It was right around this time. I knew something was about to happen. I had not gone all in, just yet.
I had gone back to old behaviors and used old defense mechanisms. I went back to the old coping skills of my previous life. Essentially, I went back to the old me because in the simplest terms, I failed to maintain the new person I had become.

To the young, they think they’ll never be old.
For them, they think youth will stay young forever.
This means we can be wild forever.
We can play forever.
We can feel alive forever
and we can live without caution or worry.

When you’re young, tomorrow is just another day.
Nothing really matters.
At least, not really.
When you’re young, you’re still young enough to defy the idea of time.
Time is just a minute away.
And to the young, life is still young
and minutes are more than plentiful.

My Dear Old Friends,

It’s been a long time since we were all together in the same place at the same time. It’s been even longer since we were the kids from the town, the kids we were, the kids we used to be, and doing the things we used to do.

Nothing fills a room like emptiness. There may be a chair, or a hard wooden bench or a place to sleep, like a narrow bed, there is still nothing but you an bricked room.
There is a hard floor and a flat ceiling, walls, and a door with a small window at eye-level with wire mesh that intertwines within the glass.

Something went wrong. I was not sure how this happened. I was not sure what took place or what would happen next. I just knew I was about to die. I knew the paranoia had overwhelmed me and I swore (if this were possible) that I was beginning to see the sounds I swore I could hear.

I felt my heart beating through my chest. There was a sensation of pins and needles going down both of my arms, which were numb for some reason.
I was wet and cold.
It was wintertime and I was hiding (like usual) away from the faces, the places, and the people in my town. I was wired and caught up in the aftermath and desperate.

I was at the tail end of a crazy night.
All of the powder was nearly gone and my usual running partner was missing for some reason. This had altered my usual routine. Instead of commiserating with my partner, I found myself home alone with a substantially large amount of cocaine that was either shoved up my nose or cooked and smoked in a glass-tube pipe. This was early summer, 1989.
June if I’m not mistaken.

There I was . . .
lost in a field of tall grass
I was out of my head
and drifted in a field that stretched
beyond anything I could ever imagine

So with nowhere else to go,
I sat for a while
and slipped into the warm cocoon
of an afternoon rush

On the way in, I never knew what to expect. Each trip was different and nothing was ever guaranteed. But this was part of the ritual. This was part of the rush and part of getting high. There was the act itself and then there was the ritual that goes along with it. This is the romantic part everyone relates to, which is the crazy because the romance is not only poisonous —it’s also contagious.

There were two glass buildings that were twin-like and tall at the border of town between Hempstead Turnpike and Merrick on Earle Ovington Boulevard. These were the two tallest buildings in our town, except for the hospital and the other glass building on Earle Ovington. But come Christmas, the two glass buildings put up a huge Christmas tree right in the courtyard. There was also a small ice skating rink but I have no real memories of the skating rink. I remember the tree though. I remember wild teenage nights when we in the rebellious crowd took to the grounds around it, screaming out loud, and running around like the local maniacs we were.

I had my share is what I thought to myself and then packed up my things and closed the door behind me.  This was my last day, I thought to myself. This is the last time I would ever find myself at a place like this.  It was enough for me to feel determined. I had finally found it within myself to move on. It was clear tome, however, that my fears would lurk behind me like a strange impending ghost,which I would always attribute to the tales of my insecurity and the wreckage of my past. I was young in most ways but too old in others. It was a fine time to be me, I suppose, although in fairness, I found the promise of my future and the benefit of my new beginning to be intimidating. There was no one around answer to. There was no more rules which I would be made to follow and no more counselors, no more reasons for meetings, no more trips to the hospital in an ambulance and no more suicide watches, no more doctors in white coats with clipboards and questions, and no more dish crews or sub par meals, cooked in a kitchen of an institution. No more bad coffee. No more room checks in the middle of the night and no more walks to the pond just down below the hill at the back of the property.