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.)

Dousing Flames

Everything has a natural summation, an ending unavoidable and with all the hallmarks of finality. Life ends at death, day at night, autumn at winter. It all follows a natural order without deviation. Addiction is no different, but it has two possible endings- death or recovery.

It has been a long, long fifteen years. I had fun in the beginning, running wild and enjoying my newfound love, heroin. But that fun ended so many years ago. It devolved into the lowest form of slavery, I gave away all I loved and all that mattered before the dope to avoid that horror that is withdrawal and the greater fear of reality, life on life's terms. Then Monday before last, eleven days ago, some shit went down that left me asking myself how high a price I was truly willing to pay to live as a junkie.Was I willing to spend years in prison? Was I willing to die and leave my dogs without their mom? Leave my family broken, leave life behind, all for a fix? Just to avoid being dopesick and avoid the pain I've held inside for so long? Willing to chance the next near miss not being a miss at all and instead being a screeching halt and a farewell to any possible brighter days, against my true will?

I've lived in a motel the past eleven days. Well, one motel the first night and then a much cheaper and seedier one the rest of the nights. A clean drug test was required to come back to my dogs and my family, and I got seriously lucky in that an unlikely friendship meant rather than sleep outside or in a vacant house or the two-door Neon a friend loaned me, I slept in a bed. Massive doses of loperamide- in the 100mg range (they only come in 2mg pills...do the math) kept the worst of the sick away, and today I took a drug test that came back negative for heroin- my first clean test in five years.

I threw away over two years clean five years ago, on a cold and rainy Devil's Night in Detroit. I cried the whole way to the dopehouse, begging whatever higher power had kept me alive over the years to please make me crash the car, get pulled over, do something, any fucking thing, to stop me. Nothing stopped me. I gave it all away that night and the next night, Halloween, was nodding out while giving kids candy. That night, I was told to get the fuck out and I spent months afterward on the street. Spent Christmas Eve in a burned out Crown Vic in an empty lot, digging for veins. Thanksgiving at a soup kitchen. The only call those I loved would take from me was if I called to ask to go to rehab- a call that never came.

I told myself I could control it. I got myself off the streets through manipulation and lies and scams and back into my family's house. I started a dog rescue. I had a Jeep. But the dope? I never stopped. I fooled everyone around me into thinking I had stopped, got sneakier and slicker and everyone gave me the benefit of the doubt or perhaps just ignored it or thought I was simply crazy and didn't want to risk confronting me. I balanced on a razor's edge, keeping up an outward appearance of normalcy while really I was just a fucking smooth-talking hoodrat hyena in sheep's clothing. I truly believed it was under control. I had access to suboxone, and I would shoot dope and then take sub when I thought it was out of hand- but for five fucking years, I stayed solidly physically dependent on opiates in one form or another. Even that month I had "clean" just recently- I was hooked on the goddamn loperamide the entire time. Kept trying to wean off but couldn't. Had a damn diarrhea pill habit, for fuckssake. And the whole time, my brain kept spinning, saying, "when you get your shit together, Hyena, you can handle shooting some dope here and there." Here and there meaning every fucking day again within two weeks. Meaning backed up against a wall again. A wall that eleven days ago started flashing cherries and berries and almost ended very, very badly.

My hands are still swollen, yet another abscess is on my upper arm from getting frustrated after digging for veins for an hour while blood clotted in the needle until I gave up and forced the shot into my muscle. I'm dizzy a lot, I have to pull some dopefiend moves to put gas in the car I've got use of until my friend gets her license back, I took the last bit of loperamide today and have been weaning off and feeling like shit for days but I AM CLEAN. I didn't have to dig into my jugular vein with a bent, dull, barbed needle and dig till I either hit or gave up and resigned myself to causing another abscess multiple times today. Both my main dealers are now in jail or just not dealing anymore, which I wouldn't wish anyone into jail in Wayne County but it seems like some higher being conspired to take them out of circulation right at the time I got smacked in the face with a seriously terrifying wakeup call. There's rumors in the 'hood that I'm a snitch, since both dealers were either with me or going to see me when they got pinched, but I honestly don't give a fuck what people think anymore. I'm not wasting time trying to talk sense to someone so deep into their addiction they're willing to spread shit that could kill my entire family- someone that sick won't listen to a word I say anyway, and might drag me back into the thick of it. What others think just doesn't matter to me anymore.

