#junkytheclown

[gia2o]

Fentanyl

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When I’m sober

When I’m sober I can feel the wheels spinning beneath me as I sit in a rushing car. Every bump, every piece of gravel is so sensitively felt. It’s unpleasant.

When I’m sober every gust of wind, even the small ones unnoticeable to those around me, sets my skin, ironically, on fire. I shiver with a burning sensation under the first couple of layers of my skin.

When I’m sober, I cry. I cry and I don’t know what hurts more. The reasons I am crying about or the pain following the damp trail left behind by the wet tears. Down my cheek, soaking my shirt as my tears unite.

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Disco balls and lava lamps

Home phones with a cord

Box TVs and stereos

Rubber ducks, no tears shampoo

Green grass and elmer’s glue

Pancakes every Saturday

Homework through the week

Flying kites and birthday cakes

Sunday school at church

Green grass and sunflowers

Dressing up on Halloween

Homemade costumes and candy bags

Kids on every street

Up and down on bikes they go

Same with trampolines

Slip and slides and water guns

Clear lip gloss and Barbie dolls

Legos, go fish, Lincoln logs

Monopoly and uno

Flintstones and Simpsons

Geraldo and Donahue

Scholastic news, library cards, Time magazine

Curfews, groundings, a spanking or two

Braiding hair and coloring books

The smell of crayons and sharpies too

Not all children know the joys

Of all these little things

These memories may be dear to you

They’re even dear to me

But not all children know the joys

Of all these simple things

No mom. No dad.

No holidays. No tradition.

Kids in the system.

Kids on the streets.

An injustice and no one listens.

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A small apartment right on top of a liquor store that’s open 24/7 on a street with flashing neon lights and bars on every corner. A cheap cafè across the street. The constant humming of cars driving by and sirens going off at the most random of hours. A window leading to a fire escape. A black cat, my companion, sitting next to the window. Inside, the carpet is maroon and the walls are red. Multiple layers of shear orange and pink curtains hanging at every window. Black sheets cover the mattress. The covers are dark purple. A Dalmatian dog taking up half the space on the bed; my other companion. A small tv sitting on a dresser across my bed. The bedside table has candles, cigarette packs, a long 20’s styled cigarette holder, an ashtray and candles. Candles everywhere. No alarm clock. Fluffy handcuffs close by. In a corner, a small desk with a computer and printer. Different fur coats hanging in the closet matches up with skimpy dresses and quite a few leather jackets. A leopard print couch with throw pillows matching the purple bed covers and a throw blanket that matches the orange and pink curtains. Dark stained wooden furniture covered in stickers I’ve accumulated. A vanity made of the same wood with a drawer filled with my make-up collection. My usual look: blue eyeshadow, heavy black eye-liner, bright pink blush, a little bit of bronzer, porcelain pale cover up and of course, red lipstick. Most of the time, I’ll have long, acrylic nails; obnoxious as can be. My hair, long and black. A mannequin dressed up in lingerie. The bathroom and kitchen have black and white checkered tiles. The walls in both those rooms are a cream colored white but have spray paint graffiti all over them. The shower curtain and the fluffy toilet seat cover in the bathroom are blue. Brushes, straighteners, curlers, products, soaps and perfumes surround the sink. The kitchen is small, but I don’t cook anyway. There’s a fruit bowl next to some bottles of wine and a fridge filled with more beer than food covered in magnets I’ve accumulated from my travels. The plates, cups and mugs are all different, but I like it that way. The kitchen cabinets are a little see through. They have a frame and a handle but for the most part are stained glass. Various types of alcohol fill them. The walls throughout the place have guitars (electric and acoustic) hanging all over. There are paintings and framed posters everywhere. There’s a radio next to the window and a record player in the living room next to a shelf mixed with books I may or may not read and my vinyl records. Lava lamps of different colors in each room. There are no doors in the doorways that separate the small rooms. I hang colorful beads to hang from the door frame to the floor. I have mismatched lamps with vintage and cultural lampshades of all sorts. I have a black chair in the shape of a high heel, just because I like it. The wall next to this chair has a collage of Polaroid photos of me with my friends and family. Last, but not least, I have a plastic bin to keep all of my dirty needles and a drawer filled with foil, rooters, pipes, lighters, torches, all sorts of useful paraphernalia, and a safe filled with heroin, fentanyl and cocaine. This is where I see myself within the next five years. This type of lifestyle has appealed to me since I was a little girl. The darkness. The underbelly of a city. The neon signs in the night and the sounds of the city that others fear creeping in from my windows. I think this started to appeal to me young because my parents would take me to walk at Belmont Shores in Long Beach, California in the evenings. We’d get dinner and go window shopping there at least twice a month. I don’t think I’d feel more at home than I would in this environment I explained. Kind of that 70’s haunting prostitute vibe. Small, slightly crowded, but homey. I know this lifestyle sounds like the type a lot of people will do almost anything to get out of. But I find it comforting and enchanting.

