"Elbow deep inside the borderline.This may hurt a little but it's something you'll get used to."
There once was a boy who wore thumb-holed t-shirts to hide the thin red braceleted wrists.
He would crouch for hours in corners, for hours scribbling out masterpieces of fear and loathing but above all, consumption.
He had creativity flowing through his veins and anything else he could find to needle guide up there.
He was wild eyed and unwashed hair, clothed in the uniform of inner city lack. Something emulated the world over as cool, something given a name as a movement, as a way of life. In reality it was the only way life lived and unwashed, holy clothed, skinny artists with nicotine stained fingers and chapped lips were as far away from romantic as the earth from a black hole.
I thought he was gregarious and full of life when in reality was so empty, so scared and so lonely. His world was dark and painted in echoes. He needed to drag people into his orbit, friends to fill the silence, cohorts in addiction. Anything to not be alone with the whispers.
But I was never a junkie, nor aspired to be. I simply was an experience junkie. When in star strewn quiet evenings we walked to the edge of the boardwalk to pool our stash, our treasured finds, we then played Jesus walking on water. Yet again pretending small drops of prescription were enough to chase away the demon of boredom threatening to claw clear out of our throats.
Dramas seemed to multiply and follow me though I was not his lover, nor ever meant to be. That poor small child, skin aged by hours spent chasing the next high. No, I simply sat on a stone fence, ankles tangled in ivy, watching on the periphery of his world of bulb machines and 3 second highs.