Gunna Let It Shine

I feel like I have known you my whole life, and the life before this one as well. I feel like every inch of you I've seen before, like every piece of you I've known before. This feels less like getting to know you and more like reminding myself all about you, remembering things I knew before. 

You saw something worthwhile and bright and good in me when I believed nothing in myself was anything better than dirt. You sat next to me while we circled around tables with other addicts learning to live clean, you listened while I shared my struggles and triumphs and I while you shared yours. You passed me your number through a friend and the next night we sat in a coffee shop and talked for hours, then sat in your van that became our van for hours more after a meeting that night and talked on. No silence felt uncomfortable, no topic felt taboo, no shred of our pasts felt like something needing to be hidden from each other. Complete honesty from the start was a firm foundation for the love that grew and spread in our souls like wildfire. 

I told you I wasn't good at this kind of thing, that I needed you to make the first move. The next day we kissed and then we fell fast and hard. Absolutely out of control in love. I knew within days you were the one. And you said you knew the same, and I could feel in my heart and soul you spoke the truth. 

I have not since childhood felt so safe as I do in your arms. I have not put my trust so completely in another as I have with you. I have never before come together with someone and wanted to pull our bodies so close together that we become one being, for you are the piece of me I never knew was missing but now could not imagine being without. When we lay wrapped around each other, drifting off to sleep, I'm often hit by a wave of love so intense it hurts deep in my heart, and ache pure and good. There is no place on earth I am more content than in your embrace, bodies pressed together, being still and silent and knowing nothing could ever destroy that moment of ours. 

You are my love, my life, my heart and my soul. You are the wind that lifted my broken wings back into flight. You nourish me and guide me and lead by example. You love me without limits and I do the same. You point out all the good things you love in me and never once have you brought up the bad. You've showed me all the reasons I should love me, you're the reason I looked myself in the eye in the mirror today and realized I love myself today, I love what I am today, who I have become with your gentle nurturing. 

I love you with everything I am, with every fiber of my being. I spent 26 years waiting for you, not knowing until I'd met you how alone I'd truly been all those years. It's only been four months I've known you and yet my heart has been waiting for you all my life. I am meant to be yours and yours alone. Thank you for being my Big Goofy, my soulmate, my one true love. Thank you for loving me as deeply and irrevocably as I love you. You've shown me the true gifts of life without smack- all the powerful emotions and you remind me why drugs are no longer an option for me. My euphoria is found in being one with you, in knowing all will be well in the end. 

Our life together stretches out before us, our futures having now become our future. I've waited so long for you, and now the waiting is over and our life has begun. There's a flame that burns in my heart for you and you alone, a flame that's burned away my regret and given me firm faith that everything happens for a reason. I burned myself down with smack for fifteen terrible years so I could walk into that first meeting back and keep walking right into your arms. 

This flame, I know is one that will never burn out. This flame I will keep lit all the days of my life. This flame is good flame, this flame is pure and bright and cleansing. 

I love you Joel. Always and forever. 

Burning Alive

I'm frantic to get away but I can't walk. I'm sweating and shaking and nothing stays down, throwing up globs of blood because the acid is eating me alive inside. I weigh next to nothing and my pants are held up with the cord from my hoodie. I'm filthy, my sweat smells like death, my body is revolting against me and I can't make my goddamn legs work. I can't get up. I'm in a puddle of bloody vomit but at least there's nothing in my guts to be coming out the other end. It's winter but I'm burning up, my skin cold and clammy to the touch but if you touch me, I'll lash out and rage against you and smash my fist into your teeth and drive it through your face because my skin fucking hurts. My bones fucking hurt. My hair fucking hurts. It all fucking hurts. 

I'm on a wood floor in the living room of an abandoned house with no glass in the windows and snow gathering around my face. I'm a human puddle of pond scum, I'm vacant on the inside and my soul is fucking bankrupt. My heart's beating funny and I keep hoping it'll stop. I know I won't freeze because the white hot steaming heat my sick body throws off might be enough to burn this motherfucker down. God let it burn down. Let it get torched and just let me fucking die. Somebody please help me. Would somebody please, please just help me. "help." Put a bullet in my brain like a crippled old horse or put a needle in my vein that'll pull me out of this remorse. Somebody please just help me. I'll never do it again if you'll just help me this one last time, I promise. 

My eyes are glass, you couldn't tell what color they are they're too filmed over. I'm seizing now, my body moving on its own with energy it apparently has but that I can't harness to make my useless legs move. My legs move all right, they move constantly, kicking and crawling and I need to punch them till they're black and blue to get them to stop for five fucking seconds. Now my arms start. Punch one with the other and then switch sides. The dopeman, he's not shown up here today. Where the fuck is he and why did I let this get this bad? Why didn't I walk and cop while I could still walk? Why do I keep trying to kick when I know I'm gunna die a filthy disgusting junkie with nobody to mourn me?

I got fantasies and dreams- I fantasize about rotting here after this finally kills me. I dream of ending up in the hospital with an IV line to exploit. Hopefully a central line, those are the best. It'll be a central or a jugular line, that's all the options left for anyone's needle now. My fingers black with gangrene stink like the rotten flesh they are but my sweat smells worse. Oh god, what did I do to deserve this? The smack was an escape, how did it become the very thing I now cannot escape from?

I haven't slept in a long time, I either nod instead or am wide awake in misery as I am tonight. The dopeman was supposed to come by, he does every single day like clockwork to take care of me in return for me taking care of him. Did he die? He got shot I bet. I bet he's never coming back. I bet he's doing this on purpose. I bet he's watching. I bet I'm gunna die but not anytime soon cuz I've got to burn for my sins first. First I got to suffer and suffer I am. 

I'm delirious. I'm hallucinating. I'm starving. I heard a noise, I hear birds but its midnight, why're the birds awake? Why're the birds whistling? Why're they yelling at me to sit the fuck up? Oh god it's him. It's the dopeman. I'm saved! I'm saved. I'm saved from responsibility and from reality and from a future I'll never know. The rig's preloaded, he'll let me get loaded before I take care of my end of this deal...

I'm awake now. I'm awake. I'm awake and I'm sitting in bed. I'm not high. I'm not sick. I'm not in an abandominium, I'm in my mom's house and I'm safe here. I've still got 19 days clean and I'm in my inflate-a-bed with my dogs awake and looking at me with concern. It was a nightmare. It was all a nightmare, it lasted fifteen years but I'm awake now. 

I'm awake. 

Zelda: A Very Belated Eulogy

He was my hero and my enemy, my destroyer and my friend. He drove me insane and kept me grounded, spun circles beyond the outer edges of normalcy and screamed full-throated, half baked tirades from rooftops, frantically waving handguns and poetry like rescue beacons at a savior who's attention he could never quite catch. He had good days and bad days and the bad days were living hell for me yet unfathomably worse for him, yet the good days always made up for it in the end. Medication wasn't optional for what ailed him but he refused it often and vehemently anyway, lest the capsules help the government install cameras into his intestines. He was an angel and a demon, a maniac and a slave, with tattered bloody stumps where his wings once were and a hollow rudimentary star below his right eye and scribblings of ink along his arms and chest. His dreadlocks were peppered with beads and bits of string and ribbon and he was the white boy version of George Clinton on LSD and smack. He was an ignorant genius who knew everything about some things but nothing about anything that mattered. His name was Zelda, and he was my best friend and on again off again boyfriend, dependent upon whether he was being a stark raving asshole or a sweet and friendly puppy dog at any given moment. 

