When there is nothing, no sound or distraction, and when the quiet is so loud that all you can hear is the emptiness, or when you hear the ringing in your ears to fill the absence of noise, and when there is no one around, and when there is no one to speak to, and when there is nothing left to hide the evidence of your aftermath, and in the wake of your crazy sabotage, or when there is nowhere to go and when there’s nothing else to do but acknowledges that yes, this is it, I find myself wondering how people can survive their own destruction.
I had a bad dream last night. This is an old dream which comes to me when my surrounding life is unsure or confusing.
I go this way, sometimes. Crazy . . .
I get lost. I find myself missing in action and meanwhile, I am walking down familiar streets and sitting with familiar faces only I am a stranger in familiar territory wondering to myself, “What the hell am I still doing here?”
I suppose this means that I have grown. I see this and the dream as symbolic.
Or if anything, I suppose this means I have outgrown my surroundings, which means no one in my circle has changed—at least not so much.
I am the one.
I have changed.
I have come to a pivotal moment or if anything, I have reached a new level of awareness. And suddenly, the old jokes aren’t so funny anymore. The habits I used to pass the time are subpar at best, or if anything, perhaps the trick has lost its magic.
Nothing seems to fit like it used to.
All that’s left is the effort it takes to chase an old familiar feeling, which has grown distant, like the sun in winter, and I am cold again, even in the summer.
By the way?
Did I ever tell you about the time when I thought I was going to die?
Maybe I was close.
Or maybe I was onto something.
Mike and I thought we found a way to pass the time. And there we were, laying on the concrete near a sump basin on the outskirts of our little town. Ah, and what a town this was, the suburbs, of course, where all kids are assumed to have the benefits of a so-called “good life” in a middle-income town, or in what I assume is commercialized as “Middle America” where no one is exceptionally rich or too poor.
We never asked questions. We believed our spoon-fed lies and accepted the news, in whichever fashion it came in.
There was no such thing as social media. There was no real news or fake news. There was only what we were told.
But back to my town –
I suppose this is where the American dream was still alive and denial amongst our parents was far more of an easier thing, especially before the times changed into what they have become.
Awareness was limited to books and news papers.
This was decades before technology took over and long before everyone had cell phones with cameras.
And Cameras, you ask?
God help us.
All I can say is thank God there were no cameras or evidence of what took place.
No, this was long ago.
This was long and far enough away to be more like a faded memory or perhaps this was another life, or maybe these details of my crazy youth is more like a movie that I watched after sneaking into some early matinee, and huffing fumes of some cleaning solvent in the balcony.
I was 15, longhaired and crazy. It was February, cold as ever, and the sky was gray and so was my skin. I finished the powdery contents of a few small envelopes with Mike, which is the reason why we found ourselves hiding away from the usual places, and on the outskirts of our town.
I was too young to know what I was up against. I was too new to the dance to realize how much it costs to do the waltz or the tango.
All the while, I was looking for the next best high. I was on the dangle and running out of options. My eyes were half-shut. we were living in the times of a different kind of drug epidemic.
These were the crack years.
Heroin was always around though.
My mind was elsewhere, and my body went limp, or lifeless, and in the winter of my youth, I was spiraled through a process that allowed my body to let go, or be lifeless like a falling leaf, which died from the tree.
I remember being sucked into something. I was down beneath the weight of the world and yet, I was weightless and lifeless, hovering in the mass hysteria of a world without gravity.
This was haunting and yet, beautiful as could be.
I was unaffected, unbothered, untouchable, and in the air of a warm and personal absence, I was levitating and moving down a dark channel which was painless and numb.
I could not feel the cold. I could not feel the frost that was biting my fingers. I was unaware of myself and unreached by the problematic assumptions or the common hassles of a teenage dropout who was new to the opiate scene.
I felt myself going under, as if I were fine to live or die.
Either or, life or death was the same. I was not worried about the cops or the chase that took place earlier. I was not worried about my future or the lack thereof. And if this were it, then fine, let this be it.
At least I would die in a peaceful manner, colorful and gentle in some ways, until the world went black as night, and all would rest in ways that come without objection.
I remember hearing something that sounded as if there was a knock at the door.
Only, what door?
I had no idea of where I was.
I was unaware of my presence.
I was laying in a concrete ditch.
Coming to –
I was semi-aware but mostly elsewhere in the haze of a long nod, which leaves you absent, at best, and somehow, like the backing of the syringe, I was being withdrawn from the depths of my lofty state.
I felt something letting me go. I was allowed to return, but welcomed to come bac, at any time, as if the best knew that he knew me better than I knew myself.
I could hear the knocking at the door, which was getting louder and louder. And then I could feel it.
This wasn’t a knock at the door. No, this was mike hitting me. He was punching my sides and trying to wake me up.
I came back. . .
“I thought you were dead,” Mike told me.
At that point, I wished I was.
It was too beautiful; hence, the wild seance that takes place when reaching for the horizon between the atmosphere of life and death.
I could have kept going. I knew there was something left. I knew there was deeper to fall, and I knew that nothing was safe nor was this the same as the lightweight models of fun time highs and party-favors.
No, this was the major leagues.
I was just a guppy. I was a little kid.
But the beast is always willing to make exceptions and just like voting for the president, there is no one to check I.D’s at the door.
I wasn’t afraid to die that way. Not at all, I wouldn’t have even known.
I’d have just slipped away in the warmth of a cocoon-like high.
I’d have been cloaked and protected from the rough edges of life, —I’d have been high in the weightless horizon and low in some catatonic depths of a warm immobile state.
I checked out . . .
I was gone.
I remember the time when I swore this was it. And that yes, I was going to die. But to me, I wasn’t afraid. I was more concerned with the fact that I didn’t care, either way.
Shouldn’t I want to live
Shouldn’t I know what it means to be alive?
I am grateful that this is gone. However, I understand the ideas and the need to be weightless or absent. And I get it.
Life’s a bitch. And so are people.
So am I and so are you, at least to someone.
I am looking to find the place where I belong.
I don’t want to go gently or softly as if to be in that cocoon-like state.
I know there has to be a reason for this.
Or what I mean is, there has to be a reason why I am still here or why i have been free from the tangle of the beast for more than 33 years.
Why?
Why me?
I don’t know the answer to this question
I assume I’ll find out at some point.
At least, I hope so.
All I know is there is more to this place than I see.
There are far more beautiful moments and places and sights and there are more things to see and to do.
There is more to this place than I have ever noticed.
But like I told you.
I get lost sometimes.
I go missing.
I guess my point is that I have chosen to find myself before ever going down that dark path again.
Somehow, I made it back
Somehow, others were not as lucky.
I guess that means I need to recognize the gifts I’ve been given.
I have to quit bitching.
I have to realize that this has to mean I must be worthy for something (or to someone.)
I don’t know if I have survivor’s guilt anymore.
Perhaps I am more in awe of the world and how things work.
I don’t know what my purpose is.
But it’s out there.
Somewhere . . .
You’re out there too.
And with all of my heart –
I am grateful
The Written Addiction 