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.

Rebuilding Begins When My Arson Ends

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today, I am going to be okay.

An Ending In Flames

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.