We sit in the living room of the apartment his mom is renting for him as a desperate attempt to somehow force his brain back into the normal mode it operated in before the first hallucinations came to haunt his everything- she believes if he can live normally with a place of his own, it will cure the schizophrenia. There's nothing but my rolled up, ripped and threadbare excuse for a sleeping bag, two folding chairs, and a card table in this too big room. We sold the nice futon and television his mom bought a long time ago. On the table, on top of a layer of Saran Wrap, are my tattoo machines, my pigment, my needles and my greensoap, nestled amongst a pile of paper napkins from 7-11; paper towels like I preferred weren't in a budget designed around every penny being spent on heroin for both of us and crack for him. A box of black nitrile gloves sit on the very corner of the flimsy and shaky plastic surface balancing out the power supply sitting kittycorner to it, my foot pedal tucked under the table in easy reach of my right foot. It looks like a tattoo shop compressed into a prison cell until you notice the hundreds of dirty insulin needles scattered across the carpet around us; there aren't multitudes of needles scattered in most prison cells. 

His arm is held steady in the clearly uncomfortable position I've bent it into, his boney, so deathly thin elbow in the right spot for the work I've been tasked with and talked into doing while high. My first- and fortunately last- tattooing job while nodding out; my best friend, boyfriend, and confidant is the only one safe enough to risk this on, he says. God, he is so thin. We are both so thin. Together we barely break 200 pounds, and he is over six feet tall. If you empty the pennies he insists we save- but aren't ever allowed to spend- out of our pockets before forcing us onto the scale, we wouldn't even be 190 together. 

Electric buzzing fills the silence and then the clinking of glass joins the din as a friend drops off the vodka we are owed in payment for allowing him to sleep in the bathtub last night. I shouldn't drink, Zelda even more so, yet we do anyway. The heroin and alcohol mix in my blood and I nod harder, my edges blur to grayscale nothingness, my focus falls by the wayside. 

Spiderwebs and elbow tattoos are precise with no room for sloppy lines or mistakes. I'd spent an hour and a half the night before drawing this web onto my fellow warrior's elbow, as I wanted to have a day to look at it and watch it as he moved and bent and twisted and raged and tried to murder me in a paranoid delusion. It was perfect. Everything was perfect. Everything was a perfect, beautiful, deadly swirling mass of chaotic selfishness and selflessness combined into hatred and love and companionship. 

I nodded and the needle followed my weakening hand as I slipped away, caught quickly but still too late. Perfect was destroyed and strays entered the picture. Stray lines, stray souls, stray hopes being mutilated and tortured to death. We locked eyes and agreed silently to try once again. We were almost halfway there, and I handed my bottle to him so he could finish my rightful share while I tried to work the line I'd made in nod into the design I'd painstakingly drawn with purple surgical marking pen 24 hours before. 

Another nod, another line. We locked eyes and silently decided to finish in the morning. Morning soon seemed hopelessly distant. Within 10 minutes of me cleaning up and packing away my machines, our "friend" and sometimes roommate overdosed and almost died while I did CPR and mouth to mouth on her for over a half hour until she finally took a breath on her own and her pulse came back to my fingertips pressed against her carotid artery. I ran her pockets once it was clear she'd survive, stealing the rest of her smack in the name of preventing a second round of lifesaving for her and preventing a round of dopesick blues for myself. 

And then I set out to erase the image of her blue, lifeless, breathless and pulseless body from my mind with copious amounts of vodka and heroin. The erasing worked in a way; I erased forever the rest of the night from my memory, finding out I'd blacked out and gotten violent only when I came to hours later on the floor rather than in our bed and saw the cuts and bruises on Zelda's face, a first for me- I am not a fighter. I'd attacked my best friend, my boyfriend, my everything and beaten him bloody and black and blue without knowing why I'd done it or how I overpowered him. It wasn't until years later that I learned I hadn't overpowered him- he had refused to raise a hand to me even in self defense, a far cry from the constant attempts to kill me while in paranoid episodes. Zelda was a good boy when the disease wasn't chewing on those vital parts of his cerebellum. 

Paradise was tarnished and the solid ground was shaky. The ending started within days of my blackout and lasted little more than a few months, and I will never know if my beating is what caused the sudden and drastic acceleration of symptoms. He hadn't had his first schizophrenic signs until he was 22- a relatively late onset- and for it to go into a tailspin like it did so quickly wasn't typical. I stood by Zelda through the worst of times in his life and he stood by me, but cheating is never okay and when he refused to kick her out of our room one night when I caught him with her, I'd had enough at last. The boy I'd grown up with, who'd journeyed big stretches of my path with me since I was 10, who was the one person I could always always crawl back to and be welcomed no matter how damaged I'd become, wasn't the same boy anymore. He wasn't my Zelda anymore. The paranoid schizophrenia was getting worse and even medicated now his personality was forever altered beyond repair. He became increasingly misogynistic and treated me like trash more and more. He walked away from punk rock and techno and decided rap was his culture. He stuck out like a sore thumb and for the first time in our lives, it didn't cause him pain to know he fit nowhere anymore because his spirit was owned by the sickness in his head, leaving no room for the emotions and reactions that would've made sense in those final weeks. The cheating, the lying, the name calling and the physical attacks when delusional had always taken their toll on me but I could never leave him just because he was sick- the good days truly did make the bad worth it. But the day came when it was clear that the good was gone, as was the bad, replaced by a stranger in Zelda's body. I had to leave. I had to walk away. I would kill myself with drugs because of grief or he would finally kill me in a paranoid episode if I didn't. And it caused Zelda no pain when I did- he simply was too broken now to feel anything normal, too brain damaged to be saved. 

I walked away and saw Zelda only in passing while buying smack from then on, as we used the same dealer at the same dopehouse. I left bags of clean needles there for the dealer to give to Zelda, the only way left I could take care of him. I let go a little more each day but knew he'd forever leave me changed.  

Within four months of my blackout, Zelda was dead. The story his mother told acquaintances was that he died in his sleep, but I was privy to the truth and the contents of the toxicology report. Zelda died of a heroin overdose, the way he always said he wanted to go if he had a choice- a final rush and then a soft, warm black curtain drawn on the "freakshow" his life had become. Euthanasia, a good death. It wasn't suicide to me no matter what the evidence stated because Zelda no longer had even split seconds of clarity where he would be able to make that concentrated effort and final decision to end his mental illness once and for all. It was euthanasia, with the giver of the good death being whatever higher power there is above, the same higher power that made goddamn sure I survived the loss of my Zelda. 

His funeral was the most macabre and disturbing event I've ever been to. The entire old Blue Hill Punks crew was there, friends who turned their back on Zelda and I the day we caught our first habits. It was an open casket, and Zelda lay in his favorite ripped Rancid t-shirt, his dozen beloved brightly colored bracelets made by various friends out of cheap plastic beads still adorned his chillingly skinny wrists, and his elbow showed the half spiderweb tattoo we kept saying we would finish the next day, for weeks on end. Nirvana's "Unplugged" album played over the speakers in the ceiling in the icy funeral home room. Zelda's eyes were closed softly, the star below his right eye as perfect as the day it was first tattooed. I felt eyes bore into my own star tattoo below my left eye whenever I spoke to someone at the viewing, my living memorial and declaration of unconditional love for my best friend which Zelda had gone with me to get and given me his enthusiastic blessing on doing. I turned away from the casket and gazed across the room, registering so many faces who came to pretend they loved him too but who had all turned their backs and never thought of him until he died. I had to protect myself and put physical space between me and Zelda but not a day has gone by in over 16 years that I have not thought of Zelda, no matter how far away I was. I have always and will always love him unconditionally. The same way I love my best friend Lepurd, or my friend Dex, or Rattie or Annie or my mom and sisters and whole family. Nothing they can ever do will change my love for them.

