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.

The Pain Tolerance of a Hyena

I'm finding it far harder to climb back up than it was to let myself slip down, but that of course I expected. I had no way to anticipate the length of time withdrawal would linger, of knowing that with weeks between me and heroin I'd still not be able to sleep, still have the cold sweats and upset stomach, still find myself struggling to walk up the stairs or even across the room because I have no energy whatsoever. I've come to understand it is now post acute withdrawal syndrome and could drag on indefinitely, for a year or even longer, with progress only able to be measured on a month by month basis because the recovery is so slow. But what did I expect, that I'd get away with what I've done to my body with nothing but a week of being dopesick? Well of course I did, because I've never been known to place anything but the most unreasonable, superhuman expectations on myself, thereby setting myself up to let myself down every time.

I'm having a harder time by far with the emotional side of things, though. I literally make myself miserable, which becomes a problem when I remove the drugs and the lifestyle of easy alliances heroin offers. I'm completely isolated, feeling halfway between two worlds, not yet fully a part of normal life but no longer a part of the daily struggle that binds junkies so quickly and firmly together. I gave so much away to heroin over the years, but I'm realizing that by getting clean, I gave some things that weren't necessarily bad away as well, namely that social aspect.

I've never been good in groups without some substance being a part of it. I've never found it anything close to easy to make friends, am in fact terrified of meeting even someone I've spoken to online at length in person for the first time, let alone how I feel when trying to make nice with a stranger. If there's a purpose or reason behind my interaction with a stranger, then I'm fine, but to speak to someone new with the sole intention of possibly making friends- it makes me freeze up in fear or make a complete ass out of myself. So being clean now and trying to find a way to break this isolation, it's hard. I still have a couple of friends, both of whom I was friends with prior to using with them, then used heroin with, and now neither of whom use anymore, but even those friendships, those two people who know and love me despite everything I've put them and me through, are scary to me right now and I have no idea why. I feel like a teenager again- awkward, unsure, like I've got to prove myself by showing off or something. This functional adult thing is way harder than it looks. And when I start thinking about trying to compete for jobs, with the plethora of unhideable tattoos I have on my hands, neck, throat, even a star below my eye right on my face, and my complete lack of work history and no formal education past a GED besides some college courses for a degree I never finished...

I made an appointment with my old psychiatrist for tomorrow, and am going to see if there's any medication that might help me make it through this early stages pain and anxiety and fear. I got clean to live a real life, not to be crippled by emotions I have no idea how to deal with and dopesickness that never ends. The cravings are getting worse and the pain is building rather than decreasing as I face it clean, and I will try anything to keep myself clean long enough to finally feel better emotionally and physically. I'm feeling that terror of being strung out I felt in the first two weeks lessen by the day, and I need to find a way to keep myself together until the happiness I experience clean becomes greater than the numbness I felt while shooting dope. An opiate blocker only works for 72 hours after I take the pill- I need a longer term solution than a pill I can work around. Something that gives that pill's buffer a chance to be enough to let me think things through and decide heroin is not the answer.

Until then, I have no choice but to feel the pain, which in a way is still better than numbness through injection; at least the pain is real. But even a hyena has a limit to their pain tolerance, and this hyena is no different from all the others.

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.

Craving and Surviving

I've come to a decision. It's one I've been kicking around for awhile, with pressure towards this decision from my mom but still one ultimately only I could make, since it is my throat the pills will be going down. I've decided to take an opiate blocker. Making a commitment. A white pill, made of what is essentially Narcan, same thing used to revive someone from an opiate overdose. Taken daily, it will latch onto the fucking demanding, hungry, ever twisting and scheming opiate receptors in my brain and then block entirely any smack I decide to shoot. And it works, I've (of course) tested it out before. It helped me before and I hope will help me again. It works for 72 hours after each dose, giving me time to stop and think before I act.

That doesn't however prevent me from deciding I'll just shoot crack instead when I want to run from myself; despite the fact that I hate it, I still sometimes decide it's time to see if I like it yet and try again, which always ends in me puking while my ears ring and my heart beats so fast I can barely feel each beat separately, my chest screaming in pain, while swearing to god if I just don't have a heart attack and die I'm never touching cocaine in any form again. The thing with shooting crack versus smoking it is, with smoking, it's hard to overdose. With IV, you don't know it's too much until after you've already shot it, and there have been numerous times where, had I not had smack to slow my heart down again right away, I think I would've collapsed and died. I've also been known to inject diphenhydramine- Benadryl. You could vaccinate me against every known abusable substance on the planet and if I were so inclined, I would still find a way to get high, even if it meant choking myself till I passed out just for the rush that comes before death. That is how sick my brain, at its very core, has become.

