dead end

When I was young, I knew there was something different about me. It wasn’t just the fact that I was shunned by most of adolescent society because I was significantly overweight. I just felt this overwhelming sense that I didn’t belong to the pastel world of suburban Ohio. The corn fields and the chain stores and the sameness. No one wanted to stick out. There was conformity in the water there. A belief in following behind the latest whatever. I tried to fall in line.Until one night while eating popcorn and laying next to the air conditioning on a summer night, I saw a thing that changed my life. It was punk rock on my tv. I don’t remember the exact film clip but I remember seeing kids wearing dresses made out of trash bags, boys wearing eyeliner, ripped jeans with safety pins. And I wanted in. I had no access to these things, but I wanted them.I also knew at this age that I was attracted to boys AND girls, a thing that was 100% not allowed when we were seeing images of humans suffering from AIDS on tv. Terms like “God’s retribution” were thrown around in casual conversation in the ‘burbs. I certainly couldn’t be one of them. As a teenager, not only did I not know anyone who was “out”, I certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone. But when I traveled to downtown, I saw magnificent queens in gender bending clothing reserved traditionally for women at the punk rock shows. I had lied to my parents, saying I was staying at a friends house. Instead, I stayed up all night in a 24/7 diner until I could catch the bus back to mylife.Drugs, yes. The drugs started at 17. Was it part of the whole experience? Yes. Did it have to be? I don’t know. I always felt like there was another person trapped inside my skin. The suicidal thoughts were becoming more persuasive. No one will care if you are gone. But the weed then the booze and then the pills dulled that a little. So why not. Heroin was a myth then. It wasn’t until later that heroin became part of the progression into where I *thought* I wanted to be. I wanted freedom from the thoughts that told me I wasn’t worth your time. Perhaps self esteem is cheaper than a tenth of a gram but one is easier to find.Heroin was just an extension of Vicodin. Or percs. Or whatever was being passed around. I never reasoned out that THIS MIGHT RUIN MY LIFE. Because I didn’t think past today. The drinking was making my depression worse. It enhanced the worst part of my personality. Heroin was the evolutionary end result of my efforts to survive mental illness. There it was- the solution. And there it wasn’t.I don’t regret things anymore because it’s been so long, I have nothing staring me in the face. Perhaps you are regretting things you can’t change. We do what we do to survive. We make poor choices. We learn from them. I don’t know why drugs slowly crept into every aspect in my life. I suppose because I loved them. I loved them more than life itself. That probably isn’t your experience but you might understand that drugs feel good. So we try them. We succumb to their seduction. We seek out whatever they offer. We find them hard to leave behind. You are a good person despite what you make think of some of your choices. Those choices are natural extensions of the world we live in. We just adapt to our surroundings which slowly trend downward as we invest our hopes in a substance.Thank you for reading. Xoxo T aka Four gold fronts