But anger or rage towards the ones who walked away was not going to save Zelda now. It wouldn't save me. It wouldn't ease the pain or make this any easier for Zelda's mother, who was preparing to do the unthinkable and see her son for the final time before burying him. My anger was irrelevant and petty in the bigger picture of this event. I had to let it go. No matter what the old crew had done or said or thought, they were here for the exact same thing I was- to say goodbye to our friend.

I turned back and faced Zelda once again. Tears were streaming down my face, my heart felt like it was being crumpled into a ball to be thrown against a wall, and my hands shook as I reached out towards Zelda's silky smooth face for the final time. I ran my fingers down his cheek, the cold firmness of his skin reminding me he was not there, he was somewhere far above or beyond this world where addiction and mental illness do not exist. I looked carefully at each detail of his face, each line of each tattoo that was visible on his arms, neck, and his star on his cheek, committing them to memory so I would be sure to see them in my mind whenever it all felt like too much. 

Zelda will never truly die because he lives on in my heart. He lives on in memories, in the black star upon my cheek just below my left eye, in the bag of plastic PLUR beads in my nightstand drawer. He doesn't die because he's one of those eternal souls, one of those who even when truly completely beaten still had a spark, even when that spark did nothing but add to the flames that were consuming him. Zelda was a warrior, he was a brave, he was a fucking total wreck insane sometimes very mean but always unique and startlingly real boy who stomped all over my soul and left scars that will never heal but also splashes of color and good memories that will never fade. This punk rock kid made an impact on everyone he met and I still talk with old friends and reminisce about the days before Zelda got sick. If you met Zelda even once, you remember him. He had that staying power and that memorable of a personality. 

And somehow, knowing he'll never truly die because his memory lives on makes the unthinkable and horrific fact of his death a little less of a pathetic excuse to kill myself slowly with heroin over a period of years and more of an excuse to do fucking better. To not make the same choices I made when with Zelda and to live better in his honor. 

Honoring his memory is the eternal flame I keep lit for him, burning on forever no matter how dark the nights may be. 

Haven't Fallen Back Into Familiar Flame

I haven't fallen. My legs are made of lead and ache all the time, my knees round balls of pain, but I have not fallen. My chest is on fire when I breathe and my back corresponds, but I haven't fallen. My stomach is weak and I can't stomach much, yet I've not fallen. But it's getting harder and harder to stand when everything hurts. Everything. My body full of pain that keeps me lying awake late nights, which is when my soul full of pain does it's hardest biting. I'm still standing, but it keeps getting harder.

It's getting harder to smile when I feel so deeply broken inside. Harder to laugh and try to overcome this apathy towards life. Harder to look my family in the eye although I've for once done no wrong. It hurts. Everything, life, it hurts.

I wasn't happy strung out. No matter how delusional I could get, I never believed I was happy. What I got from heroin wasn't happiness, and I didn't use it to be happy. I used it as the painkiller it is. Used it so I had numbness to look forward to no matter how bad life hurt.

I don't know how to explain it to someone who isn't an addict- yes, the drugs made me miserable, but they also made my misery okay. Even though they hurt just like this does, the drugs gave my pain a cause and purpose and the idea that if I ever quit, I could be truly happy and I would feel free- and the promise of numbness until the end. Now I've quit, but the pain hasn't.

I just need one moment, Higher Power, one glimmer that this is worth the constant pain of my broken soul and breaking body. One sign that there is light at the end of this tunnel I have found myself in. The light I was using to guide my way has gone out, I need a new one. The only light I see nearby is flame, and that is what I am running from. The flame is familiar though and growing closer to my consciousness.

Please, give me a sign- and some railings, something strong I can grab to save my life.

Here's To Better Days!

Here's to better days, to bluer skies and brighter horizons. Here's to broken hearts finding ways to heal, to memories that don't fade of yesterdays and the tomorrows never lived. Here's to the heroes and the villains, the punks and thugs and misfits. Here's to those who are dead and gone but memories remain, to the things we never did and bands we never heard, music never played.

Here's to the scenery flying past and fires burning bright, to the ends of the earth and back on our feet and in our broken minds. To the true believers, the skeptics and the god squad. To the kid who never backed down, to the fights we lost but won by fighting just the same. Here's to Opie and Fat Jeff and Bob The Squirrel, to Fraga and Casper and Alex, to Annie and Sexy Squirrel and Lisa, to Zelda and Knot and the list goes on forever, to the Blue Hill Crew punks and drunks. Here's to the TV plugged into the ground by the Big Tree and the musty couch and our barbeque fueled with sticks cooking stolen steaks courtesy of Kenny.

Here's to tattoos that weren't mistakes but may have been better left unpoked, to the filth and the fury, leather, studs, spikes and mohawks. To pomade and gel and so much damn Aqua Net, our own hole in the ozone while we screamed about animal liberation. To taking the city by storm and massacring the suburbs, to the Wired Frog and the Shelter, St. Andrews and the Magic Stick, to always knowing all the words by heart. Here's to Click47 and the Radio Rejects, to Leftover Crack and Anti-Flag, to Bad Religion and NoFX and Pennywise. To the crown and the down, the working man logo, the Blue Hill Zine. Here's to nothing we couldn't overcome, to anarchy and nihilism, to rebelling against what? We never really knew but rebel we did! Here's to friends, each others' alibis, brothers and sisters in arms and partners in every petty crime. To vandalism for the sake of wasting paint and long words on corporate coffee chain stores in the suburbs.

So many days passed, so many lives lost. For what? To what god was Zelda a sacrifice, to what god was Knot? Do they know love never leaves despite their passing? Does Lisa know I tried to say goodbye and would she have wanted me there? How many more of us will fall and when will the end come for the next in line? I know you've all thought for so long that I was next, but I'm not done here and not actively killing myself anymore, I have chosen to live with and live through and not let my knees hit that same worn wood. Doesn't mean I'm not next anyway, accidents happen and I have always loved and lived danger, so who knows what tomorrow may bring. But I won't go because of heroin today, if I die in my sleep tonight I will die sober. Surprise, guys!

Where have you gone? You used to be the one I looked up to, seemed like nothing could shake your foundation. I know how high your price was, I've paid the same- was it worth it? I don't yet know if my price so high was worth the future it brought and past it has left behind me. I'm glad you are alive and I hear Florida is beautiful in the winter.

Where did it go? Everything we fought for, and all that we believed, things we screamed from flower pots and on the city bus, ANARCHY! Was I truly that naive? I believed tomorrow was guaranteed, we would all live forever, blindly ever forward and never looking back. Seemed we would be bound forever and yet at some point, you turned on me and I on you and we walked away from our beliefs.

I chased the thrills down dark alleys and back until one day I found I was trapped and home no longer existed. Will I ever feel that bond again, that belonging in a crew? I feel it in the music we all shared, I feel it in the crushing sweaty bodies at a punk rock show, but I'm older than all of them now and maybe, maybe I don't belong? Where do I fit without heroin? Where do I fit not shitfaced or half dead?

