needles
Current mood: grateful
Category: Life

lately I have been thinking about how short life really is. I have been thinking about all of the poor decisions I have made in the past and how they may affect me now. There used to be a time when i was apprehensive about exposing the truth about me. For fear of getting the usual reaction that I get from people. the disgust that comes when people are close minded to the truth. I am getting older now, I no longer care. I want people who wish to befriend me to really know me. I am tired of being mean to protect myself from judgement. I am tired of being told how scary I seem. How unapproachable.

O.k. the truth is...I usde to be an I.V. drug user. those of you who know me, know this already, but for those of you who don't, let's explore it...

At fifteen, almost sixteen years of age, I moved out of my parents house. I knew it all back then. I had already been arrested for graffitti and shoplifting and fighting. I needed more. I was already doing dope, smoking pot, dropping acid, I still had not had sex because I was catholic(ironic i know), but don't worry, that was soon to come...I lived with a boy who abused me physically and mentally...the pain got too much, i moved back home...for a minute. I started working at whole foods, and then...I found the glorious world of DOPE. real dope. not just psychadelics and pot...I found speed. I was beginning to hang out with a beautiful(so i thought at the time) man who was in a band, and had a remarkable speed problem. of course, being only seventeen, i knew nothing about that sort of thing. i was living at a friends house at the time. a friend with a mother who was constantly in jail, so morals were not really a factor. I was hanging out with said beautiful man til all hours of the night...I found out about the speed thing, and did not want to tell him that i had never done it. so i sought it out. trying to be cool. the first time I ever did it, I smoked it. with a bunch of people I no longer know. well all except for two that are clean now. then, once I was de-virginized for that particular drug, I started doing it with him all of the time. this was all in a very hippie like scene, so it was kept on the downlow. he and I would stay up all hours, feeling nothing, just painting and playing, talking and thinking. it was the best...so i thought. til i found out about him using needles. of course, being the dumb underloved little girl that i was, i asked him to show me how to shoot up. he refused. so i found a way to get a new syringe and i brought it to tempt him. telling him he could have it if he shot me up first. of course...he did. from then on it was as rollercoaster of painting, music, partying and pain. he broke up with me several times in an attempt to save me from the scene, save me from myself. telling me to go back to school, go back home. yeah right. i was in love, i would follow him to the ends of the earth. I moved in to a ladies house at this point, so that i could care for her cerebral palsy ridden daughter for free rent. it was an attempt to rid myself of the addiction...he broke up with me for the last time at this point, sleeping with somebody else the very next day, letting me walk in on them naked. I would not have gotten the clue that my boyfriend no longer loved me if it weren't for another man who i had just met around my eighteenth birthday. His name for want of a better description will just be"the dope dealer...a.k.a my first daughters father" well, I got in even deeper at that point, and the lady kicked me out. told me i had two days...he told me to move in where he was living. a barn full of skater, crust punks who i had known for a while. he even offered to move all of my stuff for me. i felt i had no choice. stupid and young as i was. so there i was.. hanging out wiht the dirtiest, raunchiest of the crust punks, shooting up, drinking, smoking, painting the black images in my heart...meanwhile, me and the dealer started sleeping together. i hated him but i was infatuated. he was just so bad...he was horrible to me. he beat me, raped me, cheated on me incessantly and fed me dope. i cared not. the little girl was lost. my mom did not care, my family did not care, those i loved did not care. what the fuck did it matter? the only people that cared for me were the degenerates. the ones who offered me their shack to sleep in when my house got boarded up, deemed unsafe to live in...after being arrested for fighting and stealing, i still did not get it. not even when i found out the loser i loved was cheating on me.

it was not until i ate some acid by myself, acid that some random punk gave me, that i finally began to see clearly. i knew i had to stop. i broke all my rigs, called my mom at work at 4am(she is a nurse) and cried for help. told her my problem, told her the truth. she had no idea. she even said that my brothers tried to tell her. i told her that the next day, i would not want to follow through for my plan of rehab. i told her where to find me. i told her my hiding places. she did come and find me. with my best friend, my stepfather and my little brother. i checked into a rehab for one week. only to check right back out again. running away. choosing to live in a van...my skateboard my only transportation. at this point, i got pregnant...the pseudoboyfriend went to jail, i got clean from speed for good, and eventually, my one year old daughter, and i moved to north carolina with my parents in an attempt to escape a city burning down around my ears. i had no friends left, i had no self respect, i did not even know how to be an adult since i had never been a child. i came to the other side of the country to start over. to find myself.

so, if i have ever been mean, or cold, it is probably only out of fear, or out of an inability to relate. i come from darkness in some respects, and all this light hurt my eyes at first. though, do not worry, my eyes are adjusting...

I am thankful every single day for the life I still get to enjoy, and the daughter that saved me from it.