, sorrow, regret and fear. But life is also moments of joy, of peace, of sometimes feeling nothing but okay. Life is placing one foot in front of the other with no chemical buffer between my feet and the ground and knowing that the simple fact of my sobriety does not entitle me to anything more or anything less than anyone else gets- life as it is, with it's flaws and uncertainties and pains and triumphs. Because that is what life is, that is what living entails.

I sit here with a pair of days with absolutely no opiates at all in my system, after taking the last tiny bit of my suboxone the other day. No suboxone, no smack, no methadone or even kratom. I'm in withdrawal, my entire body hurts, my stomach is revolting and threatening to rip it's way out of my abdomen altogether, but I've no desire to walk away from where I am right now, both physically and emotionally, because I want what lies on the other side of these last couple days sick. I have an abscess on my upper arm that I'm fighting a losing battle against with double doses of three different antibiotics, and one in my neck I'm more hopeful will respond to the pills, and even that pain is welcome, because it is REAL. I've made it through the seizures, I've made it through the sleeplessness. I have made it through the daily moments where I would gladly and without second thought cut out and sell my own kidneys for relief of this sickness. I know $20 would relieve this sickness, but then what does that do for the deeper root of the sickness, my disease? It would set me back behind that wall between me and life as it is meant to be lived, a wall I was so sure, so absolutely, entirely certain, I would never see this side of again.

I've been absent here and on my corresponding Instagram, which is apparently now famous thanks to the way viral news reports have spread about the community of #junkiesofig, because my phone was stolen, ripped out of my hand at the bus stop. At the bus stop, on the way to go meet my dealer relapse. My ability to contact my dealer- not a dopehouse, he is a call and meet dealer- that day and get him to meet me at the bus stop went with my phone. Funny how things work sometimes. Since then, I've been simply too sick or too weak to write or think or do much not dictated by my most primitive brain functions. I've managed to take care of what needs taken care of thanks to one incredible and absolutely priceless thing- my mom. My mom, who I thought I'd lost forever, though not physically, emotionally. She said, the day I told her I was done, that this is it and I'm not using again, that she had no hope for me. That I would be dead in a gutter someday anyway and me pretending to try just hurt her too much, that she had detached. And I could not for one second blame her or feel anything but absolute shame. Shame, but also a determination to prove her wrong. I think she sees it now as I do, I think she sees the change in my soul I felt that day I slipped up and used last week, the day I knew the drugs were the same but I am different now. And she has been there for me. She has seen the choices I've made and the determination to not go back, to not let myself fall.

Who knows what next week will bring. Who knows if I will even be sober tomorrow. At this point, I don't even think whatever gods there are out there that have kept me alive this long know what my future holds. But I do know what it felt like the last time I shot dope. How instead of relief, it was as though I'd injected fire into my very soul itself, burning myself down from the heart on out. The shame, the instant wish that I could just pull the plunger back and undo what I had just done, that desire for a do-over I've felt so many times in my years as a junkie. I know it felt all wrong, and it wasn't a change in the drugs that made it feel that way. It was a change in me, a change in my heart and soul and knowing for a fact that I have found a better way.

I don't need to live like a rat anymore. I don't need to live as a zombie. I don't need to be a bottomless junkie. I can make my bottom wherever I choose to get off the sinking ship. And I'm off the ship today. I'm on land, though it is still just the very edge of a beach shrouded in mist, the rest of which I cannot see and don't know what is around the next chunk of fog, but I know I am in the right place right now. I know I am walking the right road right now. This is not easy and it hurts like nothing else and sometimes it feels like I am burning and engulfed in flames still, but I know, I KNOW these flames will burn themselves out. I am going to build my next life of brick, quit relying on the flimsy and flammable matchsticks I've always used before in my rebuilding attempts.

The city of Detroit burned almost to the ground three times in her history. I have burned my life almost to the ground countless times. Detroit rebuilt and is rebuilding again from a different type of fire today. I rebuilt, and am rebuilding again today. My self-arson is under control today. I am going to make mistakes. I am going to hurt beyond anything I can imagine. I am going to cry, I am going to laugh, I am going to feel joy about something other than free smack. I am going to fucking LIVE. I don't know if this is "it," if I'll never be strung out again, and frankly, I couldn't give a shit less. Today I'm not strung out, today I'm not giving my life away to heroin. Today is all I have and today?

Today, I am going to be okay.

An Ending In Flames

I want to believe that when my time is done here and I leave at last, there's something better waiting on the other side. That after a life lived in the flames, I get to rest when I am dead. That maybe on the other side, I get to hold down a job and lease a safe, reliable minivan and pay a mortgage on a house in the country with a chunk of land, half of which I use for a pit bull rescue and the other half the love of my life uses for a working line Doberman breeding kennel. I like to think I will never have heard of heroin and never have known her bite, soothing at first but eventually the death of me one way or another. I like to think my family will visit and be proud and eat BBQ ribs while we set off fireworks on the fourth of July, and I will never spend a night sleeping outside unless I'm camping in the U.P. listening to the howls of wolves. I like to think all this because at least it gives me one thing to look forward to. I like to think it but I know with the hands I have always been dealt, I'm not going to be that lucky. So I just hope it isn't as full of flame as my life here has been. As long as it isn't a repeat of my time on earth, then that's all I ask. I do believe all junkies go to heaven because we have already been through hell on earth. But I don't know if I qualify for that relief. I gave it all away. 