When everyone has drifted away and the divide just grows wider, when I stand apart because I've distanced myself from the good when I was down and from the down on my way back up, where do I belong? Maybe I belong nowhere, maybe I am simply me, an (ex?) junkie, punk rock, anarchist, rebellious youth trapped in an adult body with responsibilities and chains to this city of Detroit but no idea how to live as the adult I have found myself somehow having become. I can't pick up and travel, but staying put is driving me insane slowly and painfully. I want to head North, I want to breathe the clean air and hear the calls heard in the wild. I want to head West, I want to smell the lemon trees in bloom in the East Bay. I want to head East, hear the constant pulse of New York at night. I want to head South, smell the stink of New Orleans in the morning before they wash and bleach the pavement, hear the drunken debauchery of the French Quarter. I want to go anywhere but where I already am. And I want to leave me behind when I go, leave behind the memories of a crew that didn't last forever, leave behind my mind while I travel and see sights sober. But I know always I'm only running from myself and bounce back home again at the end, finding I can never outrun my own mind.

I miss camaraderie and fairy tales, miss the feeling of being right where I belong. I can never go back, I will not have a crew like the Blue Hill Crew again, adults don't run in wild packs across America and I am an adult now. But I wish I'd known then what I know now, for I would've put the teenage angst on the backburner and done a lot more living in the moment. I will seek adventure here and kill this boredom without smack. I'll climb the empty stairwells in vacant factories without the intention of sleeping somewhere high above, I will find my passionate artist again and paint and tattoo and draw.

I want to start again. I want to start again! I want a second chance, I want my cocky sarcastic clowning self back. I want to feel that urge to be an idiot for the sake of idiocy and laugh so hard it hurts. I want to say things I already said and make sure I'm heard this time- and I never once warned any of us to watch our backs and still never would, because my path and your path and our paths led us to where we are today. I will never hide from my truth, I will wear track marks with pride knowing I survived a battle so many of my friends, my brothers and sisters, did not. I won't cover my tattoos no matter how shitty or offensive and I will find my place again.

But for now, I'll muddle and struggle through the feeling of being 13 again when I've doubled my years and know those days are gone. Someday there will be other heartbeats beside me on the front line again, and a battle fought with passion that never dies. I fight for pit bulls and peace, I fight for my right to not be judged at first sight, I fight for the dogs with nobody else on their side. I will throw my passion behind as much as I can handle and figure out my new beliefs and joys. But nothing will ever be the same. For any of us. Nothing will ever, ever be the same.

It will not be the same, but I will make sure that for me, somehow, it is just as good as it was during Blue Hill Summers. During cold nights and beside hot fires and that love of one another will be there again someday, I will find a new family somehow off the streets. I love you all and always have, I always will. I'll never forget the good old days but it's high time I create some good new days. I've lived in pain long enough, it's time for me to find my joy again. I am sober and the needles are gone from my drawers, half the battle is won though withdrawal still lingers. The darkness, it's always been my own- but so is brightness.

I will walk this path until that darkness is gone.

Rising From The Ashes

Sickly sweet orange Suboxone salvation, under my tongue and under my skin. This rutted road of dirt and stone I walk on down dealing punches I won't counter in a world full of questions. Can this really be it? Can I really break my roots and chains and rise up from the ashes and BREATHE EASY again? I draw breath and my heart beats, so there's still hope for me.

Haunted by the memories that follow me into my dreams, where needle pierces skin leaving drops of blood and such staggering destruction. My life is not meant to be thrown away or it never would've been granted to me. My life is not meant to be lived in slavery or I would not have been born here, free. 

A train calls in the distance and I can almost hear the rumble on the tracks. Not sure where I'm headed but I shall look ever forward not back, head up against a wind full of chill and living always a life full of loyalty. Loyalty always to something, be it needle or now this medicine I take to ward off the prick of rig into vein. Loyalty to dogs or friends or the belief that I DESERVE FUCKING BETTER. 

It's early morning and the world is spinning on. It doesn't notice me here, two dogs under the covers with me while I tap away on a cell phone writing words they don't understand but that if they did, would know meant elusive hope is in my grasp today. They know that already though. They can tell by the way I'm me again. By daily walks and no dopesick sweet scent coming from me today. By clear eyes and clearing fog. They can tell by the absence of needle replaced by citrusy salvation, thick and bitter dissolving under my tongue.

Game-changing and life-altering, this medicine of mine. Yesterday an hour passed without heroin on my mind. An hour where my gut didn't clench up in knots and I didn't start to sweat, without that monkey stealing from me a single second of 60 entire minutes. Perhaps miracles do happen, or perhaps I'm just too tired. Too tired to chase that dragon into it's cavern anymore. Too tired to scheme and steal and stay high at all costs, all the while dreaming of a better way. 

The better way is here. I'm shaky still learning to walk again but each step will bring more practice and more confidence. It always has, since St. Patrick's Day of 1988 when I walked on my own two feet for the first time. I do not want heroin to be the cause of the last time I take those steps. She was not the reason for my first. She shall not be the reason for my last. 

I know I sound disjointed and perhaps a bit insane, but trust me when I say I feel a bit better today than yesterday, and yesterday than the day before, so on and so forth. 

It takes forging through fear and breaking down walls and opening my bandaged yet healing heart up to the world, opening myself up for pain but also sneaky joy. The happiness, slippery and frail, getting a little stronger each day, that skips up behind me and slaps a smile on my face. It's startling and brings a tinge of sorrow each time, that smile, why the sorrow? Do I feel guilty allowing a life lived in flame to be lived in the sun today? How sick that is, to feel guilt for living the way I was meant to live- free of chain and shackle.

Or is that sorrow mourning? If it is mourning, it means maybe this really is the end. If I'm mourning the loss of my best friend and worst enemy heroin, then maybe it means I will really leave her for good this time. For even a breakup with someone who beats you down has pain and loss and sorrow. It is still an ending. But it is also a beginning. 

I keep close to my heart the knowledge of the path I took to get to today. I cannot allow myself to forget. History will repeat if I do. History may repeat anyway, but if it does, I know now I can rise again. 

I stand here surrounded by the ashes left by the flames, and I see possibility. I see the things I could build to replace what I've burned and a future for the little left charred but still standing. I've rebuilt before and know I can do it again. 

I've risen before. I know I can do it again. 

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.

Seek To Understand as We Seek to be Understood

An addict's greatest enemy is always themselves. We are the only ones in the end who can hold needle against vein and commit the act of piercing that vein. 

But one of our greatest challenges will always be the judgement, hate, cruelty and anger people without understanding and with closed minds dole out so freely and without solicitation. I knew by letting it all hang out on Instagram I was inviting a convention of haters to form. Yet at first, I still let it get to me. Still let it form new wounds on top of old scabs and rip out stitches on things I'd thought were worked or survived past. I let their words bite me to the core, not the ones who just threw out things like "junkie" or "dirtbag" or other simple insults like that; I already know and accept that I am a junkie and when using often am more than a bit of a dirtbag, and am not at all offended when others take note of the obvious and attempt to use it as a weapon. I mean really, you think I don't know that, guys? I know it as sure as I know where every dead vein in my body is, as sure as Narcan makes for a bad fucking night. 

Plus, there's the cold hard fact that for whatever reason, a junkie is proud of being a junkie. No, not proud of our addiction. Not proud of the sickness inside. Not proud of the damage we cause. But we accept that we are addicts and wear the badge of the status of official junkie with a sick pride and defensiveness; we went through a living fucking hell to get there and gave away chunks of our hearts in the process, so it's only natural we would be proud to have survived as junkies. We are proud to have survived what would destroy 90% of the population. We are strong and we are fucking warriors. We wear it with pride around other addicts and when called a junkie, say "Yeah? Your point is?" Or "Goddamn right!" So that stuff doesn't get me. 