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I know how it feels.

How it feels to look at heroin as lame all of a sudden.

Only because you found fentanyl to be your one true love and there’s no going back.

Because now heroin is weak.

I can’t believe this mess. And even when time passes and your tolerance is at zero. Heroin still seems weak.

You know it’s bad when the most looked down upon drug is not even doing the trick anymore.

Even in my using dreams, I find myself turning down heroin because there’s simply “no point”.

And when I say “no point”, I don’t mean needles.

Even in my dreams I know that once again the hole I dug myself into has gotten deeper and deeper.

More and more expensive and more and more troublesome.

I hurt. My mind hurts. And sometimes I wonder if I will ever truly recover.

At least now, when my father asks me if I’m still on heroin, I can honestly tell him, “no”.

But how do I tell him that the problem has gotten much worse?

How can I worry him and break his heart yet again?

But hey? At least I’m no longer on heroin.

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It’s a gloomy summer still in August. Way passed “June Gloom”. I went on a walk today. One foot in front of the other. I was next to my mother. My dad and my brother, well, they weren’t home. They are pure. Unlike me and my mother. My brother goes to meet a friend to play tennis. My dad visits his friend’s dad; an old man he likes to keep company. The second they leave, believing my mother and I will make good choices, her and I watch out the window to make sure they drove off and away. Not much longer we have our walking shoes out and we are out the door. But no, we are not going out for a nice, summer walk. It’s gloomy anyway, so why not be gloomy ourselves? One end of our street has a post office, and the other side, a market. Our house is in the middle. Both places being a little over half a mile away. We head towards the market because the post office doesn’t sell booze. We wouldn’t have gone out to walk if we didn’t have a bottle to go home with as a reward. Tequila being the chosen trophy. We get to the market in a relaxed state. Ask the cashier for a bottle of tequila of which the brand name I don’t remember. My mom changes her mind, but not for the better. “Actually...”, she says. “I’ll take two and save is another trip.” We pick up a small container of ice cream and two large gatorades. The ice cream for me, and the two fruit punch gatorades for her because “she needs the electrolytes.” “What am I doing?”, I asked myself. Now I understand all those years she was watching me hurt myself and chose to enable me because she didn’t would rather me stay close and unhurt than to stop me and risk me shunning her. I kept my mouth shut, and wrongfully so. I need to learn how to say “no”. We go to pay. The cashier asks us if we need a bag. My mother declines and takes her designer backpack off and stuffs all of our “treats” into it. Nothing but her wallet and our mandatory masks were in there prior. She is too weak to carry this backpack now, so before she even tries to put it on her back, I put it on mine. She asked me if it was heavy. I told her no. I lied. We walk back home and now she’s in more of a hurry. Paranoid my dad or brother might beat us home, even though we logically knew that they both would be gone for hours. I now see behaviors in her that I saw in myself before. The mind of a paranoid addict is enough to drive a person mad. We get home, and as I knew, no one was there. As I knew, no one got home until hours after. I take the bottles and pour my mother a single drink and hide the bottles. She did not like this. I did not care. She felt betrayed. I did not care. The reality of her bad health and my no good enabling slapped me across the face. I explained to her why I decided to do this and that if she has a problem with it, I will have no choice but to tell my dad and brother about our little adventure. She did not like that. I did not care. She felt betrayed. I did not care. I told her I loved her too much to let her to destroy herself to death. She understood, thanked me, and gave me a hug. When the boys got home, we told them we went for a walk. They asked where we went. “To the post office and back”, I said.