What matters is that I no longer have any reservations- I know I will never, ever be able to use heroin once in awhile and then leave it alone. I finally understand and accept the full first step of Narcotics Anonymous- admitted we were POWERLESS over drugs, that our lives had become unmanageable. I always knew life was unmanageable when I'm strung out, but never truly believed I was powerless- but I'd tell you I was because it was an easy excuse for why I was seemingly unable to get and stay clean. But I get it now. Powerless means that when I pick up a needle, I won't put it down until I am dead, locked up, or hit with a scary enough wakeup call to knock me into reality long enough to understand what I'm really doing to myself- and to everyone who loves me.

Heroin, in the end, makes me fucking miserable. It makes me want to put a pistol in my mouth and pull the trigger. I shoot dope and I end up crying when I'm high. I beg, borrow, steal, rob, whatever to get more. I become someone I hate to the very core and I cannot stop. Dope no longer acts as a cushion, it's a bed of needle sharp nails now. It shakes my ground and makes me give away my hope. It's clear to me now like never before what my choice comes down to- go on to the bitter end, blotting out my consciousness with as much smack as I can fit into each syringeload, degrading myself in order to maintain a raging habit that claws at my soul every waking second- or recover. Face every dirty rotten low down junkie scumfuck thing I've ever done. Heal my soul, make amends, trust others with more clean time than me. I'm going to NA and AA meetings on a daily basis, I'm learning slowly how to live through the emotions cropping up in a whirlwind, and I'm motherfucking determined not to let reservations about control sneak back into my head.

All that stands between me and death or prison or complete, irreparable insanity is one shot. One pack. One bad choice. I want my life to be more than an existence. I want something worth living. And the only way I'm going to get that is to murder and bury my constant companion of the past fifteen years, that beautiful, destructive, omnipresent Lady Heroin.

Today, I'm moving on.

Christmas Eve in Crown Victoria

Lotto ticket in my rotting infected hand, my numbers might come up tonight. They should come up any day now, any ticket now should be the one that takes me to hell where I belong. I refuse to believe in hell because then, then I can delude myself into thoughts of me in heaven when I'm done here on this icy coldhearted earth. This night is dark and lonely but I embody its darkness and embrace its loneliness. 

My lotto ticket is folded into an envelope with powdered death inside, nobody picked out numbers hoping for riches on this square scrap of orange yellow and black typed paper. Powdered poison that eats my veins and eats my dreams and leaves me nodding broken on my knees in the snow, cold winter rain forming crust on the drains while steam rises from the sewer grates where I sleep. There's a crowded filthy shooting gallery nearby but this burned out car in a snowfield marred by only my own tracks is fine. It's fine. It's just fucking fine. My brain won't work anymore until the powder is liquid and mixed with my blood. My body won't work anymore except to continue torture until I feed it this drug. 

Climb into scorched steel built here in Detroit, a Ford Crown Vic that has seen better days. Wrestle a dull needle out of my socks, three pairs because winter is brutal here and I'm already frostbitten, body and soul, toes and spirit. I lost the will to live but I found my key to oblivion. Pull off filthy thin gloves and melt some snow in my hand, uncap the rig and draw up the frozen acid rain. Dump powder into spoon and add meltwater, hold over lit Zippo propped on my knee for light more than warmth or function. That delicious sick scent of hot steel and heroin licks up to my nose and my empty stomach growls, hunger deep and sick so few truly know and fewer still would wish to know. Bubbles form and I remove heat and drop in cotton wad formed from pocket lint, q-tips cost too much and aren't worth the risk to steal. Draw up my poison and wrap hoodie cord round my lower arm.