What hurts is the more complex and time consuming haters. Those who take the time out to post long, drawn-out comments explaining to us what a piece of shit we are, how we only want attention, have daddy issues, on and on. The ones with such closed minds they assume that we made a choice to become what and who we are, and therefore it's as simple as making a choice to not be addicted to smack anymore. I mean c'mon, it's just a fucking powder, right? You've only been chained to it for fifteen years- MAN UP and walk away already! It is not their words that hurt- it is the knowledge that should one of their loved ones ever find themselves suffering from the disease of addiction, that hatred and judgement is what they can expect. Not help. Not support. Not the ability to be open with their best friend about their pain and their struggles. The knowledge that if they are, they can chalk them up as lost forever. And that?

That fucking HURTS. 

A junkie judges themselves so harshly, we truly in our hearts- don't feel but rather KNOW- we are trash. Know we are worthless. A drain on everything and everyone. We live every day with not only the burdens of our root pain, which I've talked about before and will go into again at some point I'm sure, but the pain added on by our escape and what we are now powerless to stop and must submit to- the need, not want, NEED to get more. Our lives owned by that fire, reduced to ashes and smack. The acts of degradation so staggering most would just eat a fucking pistol afterwards. The fires we start and fires that consume what we once were and forever change our worldview, our self image, our reality and our future. Junkies live such hell every waking moment and many dreaming moments as well that when I see a closed minded asshole who refuses to self educate or ask questions or seek to UNDERSTAND, who chooses instead to attempt to further the pain we already live, I get hurt, angry, enraged- and then I get writing. I try to explain to them with kindness rather than their same weak and juvenile nastiness how the same way they think we are pathetic, well, I feel the same about them. Their ignorance. Their desire to belittle and attack and wound those souls already so close to broken, it's less than a thread we hang by. That is truly pathetic. A junkie isn't stupid. In fact, I believe the longer you've survived this mode of living, the more brilliant you must be because it is endless work, endless scheming, endless thinking and planning and split second decision making to be a junkie and stay high and keep away the withdrawal. And it takes the strongest kind of souls to survive the worst forms of pain. 

Addiction is a disease. It is recognized and categorized as such by the AMA, can be found listed in the DSMV and there is not a country in the world without addicts as a part of the population. Addiction is not a choice, not a lifestyle, not a goal nor a decision. An addict's brain, viewed on MRI, is literally PHYSICALLY different from a normal person's brain. We are not like you. We were born this way just like a person is born black or white, gay or straight. You may be an addict too and it may be as simple a difference between us as you not having that deep pain that kick starts your addiction, that drives you to seek out a way to escape that becomes the very thing which you fight with staggering violence to escape from. 

If you don't get it, that's fine. If you don't want to learn, that's not fine because ignorance is not bliss but whatever, I cannot force open a firmly closed mind. I can and will and do however ask that you show a little respect. Some common decency would be nice. See a photo of someone in so much pain, so tormented by whatever their root pain is, that they have a needle full of smack in their arm to try desperately to escape? Think about what your words will do. You cannot shame me out of my addiction. You cannot bully me out of it. You cannot do anything but add to my root pain- an my root pain? It comes from the very bullying that you are so cruelly, so thoughtlessly, so immaturely doling out. What purpose can your cruelty serve other than to take me instantly back over fifteen years ago to the first time I felt that same punch you're dealing out so coldly. 

Wake up each day, junkie or normie, fiend or not, and think, "What can I do today to seek to reduce the harm I do to those around me? What can I do to promote understanding and peace rather than judgement and hate? What can I learn today and how can I stay open enough to allow myself to see that which I am supposed to learn and they whom I am to learn it from?" Do that and maybe you'll find the world isn't half as black and white as you think. Maybe you'll see I'm not a bad person, I'm just sick. I'm not evil, I'm suffering from a disease for which there is no known cure. Yes, I made a choice to pick up the first shot but how could I have known that fifteen years later, I would be fighting still to escape that decision? And after you educate yourself I hope you can sit down and think, "Thank whatever god there is I am not in that kind of pain," rather than wanting to spew rage and hate and evil on the Internet. 

Seek to understand us as we seek to be understood. The stigma and judgement is what keeps us sick, prevents us from seeking help, from being able to take care of our disease with the same matter of factness with which a person would seek care for cancer. Hate addicts? Then the way to help wipe us out is to stop judging and start learning and become part of the solution rather than adding another closed mind to the problem. 

Because without understanding, I truly have no hope left at all. 

Alliances

My father was my one true ally. No matter what. He is the one who taught me all the most important things I know: never pull the trigger without a totally clear shot because to cause an animal to suffer for even thirty seconds while you get off another round is atrocious, and to show that animal compassion and gratitude and the utmost respect for the sacrifice it made for you. NEVER hunt for sport unless you intend to eat or use (not just mount on the wall) every piece of the game you take. That you ALWAYS have enough money to spare some for a kid's lemonade stand. To be self sufficient. To trust people to be good on the inside. To be kind to everyone no matter what. To help people fix flat tires no matter the time or weather. To use words rather than fists when you are angry. To catch and release once you've got enough fish for what you need, and always be gentle and quick in the death of those you keep and grateful for the gift they've given you. To show mercy towards everything and everyone. To make amends for your wrongs no matter how small or how old they are or how angry you feel towards the person you wronged. To never hate- ever. How to raise pigeons in the attic and calmly deal with the fallout that caused with your neighbors when they shot and killed my favorite one, Chirps. How to train dogs to sit, stay, hunt, retrieve and do anything else you need them to do- always with respect and compassion. That there is always something you can do to help a stray, be it a dog or a human. The name in English and Latin of every wildflower, every tree, every animal, insect, bird and fish in Michigan. How to identify a bird by sight, sound, eggshell, nest, or sillhouete. How to stand in the middle of a stream, flyrod in hand, and simply exist in peace with my surroundings. How hard work pays off if you allow it to. How to live in the city peacefully while your heart lies farther north. 

All of the lessons and knowledge and skills I need to live a life I only dream of now, while cravings and thoughts of blood mixing with brown liquid pain relief gnaw at my guts and cause me to retch. Nobody at the squathouse ever cared much about birds unless it concerned flipping them to cops. Nobody I bought smack from ever asked what variety of elm it was we met under (American, rare now thanks to Dutch Elm Disease.) It sure wasn't secret hunting spot locations I was begging for by the freeway ramp. And it wasn't great perch fishing conditions I was running from. Why then is this my life and not the one my father spent countless hours teaching me how to live?

My childhood was spent in the northwoods. Seeing in me what he knew in himself, my dad ensured I spent not a single weekend in this city. Friday after school, Dad loaded all the gear for our next adventure into the car and we were off. My childhood up until age 10 was absolutely, 100%, pure as driven snow PERFECT. I cannot ever remember being unhappy. I excelled in school and excelled in learning what my dad offered up in lessons Up North. Even our own backyard- the wildflower garden that after his death was allowed to go back to nature, which I've now turned into a wild berry patch with tangles of bushes filled with raspberries and blackberries dug out of Michigan soil with my fingers and transplanted there. It'll never be called anything other than "Dad's garden" though. We would catch a garter snake, bring him home for a week, and then I'd learn the lesson of why wild things belong in nature for myself, watching Slithers sit silent and miserable in an aquarium rather than slipping through the grass or sunning himself on a rock in the field where I captured him. It was always by the following Tuesday that I was begging my dad to let me skip school so we could go take Slithers back to his home where he belonged. Or Hissy. Or whatever kiddish name that one had been given. I did this same thing over and over, it being a hard lesson for me to accept, that I could not bring the wild I so loved home with me and have that wild be the same as when I visited it. That the snakes and birds and baby raccoons lived in their home, and I in mine, and our homes were not the same. They were not happy in my home like I was in theirs. 

