An
award winning true short story published by AI Press New York
Winner
of Grand Jury Prize, Best Artistic Contribution, Best Emotional
Drama, Young Writers Critics Circle Prize
Avg
Rating
:
235)
It
happened one day after school, my first kiss. As Harry's touch felt
my lips like a whiff of air, like a soft feather, my eyes closed. A
joy filled me unlike any in the 15 years of my existence, a light, a
blanket of warmth on a cool September afternoon. Is this orgasmic
pleasure some of my schoolmates talk of? When I opened my eyes that
day, I appreciated the gift of life like never before, with a spring
in my step, touching every flower brightly colored so bright, every
yellow leaf, picking them and feathering them on my cheek. The
clouds, the sun, life, life, life everywhere, and I love it!
Life and all things bright and wonderful.
The phone rang,
disturbing my writing, but I didn't answer. Now at 26 I once again
think before I restart, why I am writing my autobiography. Why do
people write a tale of their lives for others to read when every life
is different? Maybe they want to do so because they like to leave
something behind, a history of time and space before they die. But
I'm not old and dying. Maybe when you have too many experiences in a
small frame of life you want to store it before you forget. Anyway I
will now continue my tale tell writing. Please bear with me for my
poor choice of words; I'm not in the 'mood' right now, just
depressed. Maybe at night when I'll finish it. Ah, may be.
Since
I was 14 I foresaw myself becoming a junkie as I was using opiates at
least once a month, with a history of drug and alcohol addiction in
my family. My mum had cancer and one day when I had a bad headache
and as there was no plain Tylenol left, she gave me a couple of her
pills. I loved the feeling and I soon found that they helped remove
my emotional pain, for a while at least. Her pills contained (I later
saw) a concoction of hydromorphone and paracetamol. From then on, the
my keen interest in opiates increased many-fold, I read Huxley's
"Brave New World" , John Lily's "Programming and
Metaprogramming in the human Biocomputer". Huxley's words still
bring tears to my eyes, no less inspiring than any piece of American
history for a teenage girl, “Who lives longer? The man who takes
heroin for two years and dies, or a man who lives on roast beef,
water and potatoes 'till 95? One passes his 24 months in eternity.
All the years of the beef eater are lived only in time."
Then
I finally took heroin, Harry, bought from a graduating friend of
mine, chasing the dragon on a chocolate foil, after school behind the
bushes on the way home. Then on the journey continued with
concomitant codeine, dihydrocodeine, morphine, dextropropoxyphene,
hydrocodone and anything else I could get my hands on.
Because
my skin is red-hot with freezing sweat that pipes from my pores like
ice-cream, curling up and settling until it spreads across the duvet
that begins to tighten like a velum over my body. Because I sneeze
and sneeze and cough and shiver and my eyes have to squint to take in
anything. Everything I don’t want to, everything that has eluded
its necessity, its reason. The kitchen is full of mess though I
haven’t eaten. It is mugs and cereal dishes, about thirty thousand
of them. The plants are dead but they were lovely, old, they had
traveled with me, and now they’re dying. The sink smells of the
fish I ate three months ago, it could be four, it could have been
years. It could have been days. Maybe I never ate a fish, it seems
unlikely now.
Any-who, as I was saying, the next July on a
rainy afternoon my mum died; and my use of her pills by that time had
increased to twice a week at least. Soon my entire mother's pills had
gone but there are various opiates sold OTC in the UK (codeine,
dihydrocodeine and morphine derivatives in very small quantities
approx 90mg in a cough syrup bottle). I also managed to get my doctor
to prescribe dextropropoxyphene and managed to steal or otherwise
obtain hydrocodone from my granny. However, Harry with me I found
mum's old prescriptions and bought various opiates, and when the
pharmacist would ask how my mother was I would smile and say she's
fine; long after she was gone. There is no heaven; paradise is only
found in earth.
During that time the only problems I
encountered were a build up of tolerance (removed by a yearly break
of a week) and that the chemist became rather suspicious. I never
really had money problems paying for the drugs as they were cheap,
only Harry if I could have more of you. No one ever suspected
anything, as I was already under weight and abnormally pale. And no
one really suspects a 15/16 year old who looks young for his or her
age (I looked around 12) of being an opiate addict, especially a
Catholic schoolgirl.
I sent my girlfriend packing recently.
Forced to being a lesbian for money. I remember her skin feeling like
razor-wire on my thighs, her nails penetrating my skin and finding
nothing but bones with the consistency of freshly quarried chalk. I
sent her packing, but what would she have packed? She’s gone
though. I look around, what has she taken? What might she have taken?
What would she want to take from this museum of mine, of me, of what
I was?
