addiction: a mystery
3/24/2011
Dear Amy -- The last time I scanned any pages from this book was in 2008; there are a whole slew of pages not shown here, including many that talk about us finally getting clean and how beautiful you were and all the happy things we did. And that's where the book ends--I just haven't gotten around to scanning those yet, but I promise I will. The very last page (shown here) and the message it contains are of the utmost importance, the moral of the story if you will :) The ONLY people in the world who have seen this are my cousin Todd and a few online friends that I don't actually know in real life. I originally started making this with the intent to never show anyone, EVER, which is probably what allowed me to be so honest. I love you and I miss you and, more important than anything, I'm proud of you every day of my life for your sobriety.
She came to me, war-torn and brilliant, rebuilt and destroyed, exotic and alive, she came to me. Flanked by summer love and winter rain, dodging love, falling hard, attempting suicide. She came to me with a conscience but felt no remorse without any guilt. Never free, she came to me. I fell for my best friend, over and over again. First in the spring of our togetherness when she who had been a vague high school acquaintance materialized back in our hometown, on break from college. Breathing cigarette smoke from across diner table tops, I listened as she caught me up on the past six months like we had left off somewhere not too long ago and were picking back up. And the truth is, that even though we'd never spoke more than several words to one another, I couldn't seem to shake the feeling that we were.
The first time I expressed it was in writing, big surprise. Relaxing in Florida for the summer before college begins, iced-tea-sipping, water-jet-orgasming, I was 'Girl Interrupted'-watching when I lunged for the green of my journal and wrote, "...it makes me want to indulge my bisexuality, have a lot of sex, smother Amy in kisses. Fuck me, feel me, feed me, rebirth me. Crazy people aren't broken, are they?" My mind is racing, the wheels are churning, setting a change in motion that would not rise to consciousness for another year and would not be in my control for very long. I was bereft with emotion because seeing this movie on video catapulted me back to the first time I watched it earlier that year in an empty late-night theater in Jersey. I had seen it with Amy, naturally. We only did everything with each other. After the credits rolled, we sat together in stunned silence in the winter of my car, the same way we would in future months to come upon seeing 'Requiem for a Dream', then the ultimate, 'Aimee and Jaguar'. We shared one of her cigarettes, our hands breaching the small console divide and I knew I could never bear it if we were to be separated. When I asked her if she would ever run away with me, escape madness like damaged Angelina and I could be her Winona, she said we could leave that night.
I knew she was all talk but she was also all walk. This girl obeyed that impulse more directly than I, the original instinct-follower, had ever dreamed. I was the teacher and she was the leader. And it was there between us even then, before sex and drugs. This is when it was just love.
The freshman dorms at Temple University are all air-conditioned with the exception of ours. Amy is my roommate that sweaty September when we decide the tile floor would make a cooler, more comfortable bed. We spring our mattresses from their metal frames, strip down to bras and shorts and underwear, we hit the lights and then we're colored contrasting, all skin and sprawled out limbs. Basking in the whir of the electric fan, blinds twisted to block out the midday scorching sun, I verbalize it for the first time when I gush tentatively about Catella, the redhead I have been noticing from afar. I like the way she's always wearing headphones and dancing down the sidewalks to class when everyone else is walking in a daze; she has her own rhythm with or without the music, listening to songs I'll never know because my interest in her is from a distance, quite curious but purely simple. Amy admitted that she was interested in Catella's friend Jen, who we called Man Hater, and my jealousy shot through the roof.
But still I didn't realize. Not later in the fall when Heather's tragedy doubled as a brutal reminder never to wait nor hesitate. Heather had been a secret crush, a prevalent fantasy. But she was young, at 16 she was just a baby, so she became a stowaway, someone I'd come back for, someone I'd hold off on, pursue later when she was older and I was more secure and had a better understanding of my sexuality, and then she died. I confided in the same green journal, writing words only meant for one, words like "This is my regret, that I wasn't where I wanted to be when I wanted to be. I could've changed it and didn't. Never again. Nothing will stop me now."
What paralyzed me then through all those failed scenarios motivates me now. I had to struggle to endure the calm waters that tend to trap people more brutally than any undertow. I am searching for something I can't define and I feel certain I'm at the edge of an imperceptible cliff, ready to take the dive, not to fall but to fly. I have not yet found you but if I should lie next to you in a specific kind of stillness and begin the process of translation, your words into my flesh, will true meaning be lost or found? The space between us is the catalyst. It is precisely those things that separate us that make us want to come together and I feel certain of my ability to reach you through the void, the fog, the distance and the dischord. I am cold and naked in my empty bed but here is where I rest, pressed for time, prepared to press against your clothed body and naked mind.
I came to her weak-kneed but her destruction made me strong.
I will consume you for an instant and later we both shall starve.
"Do I look like a madman?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied. "But I should not feel safe with you if you were entirely sane. You might give me up. You might regret your promise to make an attempt to save me.
"Do you think I can save you?"
"Yes--and no."