I don't know quite how to describe what bullying does to a kid. How it totally and irreparably kills them inside. But the fact that the power of those kids' cruel and totally wrong words and actions and thoughts about and towards me eventually became more than the power of what my dad put in my head my entire life- that I was awesome, I was perfect, I was smart and I deserved every bit of my inner happy- goes a long way towards explaining. The words and the actions and the shunning the kids started doling out completely destroyed me. It demolished me. Set fire to my confidence and burned my happiness down. I became haunted, afraid, alone and scared of every new day. I could only fake sick to skip school so many times. I tried my hardest to live for Friday afternoons, when my dad and I would take off north together and the kids didn't matter, but the day came when those kids' words followed me North. They haunted me through the woods, shadowed me along the riverbank. That pain became a piece of me I couldn't escape from anymore.

I internalized their words. I started trying to be like them, stopped going North with my dad. I willingly and consciously pulled myself away from the one person who always understood me, always supported me, always loved me and always encouraged me. I willingly and consciously stopped going with my dad to the few places I always, always belonged- the woods and his embrace, the passenger seat of his car, I-75 North beyond Birch Run with old hippie music on the radio and my best friend at my side, the field with a shotgun against my shoulder and a dog out in front of me on point, Dad speaking encouragement and correcting my stance before asking the dog to flush the pheasant. The very last places and times I felt completely whole and content. I look back and I want to smack myself. Hard. Wake myself up to the reality that those school years do not matter. FAMILY matters. Inner peace matters. Joy matters. Wherever I found that joy and peace is where I should've stayed. I should've fought tooth and nail to stay there. And to walk away from my father? To willingly give up those weekends, those moments in the backyard, because it wasn't cool to be who I was? In all these years between that day and now, in my entire fucking life here in this realm, I have never and most likely will never again do anything else so absolutely stupid. So blissfully ignorant that that choice would end up being why I sit here now, running out of the suboxone I've now got myself hooked on to try to make this easier and planning my escape. 

My father passed away on March 16, 2008, at 57 years old. I had 17 months sober. I had gone hunting and fishing with him a few times in those months, was working back towards what we once had. Making amends. Living the lessons he taught me with him by my side again at last. I had just flown home from a visit to my sister in San Francisco the day before, and we went out to eat together, me, my dad, and my mom. Before I'd left, my mom had asked my dad if he thought I'd be okay in San Fran, if I'd stay sober. My father told her he trusted me implicitly. Over 17 months I had done so well and had earned that trust. But on March 16, my dad got up early to take our new dog hunting, his first work in the field on live birds, and he never came home again. With no history of heart trouble, my dad had his first and last heart attack in the field and died within an hour, the ambulance having just gotten there. My dad died on the half-frozen ground of March in the fields where I shot my first pheasant, with his dog by his side. I'd like to think he would've wanted to go just like that, but I know better. He would've wanted to go surrounded by his family. 

I don't get to ever feel that all-encompassing security of childhood again, but then no adult does. I stayed sober another six months before I let the same thing that sent me to the street the first time send me back again- the loss of that bond with my father. The night I went back, Devil's Night, I screamed and cried and pounded the steering wheel of my truck, begging my higher power to stop me, to send a flat tire, a car crash, ANYTHING to stop me. That was the first time I shot dope against my will and the first time I truly understood the power of the heroin I'd gone running to so long before to kill a pain I could've solved with the tools I had, the person in my life that was always on my side. 

I believe my father paints the sunsets. Delusional, silly, whatever. It is what I choose to believe. What I need to believe. And I'm starting to think he sends the storms that seem to follow me wherever I go when I'm getting high. Sends the sunsets to remind me he is always there, that it is up to me to come back to safety. And sends the storms to remind me what I'm doing is violent, vicious, and unstoppable once started. I watch funnel clouds spin and twist over the lake and I think how they are so much like addiction, striking with seeming randomness, not caring if you're rich or poor, inner city or suburban, a child barely out of pink sweatpants with cartoon dogs on them or an adult with a better grasp on life. 

This disease is cunning, baffling, and powerful, and I don't think there's a way out for me anymore. Some days I grab elusive hope, but usually it slips from my grasp and the world just spins on around my nodding empty shell, leaving greasy tracks along my skin as it passes me by. I miss my dad. His death isn't why I get high anymore; I get high because I can't stop. Or won't stop, don't stop. But really, I can't. Because I'm not willing to face that pain and shame and guilt and regret. So, so much regret. Regret unlike anything I've ever felt before, that crushing weight and stabbing pain and so much that's never far from my mind. So much I want a redo on. Just a do-over on those months between the start of my withdrawal from my dad and my discovery of heroin withdrawal. If God could just give me that one do-over, maybe this story wouldn't be the one it is. Maybe it wouldn't end the way I know it will. 

Maybe I'd have a shadow of a fucking chance. 

Weight On My Shoulders And Memories Everlasting

A friend on Instagram said something tonight that struck me, and got me thinking. It was about how people who are not addicts themselves cannot comprehend living so full of pain that the horrors of heroin addiction are preferable to facing that hurt. Most of my thoughts were actually memories that are so much the reason why I do what I do, why I continue to shoot smack knowing the end results- jail stints, abscesses, pain for those I love and the few who still love me, further damage to a liver that screams at me all day every day, homelessness, poverty in the most sincere sense when a loaf of bread is out of financial reach for me, and so much more. So much worse.

The beginning point of my pain was towards the end of elementary school. I never fit in, never had many friends. I switched schools every couple years because I was in the "gifted" program, which also hopped schools every couple years. So I never put down roots, never formed lasting friendships as a little girl. As kids got older, they realized I wasn't like them and turned into the demons I now find almost all kids can be at times. Bullying started, my interests and hobbies became taboo, and my spirit came so close to broken at a very early age. I have always loved animals, canines such as dogs and wolves especially, and that was apparently not cool or okay, and was a "boy thing." So in came the chorus of "lesbo" and "she-he" and words the kids and I had no idea the meaning of, all I knew was they were cruel and they hurt. So I buried that part of me. Never went so far as to hurt or ignore an animal but definitely didn't advertise my love for them like I once had. But still I found myself alone. Middle school brought it's own pain. Kids were even more cruel and far more devious in their bullying than in grade school. They also hit harder. So I quickly found an outlet and a crew- punk rock. Heard a song by Pennywise, "Straight Ahead," on a skateboard show when channel surfing and fell in love. Punk rock saved my life as much as it destroyed it by being my intro to smack. That anger, that energy, and that unity in the scene was what I craved.

After I fell into the punk rock crew I ran with, bullying didn't bug me so bad, although to this day I wonder if it's still the root of my self-loathing- if the words of those kids live inside me still to this day, that I'm wrong, I'm no good, I'm weird and a freak in all the worst ways. But now I carried knives and the tables were turned. Fuck with me? I bite back now, motherfuckers. I became the Hyena, fighting for what I believed in, savage when need be but gentle and caring at my core, showing only those on my crew my soft side. Eventually, as I got older and my skin got thicker, my outside image got tougher, my scars became badges of pride, I had a crew that viewed me as leader, a role I've always hated and never felt comfortable in. I am not a follower, but I hate that feeling of a group depending on you for guidance. My guidance sucked and cost some kids their lives, following me into smack. I rode the rails, hopped freight trains all over the country. And then, I started losing friends to death instead of judgement or my addiction, my scams, my criminal acts, nursing an ever-raging habit all the while. The worst event of my time on the rails were not those friends who overdosed and died in my arms, or those who I gave breath and pulse to and brought back from ODs, or even watching as trains severed arms or legs and changed futures once bright into bleak and limited. It was my riding and using partner Knot and the day he died. It's one of the memories that brings me the most guilt, shame, and a pain that once touched, lasts weeks. I touched it a few weeks ago for the first time in years and it plays through my head on a loop many times a day now. Should've left it buried but I suppose some things just refuse to stay where they're put.