Although I didn't do quite as well at school as I had
previously done (I got an average grade of 'B' in my GCSE's instead
of the 'A' I was predicted) but everyone just assumed my under
achievement was due to the death of my mother a month before the
exams, but once I got to college the under achievement continued. My
friends began to suspect something was wrong but they assumed it was
just depression. No one noticed that I only ever wore long sleeves
I'd taken to extracting the morphine derivatives from anti-diarrhea
medicines and injecting it. I had no scarring as such as I used
clean, sharp needles and clean syringes each time but I had some
bruises I didn't want to explain while at a friend’s house; her mum
being a nurse. This was thanks to sterile needles and syringes that I
bought on the Internet
At 18 I moved to a bigger city
(Manchester) thinking that most of my problems would go away
(boredom, depression; the doctor wouldn't prescribe anything for, my
ever increasing drug use and so on) and for a while at least, they
did. Once I got there I had complete freedom, found new friends that
I actually had something in common with and didn't have to fake
interest in (the crowd I'd always been warned about) and things
seemed a lot better. I even enrolled at college and was predicted a
grade 'A' or 'B' in all the exams. During this time I was still using
heroin a lot, probably more so than what I'd done in Grimsby (a
medium sized town with a high teen pregnancy and drugs abuse rate,
this reflects the amount of interesting things to do) but I'd pretty
much stopped using opiates as it was far easier to buy illegal drugs
in Manchester than in Grimsby, not that I ever had any trouble
finding what I wanted there.
Then in March my friends and I
received the results of our module exams and as we'd all done
reasonably well and decided to have a little party. We headed off to
our dealer's flat to obtain drugs to enhance our night and whilst
there he offered us some heroin (the pharmaceutical sort in
ampoules). At first I said no, but my friends kept calling me chicken
so I gave in (I'd never disclosed to them that I had chipped heavily
at Harry and other opiates). It wasn't until later that night when we
injected. The poor fellows tried to find a vein, poked the syringe
through them or jammed it into a muscle and spilled blood all over.
Seeing their pain for a long time I finally couldn't resist and
shouted “You fools tie a band in your wrist and then slowly put the
needle into your left hand at a 20 degree angle facing the heart!”
The room resounded with silence. They noticed how easily I found a
vein that they realized I'd had previous experience with injecting
and I told them about it. Needless to say I was the one that
administered all the injections. I hated giving those injections
because I anticipated that at least 1 of the 6 people there would
become an addict like me.
Sometimes I used with them but more
often than not I didn't bother as I didn't plan on going back to
injecting them every 3 days or so and seeing their misery (after a
while it begins to hurt more and more as the veins bruise with that
many injections.) Gradually they stopped going out places with me
each weekend and one of which was the drummer in my band and he even
quit that. It happened so that the only time I ever really saw them
was when we used heroin together. Other "friends" began to
distance themselves from me over this time as they took one look at
my friends and me and just assumed. Tutors, employers and friends
began to treat me with suspicion. They obviously didn't believe a
thing I said. I'd lied to them prior to them thinking I was a junkie
and they'd never had a seconds thought even when I deliberately
slipped up just to test them. With me it always was the case that if
my lips are moving I'm lying.
I was given frequent drug tests
from my employer, several of which I've failed but each time I've
convinced him it’s from Paracodol (paracetamol with 8mg codeine)
tablets. I'll just have to hope he doesn't check with my doctor to
see if I am actually allergic to aspirin and ibuprofen. I'm not. Over
the next few months they became physically addicted and as I was the
only one to hold a job down guess whom they kept asking for money. As
I refused to give them it as I won't give anyone money to fuck
themselves up with gradually I saw less and less of them. From sexual
favors to trinkets they offered me all but I refused.
Last
time I saw any of them was when one of them overdosed and I visited
her in hospital. She still uses. As for me as hours, days, weeks,
years slipped by I needed Harry once then twice and ultimately now
more than four times daily. I still use. The years have slipped by,
I've grown thinner and the first kiss was in my blood because I
couldn't live a second without Harry. I tried the rehab then escaped
for my dear Harry. Living now in a trailer, with hardly any money and
no one to talk to, I sell whatever I can procure from dumps or any
thing I can steal. I still use.
You must think that what an
abrupt ending, I'm attempting here, of this nonsensical
pontification, but I tell you nothing more happened. Everyday was
like every other, years intervening forgotten in a cloudy mind, with
just one motto that I will have my dear Harry with me the next day,
beg, borrow and steal. All my dreams filled with one thought. I
stole, I lied, I lie, and the worst ones are those I tell myself.
Maybe I will change, maybe someone in this world will love me again,
and maybe I don't need anyone. Yes, lies every night to get a few
hours of sleep, that tomorrow I hope I'll wake up like I had a bad
dream, desperately, desperately hoping tomorrow will be
different.
Will I die soon? I don't know. Maybe we all lie to
ourselves before we sleep, don't you? Except for one time, when we
fall asleep for the last time. Death I guess is a promise we make to
God at birth. It is inevitable. But before that promise is kept, all
of us want to have some meaning in our lives, whether it's the
romance of a first kiss, or having a family or even facing loss and
separation. However, I guess there are only two types of people on
our planet; those who choose to face their fears boldly and those who
always choose to run away.
2126 words
© Copyright 2005 sayan
More: http://www.hsengine.com/s?w=Catholic+Drug+Rehab
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