"You have not yet heard what I have to propose, or there would be no yes and no."
"Look." (And this is how Amy explained it to our roommate, Theresa.) "Jaclyn and I have this overwhelming wanderlust and desire to travel; we want to trek across the country or go to Europe. But we don't have the money to do so and it's killing us. So we're taking a mental vacation instead." I was supposed to work at the Outpost last Thursday. I left Amy, deflated and depressed, back at the apartment. I got halfway down Lincoln Drive and turned around, told her I wasn't going. We racked our brains for a way to escape but came up empty. Let's get fucked up, was the conclusion. Two bags from Somerset, four vials from Lee & Tioga and our brains have been vacated ever since. The heroin was her choice, not mine, and God how I fought it. I fought it until she blew the first line--as soon as it kicked in, the emptiness and hostility that had been plaguing her for weeks vanished. One simple sentence: "Sorry for neglecting you, Jac." And the reason I followed, and did a small line myself? She needed drugs to show me any semblance of love. I am not enough to keep her happy, but heroin is. She did it to turn off the world--and I did it to turn off her. And this is my life. This is the person I choose to be with. This is the grave I dug on my own.
10/2001
11/17/2001
1/1/2002
1/2/2002
1/2/2002
The path I've chosen requires more strength than others, but the rewards are so much sweeter. And it was a choice. Everyone blames Amy for my descent, and admittedly there were times when I hated her. But I made the decisions I made on my own, no force, no guilt, no pressure other than that of love. I could've let go at any time, could've gotten out before it was too late - I chose to stay. In fact I made the same choice many times over. I chose to fall together because I could not bear the thought of her falling again, alone. My memories are painfully shameful and I'm not talking about breaking the law or deceiving our loved ones. I mean the memories of the bed we shared and the boundaries we broke and the way we fell so far and so fast, the white bedtray and the black backpack and Lamberton and Cass Streets and all the words, the words, the words...wasted. I touch my arms when I am alone, horrified. No signs of abuse remains and there are no scars but I am not healed...
*I ended up changing this page later on. It still has the same picture, but it now says:
I pity the paradox/those who have never died/because they'll never feel/the beauty of coming back alive.
And then, just like that, it was over. Abstinence didn't work, cold turkey didn't work, detox didn't work, suboxone didn't work, subutex didn't work, rehab didn't work; methadone did. Methadone maintenance at MCMC in Norristown, PA, they start everyone at 30mgs of pink syrup and up your dose in increments until you stabilize. Amy stabilized at 150mgs, I stabilized at 120mgs. They didn't believe we were doing 8 and 6 bags at a time, 3-4 times a day, but it was true. It cost $95/week each but the staff was amazing. The first time I met with my counselor I cried. I cried because he was the first person in two years to ask me how I was feeling, and was I okay? Was it really over, I wondered. I cried because hope was on the horizon for so long, and finally it was here. We started the program in May. We had our final shot on July 4th, 2003. Is it any coincidence that it was independence day? There were no fireworks that fateful afternoon, no blow up bang to mark our end, just a quiet sigh of relief as we realized at last that it could not be any other way.
"When I leave you," he said, "I shall love everything. The air I breathe, the earth beneath my feet, the sheens of every individual blade of grass, the shape of every sun-flecked leaf. I shall love everything as one loves when they say farewell. I could not have this love unless you gave it to me. If I lived for a thousand years, nothing could happen again like what has happened to us during this night. It has been terrible and beautiful. It has been sufficient."
"It has been more than sufficient," she replied. "You are sure you want to go back? There are moments all through life which seem insufferable, but when they have been endured we are afterwards glad that we did not break under them. Always there is the desire, the passion, to go forward, to live on."
Dear Amy -- The last time I scanned any pages from this book was in 2008; there are a whole slew of pages not shown here, including many that talk about us finally getting clean and how beautiful you were and all the happy things we did. And that's where the book ends--I just haven't gotten around to scanning those yet, but I promise I will. The very last page (shown here) and the message it contains are of the utmost importance, the moral of the story if you will :) The ONLY people in the world who have seen this are my cousin Todd and a few online friends that I don't actually know in real life. I originally started making this with the intent to never show anyone, EVER, which is probably what allowed me to be so honest. I love you and I miss you and, more important than anything, I'm proud of you every day of my life for your sobriety.
She came to me, war-torn and brilliant, rebuilt and destroyed, exotic and alive, she came to me. Flanked by summer love and winter rain, dodging love, falling hard, attempting suicide. She came to me with a conscience but felt no remorse without any guilt. Never free, she came to me. I fell for my best friend, over and over again. First in the spring of our togetherness when she who had been a vague high school acquaintance materialized back in our hometown, on break from college. Breathing cigarette smoke from across diner table tops, I listened as she caught me up on the past six months like we had left off somewhere not too long ago and were picking back up. And the truth is, that even though we'd never spoke more than several words to one another, I couldn't seem to shake the feeling that we were.