Knot was a scraggly kid with no family, no home, and honestly no future beyond life on the tracks and smack. He was my male counterpart. He was my best friend and my perfect equal match. Dreadlocks with bits of string and beads and ribbon woven in here and there, pierced septum and a dozen self-done safety pin tattoos, two years into a smack habit to rival my own but with a spirit that refused to be broken or held down, Knot is who I think of when I think of heroin warriors. A kid with gumption and pride and a refusal to stay down when hit with whatever life threw at him, he rolled with the punches and threw a few punches as well. He was wise, he knew he wasn't going to settle down someday, he knew his life wasn't going to be long but was going to make damn sure he packed as much living into it as possible before the end. I don't know if he could've seen the end that would come though.

The day Knot died, or in truth was killed is a more accurate description, we had spent the night in some podunk little town in South Dakota, running low on smack and planning to head back to New Orleans where we could get work and gear. New Orleans and Atlanta were the only two cities in the south we ever visited together and except Florida, the only part of the south I've been in to this day. The north and the west coast were far more our style. I must've been around 13 or 14, the exact age escapes me always for some reason. I know Knot was a year younger and looked up to me; I hope he knows I looked up to him just as much, in truth likely more so. We woke up that day and headed back to the railyard we had camped near, planning to catch the first train on the right set of tracks to get us headed the direction we planned to go. While waiting, knowing we'd be getting more smack within a day, we did our morning shots plus a little extra for a nice nodded journey south. That cost my best friend, my traveling buddy, my protector and my confidant his life.

I always jumped first, always grabbed the handles first, chose our boxcar and our moment to jump. I'd ridden longer, had more experience, and just was generally good at judging the right moment. Except that day, I was too high. I judged wrong. I jumped too soon, the train was moving faster than my heroin haze led me to believe, and my hand lost the grip on the handle of the car. I caught Knot's hand slip out of the corner of my vision. We both for some reason, rather than finding footing and pushing away from the tracks as we fell, swung back and down and ended up on our backs.

I landed smack dab between the rails, under the train.

Knot landed smack dab on the rail.

There was nothing I could've done at that point. I know that at least. Though the guilt of knowing I made the bad call that day haunts me and will never be far from my mind, I do know that once the events were in motion we were powerless to stop them. The ad for Trane air conditioners, about "You can't stop a Trane," always brings me to my knees because of the solid and tragic, unfair and terrible truth of that statement. The train was moving too fast. It was over in seconds. Knot's eyes, blue as the sky over the Dakotas that day, never left mine. I could see he knew what was coming, could feel the rail under his back and resigned himself quickly. I watched fear, panic, then peace flash through his eyes while the rumble of the train filled my ears. He never made a sound.

I laid there beside him until the entire horrific train passed. Then I laid there longer. Finally a rail cop ambling along his patrol happened upon us. Or me, and what was left of my best friend, the person who I knew and who knew me better than anyone on earth. I don't remember much beyond the cop yelling for help and kneeling down beside me, on the other side of me from Knot. I must have passed out.

Knot had no family. His real name revealed that was the honest to god truth, that his parents died two years back and Knot was thrown into foster care. So his body is buried somewhere in a Potter's Field in a small town in South Dakota. The authorities were cold enough to refuse me the right to claim and cremate my partner.

I spent the last of my cash on a bus ticket home a couple weeks later. I didn't ride another train until September of 2001, when I was on a train along the east coast on 9/11 and know those planes flew right over me on their way to their destination. That was the last day I ever rode a freight train and I will never hop another car as long as I live. Part of it is knowing that with the damage to my body in the years since, I couldn't keep up, but mainly it's because I cannot hear a train whistle without feeling like I've been shot in the gut. I have no photos of Knot. I have nothing of his but a scrap of red lace I wear on my wrist, the same wrist as my piece of gray lace he tied on me so long ago; I've taken them off for periods but never again. I feel naked without them. I do have memories that I will never forget. Memories of open sky and flat country, of mountains and rivers and close calls and bonfires and fun. True, unfettered, untainted fun. Nights we didn't sleep, just talked. His face in the firelight, eyes sparkling as he told me about his brindle mutt from his childhood named Spot (which is why I named my striped cat Spot) and how he'd always nibble his fingertips to wake him up. Memories of days when it seemed like anything was possible and we were king and queen of the world. Running from rail pigs, laughing as the train pulled away and gained speed while the cop huffed and puffed along, growing more distant. Guitar jams before we sold those off for smack, drum circles with other hobo kids. Him having to literally cut a man with a knife when he wouldn't keep his hands off me on a stretch of lonely track.

But most of all, I remember his eyes. The clear, brilliant blue of the Midwestern sky in August. The way he was so easy to read by what his eyes told me about how he was feeling. I have never seen another pair of eyes the color his were and I know I never will. They were as one of a kind as everything else about Knot. No other eyes will catch firelight the same way, will ever reflect the clouds over a field of wheat the same way. No other eyes will ever have that instant connection with my heart and soul his had, the way they'd always pull the truth out of me no matter how hard I tried to stay strong and resist. If eyes are the window to the soul, then Knot is where he was meant to be- somewhere high above in that perfect bluebird sky, without pain or fear or the uncertainty of a life unmoored, a life in which the only home left was no home at all. But in those last months together, we were both always home. Our homes were each other, the security and safety and comfort of each others' presence. Knot was never my boyfriend- he was always my brother. My blood as sure as a leopard has spots. I get a measure of comfort knowing the last thing Knot saw as he left this realm was his home, boring those blue eyes into mine. Homeless as he was, as we both were, Knot died at home. This I know without any doubt.

I live with the knowledge that my decision, my bad call, cost the truest sibling I've ever had his life. Today, I'm building a relationship, a connection, with a new kindred spirit, Lepurd, so parallel to that I had with Knot it gives me chills. I know that's why Knot is on my mind so constantly lately. Because so much of Lepurd is like him, like the brother watching over me from his perch high in the brilliant blue sky his eyes let me glimpse even on the stormiest days. Lepurd has the same smile that makes it impossible not to smile back, the same softness in his heart and the same warrior's bravery, courage, and strength alongside that softness. He has the same pain as well, deep-seated and staggering but a pain we both know, a pain from youth that unites us in yet another way. We both love so much of the same things, and argue the same way Knot and I once did, in a roundabout way that seems more like discussing but with all the passion of a full out brawl. And we both have furry daughters who mean the world to us, two misunderstood breeds who remind us of our own struggle to be understood or, at the very least, not judged on our outsides or our modes of living. I've found much of life is circular rather than linear, and my circles brought me back to the same type of beautiful, kindred soul that led me to bond so deeply and so timelessly, so unshakably, with Knot.

You have to always keep your eyes open in this life; if you blink you may miss meeting the gaze of the people you are meant to meet. I met Knot on a shitty little street in downtown San Francisco, locked eyes and we moved as one from that day till the end. Lepurd and I met online and it was through locking eyes with his words via email I first realized I needed him without knowing yet that he needed me as well. Smack is present in our connection, but is not our connection. Smack is present in everything for me though, so it's presence means nothing. What means something is the depth and finality of the connection. The way it feels the same as it did with Knot- like if I lose him, I lose myself as well. Lepurd came into my life at a time when I was leaving life altogether, ready and planning to go. He gave me a reason to live. He gave me the courage to fight for one more day. He still gives me that. He stands tall and faces a world that's dealt him blow after blow and he grabs onto the victories in that life that's often so cold to him as it so often is to me- and he shows me it can be done. He is a warrior. He is a kindred soul. He is my excuse for continuing to live a life some say I should end out of mercy for others and society as a whole, he is my reason for continuing to live a life I sometimes feel I should end out of mercy for myself. He is my hope. The new knot around my wrist that won't let me forget I am more than my addiction. I am more than a junkie.