So while naltrexone will help, it isn't a magic cure. Either is the Vivitrol shot, given in your ass once a month and supposed to do the same thing naltrexone does- except I had to test that out, too, and a couple days after the shot, my ass still sore, I discovered I am one of that tiny little tenth of a percentage point of people for whom it is totally, absolutely, 100% ineffective. There IS no cure for addiction. This is a fatal motherfucker of a disease it is impossible to ever remove from someone, no matter what Scientology says (been to that treatment center too, it's where my college fund went, and let me tell you, there's no cure to be had there but many, many memories I'd rather not have of some abusive treatment methods- which is why the center I attended was shut down and the directors excommunicated from the Church of Scientology.) This disease will gladly and calmly wait years and years for me to let my guard down and when I do, there will always be a dope dealer down on Peterboro who will help me give my life away again and smile while he does it.

It's up to me to live the life I choose. A friend and brother in arms named Tripp, who is now in prison for dealing meth, made me write on my mirror here at my mom's house "I CHOOSE THE PATH I WALK EACH DAY" and damn if that pseudo brother of mine wasn't dead on. I've looked in that mirror to inject into my neck what probably amounts to multiple kilos of heroin since then and HATED seeing that phrase every single time. Because sick as I am, I am not stupid. I always knew it was true and I was making a choice to push the plunger. Even knowing what choosing not to do dope would mean, the misery of withdrawal, it was still a decision made to start that cycle again after each attempt at sobriety. The decision of using or of cutting myself loose from smack, what I felt for so long (and still feel most hours of the day, though I know it'll pass) was my only tether to the world.

My life, my existence, was as a junkie. Period. I didn't question that, I never asked why me, though I have wished I had a disease with less stigma, like cancer. I didn't stop to think, I just reacted. Pure animal instinct from the deepest reaches of my brain. What will it take to not be sick today and where do I begin going about that task. That was it. Sober moments, even moments on a withdrawal med like subutex or suboxone, were torturous because I knew I would and fully intended to use again at some point. I don't intend to use again now, though, though I am not nearly naive enough to think it could never happen. I'm terrified, honestly old fashioned shaking in my boots waking nightmare terrified, that I'll slip and use again. I need to have 14 days with no opiate use at all in order to start the pills, and every half hour I'm hit with another stomach churning craving out of nowhere. It's hell, it makes the withdrawal I'm still in feel like day three cold turkey kicking, and my mind just spins circles around that image of, say, a filthy rig that MUST be hidden somewhere in my room or the bushes out front or maybe under that one bush round the block from two years ago that might have a cotton with enough dope to feel left in it's plunger cap.

It is absolutely unreal, the power of those cravings. But somewhere, I read that a craving lasts on average 7 to 8 minutes if you don't feed into it. So when my stomach clenches and that picture of needle in vein blood registering plunger depressing hits me out of nowhere, I find a clock to look at. I look at the clock and think, "okay, 8 minutes. Probably more like ten since I'm a really sick one. I can do ten minutes of this, I've done months in jail and kicked cold turkey for days. I can do ten minutes of wanting to snatch the nearest purse and run to my dealer." And it freaking works! It works. I survive. I don't commit a felony, I don't end up dopesick and broke and homeless, and I don't die right then and there from sheer lack of heroin. I survive.

I survive. I have survived a long, long time in a hard, hard lifestyle, one that the president of the USA couldn't survive and I hope never has to. I wouldn't wish what I've survived on my worst enemy. But I survived and am at this point right here, right now, with four days totally opiate free and I think nine or ten days totally heroin free- and for the first time in a very long time, I have every intention of staying as sober as I am right now. Even if it does mean I start crying because one of the 25 cent ghost shrimp I bought today died on the way home, or crying simply because I started crying and then laughing because I can't figure out why I'm crying, and then feeling absolutely nothing for a second before crying again. I feel awkward, totally like a teenager in middle school again, don't know what to do with myself, but I am clean and sober.

I survive, and I am clean and sober. And I will keep surviving no matter what, and someday, I will find myself LIVING again instead of surviving. And that's why I'm clean and sober- because I'm ready to find out what living is like.

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.

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.