I gave away my bond with my dad, choosing trying desperately to fit in when the wolves turned on the hyena in their midst so long ago. I gave away my relationship and the pride of my mom, what my sisters hold close and guard so carefully, what I'd give my life and will give my life to fix, for only my final departure can end the pain and shame I cause her now and let her heal at long last. I gave away my home in pursuit of what I believed was cool and right and where I believed I was meant to be. I gave away my control over self when I first met heroin and felt a needle's prick. I gave away my soul when I realized that an abandoned half burned house felt more like where I belonged than in the arms of someone I love. I gave away my future when I caught my first habit, a habit I caught because I chased it, so naive. I gave away my love to so many even knowing always they would leave, but still I loved them all and always will. I gave away my familial ties by repeatedly biting the hands they reached out to pull me to my feet, not knowing the reason for the reflex, only knowing the harder they tried the harder I bit. I gave away the love of my life, my kindred soul, when I proved to him and myself I could not beat this addiction and came to realize that by giving him away I would ensure I didn't drag him into my ever raging Saint Elmo's Fire with me. I gave away what I spent years building, a haven and hope for forgotten dogs, the only good I'd done in my life and the last thing I had left to try to hold myself together for. I gave it all away. 

I sit and stare into blackness knowing soon I will be in that blackness at last, without the pain and regret I've known for so long, without the knowledge that even the good I'd built I gave away in the end. I know that is the color of the end because I've seen it before. I've seen it when I gave death my best shot and yet didn't stay gone. The end will come dressed in black, sharp at first but then soothing and soft, and I will melt into her embrace and I will go quietly into the night. I won't fight. I don't have any fight left. Now with only my two furry daughters left keeping me here, daughters I know my mother will keep and protect and love for me, I see at last how selfish I am in staying here. In continuing to form bonds with people only to hurt them and drive them away shaken and changed in the end. In continuing to hold control of that haven I built knowing I'm really just a burden even to the progress of that in the end and it is better to let control be passed away from me now, so it can either end or grow brighter without me. 

I never belonged here. I don't think I was meant to be put here. Or at least not as a human. Maybe as one of the strays I tried and failed to rescue. Or a wolf. Or a hyena, brutal and vicious at times but so loyal and true to their clan. I don't believe I will come back as something or someone else. I believe I had my chance and have proven my soul flawed beyond repair or hope. Now all I want is to be granted my due, free passage to a place beyond this realm where the light isn't tinted red with history and the great inland lakes are cool and refreshing when I dive from a cliff into their waters. 

I dream of a place with fields that don't end and the dogs I've let go before me are there waiting. Where my dad stands with open arms and streaming tears, welcoming me home at last with the only hug left that could heal me. Where friends who became family sit around the fire telling stories that end in triumph and never our failures, never our regret. I dream of a place free of pain, free of fear, where each day is the same, as they were here, but each day is not the same as it was here. Where my breath comes easy and the sunset lasts forever. A place without darkness or doubt or flame outside a fire pit. 

I hope my dreams foretell the future but I know better. I know what my lot in life is and know I will reap the same in death. But I have hope it won't be the exact same, and that is why I have no fear of it. I don't fear death. I fear a future I cannot ever picture beyond the next day. I fear living on now that the last of the good is gone. I fear another fifteen years in the flames until there's no ashes left to arise from. 

I don't know yet if this is goodbye. I do know that to try suicide is an act of futility for me, that the most earnest attempts end in further failure. But I do know I know a house where a dead dog lies in a closet upstairs, surrounded by his toys and food dish, likely left "just for a few days" that became forever and I discovered him far too late to rescue his forgotten soul. I know this house well because I spent a winter there until I found the departed dog upstairs. And I know a corner in the kitchen by the stripped sink where I once almost left this realm before, too much heroin when I didn't mean to and six hours gone half alive and all unconscious. I know I could sit down and shoot up and let go there. It wouldn't be hard. I'm hanging by a thread that shouldn't take much to sever. 

How low can I limbo before I break? How much weight can I carry before I crumble?  How long will it be before I sell my soul again? How long until I'm delirious from lack of sleep again? How long until a gun is shoved in my face, and will they pull the trigger if I turn and run? How much is my useless life worth and how will I find out?

I don't have the answers but know I soon will. Know I am facing flames of my own making again. Usually it is as simple as putting those flames out by sobering up, but that didn't work this time. It just made me realize no matter where I am, still I burn. Those flames lap always at my heels. And there is nothing left of me to turn to ash, no ashes left to arise from. Nothing left to rise for. I've given it all away and there's no going back. 

If God exists, I hope He lets me go in peace and warmth and beauty, even if that warmth is false and created by the product of the deadly beautiful poppy flower, as red as the blood I draw into the syringe that I use to blow my brains out and erase myself from this realm.