So that pain eats me inside but it also has allowed me to see in Lepurd the best qualities of Knot. That guilt and pain is part of why I prefer the torture and living hell smack addiction often is to the far deeper pain of my past. I do not expect anyone without an addict's mind and past to fully understand.

But I hope maybe this will help those without a junkie's life gain at least a glimpse into what my reality is like. Why I stick around heroin despite the quite obvious and sometimes close to unbearable pain that comes with it. Because that weight on my back is always lighter than the memories everlasting.

Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus

I suppose the first thing I have to do here is explain who I am, what I am, and why I've chosen to lay it bare and share what I'll be sharing here. But before any of that, I'll explain the name of my blog and title of this post, which in turn will help me explain the other things I mentioned.

"Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus." Written by Father Gabriel Richard, it has been the motto of the city of Detroit since 1805, when a fire destroyed the city, including the school the Father had founded here. Translated, it says, "We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes." That's been the past fifteen years of my life- rising from the ashes only to burn it all down again, leaving myself bloodied and bruised and filthy, hoping desperately for better things.

You see, I am a junkie. A heroin addict. Smackhead. Skaghead. Dope fiend. Whatever. Heroin is the fire that leaves my life in ruins over and over again. The first needle entered my vein when I was 11 years old, a little kid with big pain from bullying who fell into a punk rock crowd and yearned for the numbness I saw on the face of an older rock star, a punk rock grrrl who hung around the older kids in the group I was in when she wasn't touring with her as-big-as-it-gets-in-punk-rock band. It took months of begging and wheedling, but eventually she agreed to introduce me to the dark, mysterious lady H who already haunted my every waking thought. I can recall even then having a vague feeling that I'd be giving a lot away to this new relief in the days to come. If I'd known how much I'd give away, how many years I'd be down, the pain I'd cause and the pain I'd feel, maybe I would've thought longer about it but I doubt I would've acted differently. The numbness, the euphoria, the escape was worth it at the time. Often remains worth it today, though for very different and much deeper and darker pains than I had back then.

The downward spiral was quick for me, because I let it be quick, let it take me down roads far from home, across the country on freight trains, through hell on earth and so many near death experiences it's truly a wonder I'm alive. I hear a lot of junkies talk about what heroin has taken from them, or what they lost to it. I have never had shit taken from me by smack, never lost anything. I gave it all away. As sure as I gave my money to my dealers, I gave my life to smack. Gave my friends away, gave my family away, gave my hope away. Fifteen years of smack has resulted in me ending up with a much smaller set of possessions and associations than your average 26 year old, but it was all because of a choice I made as an ignorant, bullheaded, tough as nails on the outside yet dying on the inside little kid. I gave it all away, and I give it all away still with every pack I shoot, every nod I spend hours in, every dollar I scheme and steal and lie to obtain for smack to keep withdrawal at bay- and to keep my demons at bay.

After fifteen years, with a 25 month break in there almost a decade ago during which by some act of a higher power I was totally sober, I know my odds of lasting recovery are not good. I know the reality of my situation is bleak, my outlook dismal. But the name I go by fits me- Hyena. I refuse to go down without a fight. I know this disease, this powder has brought me to my knees and thrown a noose round my neck so many times, but always I stand and struggle away. I'm pulled back in each time by choices and consequences and the subtle whisper that its alright, it's all right, come home to me where it's warm and silent and the numbness kicks in when I bite down. One day, I know I will be too weak to rise. One day, I won't have the will nor the strength to fight to my feet again. One day, I shall swing from the gallows with a needle in my body still, crying out to be heard without a sound. Without a prayer. Without last words and with only stolen breath fifteen years overdue for return.

Until then, I will struggle and fight and hope for better things to arise from the ashes that my life so often is, ashes left behind by my own fucking arson. I think a lot about the past, but fear keeps me from thinking about the future. A gut-wrenching, all-encompassing panic and sorrow sets in and stabs deep when I think about ten years from now, ten months from now, anything longer than a few weeks from now and sometimes even then. Sorrow because I simply cannot come up with a long range image of myself, because my heart and soul says I won't be here then. Sorrow because I know I've already lived and shot smack far beyond my expiration date. Panic because it makes me feel like I'm untethered when I can't envision any future with me in it. Panic because I already live with the damage and can't bear to think what another fifteen years of this hell would produce- because I sure as the sun will rise know that my future includes heroin in some amount, some level of control or lack thereof. Taking medication for a case of hepatitis I've had for ten years, liver damage that made the doctor do a double take. Shooting smack in my jugular because there simply is no other option; all my veins are gone. Sleeping on the street sometimes, wishing I could reach another, higher mode of living not shared by rats and roaches so plentiful in my favorite vacant houses in the Motor City. But after fifteen years, though I still fight and sometimes get a month sober at a time, I need to look realistically at my situation. Acceptance brings a sort of fragile peace, a respite from worry or fear or even the rage that drives me to keep fighting but eats me alive from the heart on out at the same time, rage against myself for the choices I made, against smack for being so goddamn fucking easy. Acceptance is a warm blanket I drape across my shoulders on the darkest nights, when I can feel death stare me down and move in close, looking me in the eye and asking if I'm ready. Some nights I say yes, but must change my mind at some point after the shot I knew but didn't know but suspected and expected to be too much, for I always come to in the hospital while they stab me frantically looking for a vein to deliver that liquid torturous hell that is Narcan. So my brushes with death always end up only being brushes, rather than final meetings.

So I don't try to run from death like I once did and yet do not embrace the end of struggle, the end of a deep pain that never stops chewing and gnawing away, that death would bring. Today I have two days sober, today I'm up a couple dollars in the card game of life. What tomorrow shall bring only tomorrow knows, and tomorrow has never liked to reveal her secrets to me. I'm beaten, battered, bruised and so close to broken but still I stand. Still I rise. I rise, I rise, I rise. You can watch me rise, watch me fall, watch this battle play out here in words and on Instagram under DetroitHyena in photos. But do not judge me, do not judge my path, do not judge my pain and the methods with which I escape. We all have our vices, we all have our flaws. We all have our anger, we all have our love. We all have our escapes and we all have our demons. We all have our victories and all have some devastating defeats. Here is where I'll let mine see the light; I'm too tired to try to hide it all away any longer and maybe someone will gain understanding or insight or hope from my fight.

There's a dead dog in the closet, junkies bootin' in the bedroom,
   harsh images flashin' ever faster,
   I'm shootin' up the everlaster.
And the birds all scream dissent as they stare me in the eye,
   spittin' razorblades and knives,
   but when the needle owns my soul, there's nowhere left to fly.
So I close my eyes and fade away,
   embrace this night and die today,
   the bonfire in the hallway throwin' light across my face,
   I'm secure in knowin' I've found my place.
And as the final flash fades from my eyes and knees hit worn wood,
   I'm thinkin' warm thoughts of all that's good,
   no time for tears in a life spent rewritin' the same page,
   leavin' a fractured family filled with rage.
I take with me soft memories of better days and hospital stays,
   and all the words I never prayed.
So hold me tight and keep my breath
   as I seek my peace in a hopeless death.