I've got one trusty vein running through the R in create, an old tattoo more a broken command than anything now. I don't create, I destroy, myself and anyone else who decides I'm worth the risk of bonding with. Christmas Eve and I'm alone in the streets, the only one sick enough to choose dope over life, tonight of all nights. It doesn't matter much what day it is when I'm sleeping alone in the cold, hoping the chimney in the abandominium I call home doesn't collapse on top of the weak flames from treated wood I ripped from the burned house next door. I'm sick growing sicker and weak growing weaker but this syringe in my hand full of heroin will make that all okay, will make it all fade away. 

I touch the surgical steel of the needle to the well used and angry red flesh before the R and must apply intense pressure to pop the dull spike through my skin. I'm lucky the vein is so weak in that spot from repeated use and the flesh too swollen to allow it to roll or I'd be in big trouble, unable to IV and instead forced by my sickness to slam the filthy thing into my muscle, inviting abscess like the two on my left upper arm. Why I feel it's much better to inject filth directly into my blood I never know, but at least it hits quicker that way. 

Blood registers, mixing with the golden liquid relief, and I depress the plunger with increasing speed, needing the gold to disperse and kill the pain and with luck me as well. Then I wait. I wait and I taste my thick dopesick saliva, waiting for that indescribable taste on the back on my tongue that means relief is here. One second. Two. Three. Counting in my head. Six. Seven. Did I miss? This is taking too long, did I blow my shot? I'm not itching and hiving at the injection site so not likely. Eleven. Twelve. 

There it is! And then warmth. The night is no longer cold to my easily fooled body as heat spreads from fingers to chest, toes to stomach. Sweet, sweet relief for my clenched muscles, sore from walking and scamming and stealing and selling my body and soul day in and day out to keep the demons at bay. This charred leather seat is suddenly a throne and I'm in heaven, life doesn't matter and neither does death. I'm here and then I'm gone and everything is all okay, it's okay that I'm nodding out with a needle in my wrist in a burned out car in Detroit on Christmas Eve because it just doesn't matter anymore. None of this really ever mattered much in the first place and now it doesn't matter at all anymore.

My head gets heavy, my eyelids grow weak, my breathing is shallow and maybe, just maybe, I'll make it to heaven or hell this time at last. Maybe this is the last winter on the streets of my dog eat dog city, the city where I gave my life away and fought halfassed battles pretending I wanted control back. I don't want control, I want this. I want bliss. I want oblivion and I want death and I will never, ever reach any of those because I'm "not meant to die" and have a "purpose on this earth" but really because I can never find enough cash to afford a suicidal overdose and because my gun isn't loaded- but I sure am.

You've brought me to my knees my golden powdered queen, so now how do I stand up again before the roots grow too strong and I'm stuck kneeling forever? Where are your magic answers for the future, queen? You won't give them to your loyal, devoted servant? Your motherfucking slave who spent the holidays with you, eating cold, processed turkey at the soup kitchen on thanksgiving, grateful only to not be dopesick because there was truly nothing else worthy of gratitude? Your bitch who works her ass off or sells her ass when needed to meet your demands? You won't give my loyalty the reward of your secrets, my queen?

I'm alone in this and I know it, I'm alone and adrift and I know it, I'm freezing to death and I know it and my blacktipped toes show me the truth. My two eyes are liars telling different truths- one of heaven, one of hell- and my heart is full of fallacy but some part of me, somewhere in me I know it. Something says this is not okay and I am not okay and dying here is not okay, but my eyelids are so heavy and the world is fading out. I am not cold nor warm nor anything else, I'm crossing over and I'm ready to leave. I close my eyes and there's only blackness and then time staggers and stops and I'm gone. 

And then I wake up and it's Christmas and I know still this is not okay. But I have no idea how to change it or if change is even a possibility for me, so I carry on as carrion for years and years more.