The first time I expressed it was in writing, big surprise. Relaxing in Florida for the summer before college begins, iced-tea-sipping, water-jet-orgasming, I was 'Girl Interrupted'-watching when I lunged for the green of my journal and wrote, "...it makes me want to indulge my bisexuality, have a lot of sex, smother Amy in kisses. Fuck me, feel me, feed me, rebirth me. Crazy people aren't broken, are they?" My mind is racing, the wheels are churning, setting a change in motion that would not rise to consciousness for another year and would not be in my control for very long. I was bereft with emotion because seeing this movie on video catapulted me back to the first time I watched it earlier that year in an empty late-night theater in Jersey. I had seen it with Amy, naturally. We only did everything with each other. After the credits rolled, we sat together in stunned silence in the winter of my car, the same way we would in future months to come upon seeing 'Requiem for a Dream', then the ultimate, 'Aimee and Jaguar'. We shared one of her cigarettes, our hands breaching the small console divide and I knew I could never bear it if we were to be separated. When I asked her if she would ever run away with me, escape madness like damaged Angelina and I could be her Winona, she said we could leave that night.
I knew she was all talk but she was also all walk. This girl obeyed that impulse more directly than I, the original instinct-follower, had ever dreamed. I was the teacher and she was the leader. And it was there between us even then, before sex and drugs. This is when it was just love.
The freshman dorms at Temple University are all air-conditioned with the exception of ours. Amy is my roommate that sweaty September when we decide the tile floor would make a cooler, more comfortable bed. We spring our mattresses from their metal frames, strip down to bras and shorts and underwear, we hit the lights and then we're colored contrasting, all skin and sprawled out limbs. Basking in the whir of the electric fan, blinds twisted to block out the midday scorching sun, I verbalize it for the first time when I gush tentatively about Catella, the redhead I have been noticing from afar. I like the way she's always wearing headphones and dancing down the sidewalks to class when everyone else is walking in a daze; she has her own rhythm with or without the music, listening to songs I'll never know because my interest in her is from a distance, quite curious but purely simple. Amy admitted that she was interested in Catella's friend Jen, who we called Man Hater, and my jealousy shot through the roof.
But still I didn't realize. Not later in the fall when Heather's tragedy doubled as a brutal reminder never to wait nor hesitate. Heather had been a secret crush, a prevalent fantasy. But she was young, at 16 she was just a baby, so she became a stowaway, someone I'd come back for, someone I'd hold off on, pursue later when she was older and I was more secure and had a better understanding of my sexuality, and then she died. I confided in the same green journal, writing words only meant for one, words like "This is my regret, that I wasn't where I wanted to be when I wanted to be. I could've changed it and didn't. Never again. Nothing will stop me now."
What paralyzed me then through all those failed scenarios motivates me now. I had to struggle to endure the calm waters that tend to trap people more brutally than any undertow. I am searching for something I can't define and I feel certain I'm at the edge of an imperceptible cliff, ready to take the dive, not to fall but to fly. I have not yet found you but if I should lie next to you in a specific kind of stillness and begin the process of translation, your words into my flesh, will true meaning be lost or found? The space between us is the catalyst. It is precisely those things that separate us that make us want to come together and I feel certain of my ability to reach you through the void, the fog, the distance and the dischord. I am cold and naked in my empty bed but here is where I rest, pressed for time, prepared to press against your clothed body and naked mind.
I came to her weak-kneed but her destruction made me strong.
I will consume you for an instant and later we both shall starve.
"Do I look like a madman?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied. "But I should not feel safe with you if you were entirely sane. You might give me up. You might regret your promise to make an attempt to save me.
"Do you think I can save you?"
"Yes--and no."
"You have not yet heard what I have to propose, or there would be no yes and no."
"Look." (And this is how Amy explained it to our roommate, Theresa.) "Jaclyn and I have this overwhelming wanderlust and desire to travel; we want to trek across the country or go to Europe. But we don't have the money to do so and it's killing us. So we're taking a mental vacation instead." I was supposed to work at the Outpost last Thursday. I left Amy, deflated and depressed, back at the apartment. I got halfway down Lincoln Drive and turned around, told her I wasn't going. We racked our brains for a way to escape but came up empty. Let's get fucked up, was the conclusion. Two bags from Somerset, four vials from Lee & Tioga and our brains have been vacated ever since. The heroin was her choice, not mine, and God how I fought it. I fought it until she blew the first line--as soon as it kicked in, the emptiness and hostility that had been plaguing her for weeks vanished. One simple sentence: "Sorry for neglecting you, Jac." And the reason I followed, and did a small line myself? She needed drugs to show me any semblance of love. I am not enough to keep her happy, but heroin is. She did it to turn off the world--and I did it to turn off her. And this is my life. This is the person I choose to be with. This is the grave I dug on my own.
10/2001
11/17/2001
1/1/2002
1/2/2002
1/2/2002
The path I've chosen requires more strength than others, but the rewards are so much sweeter. And it was a choice. Everyone blames Amy for my descent, and admittedly there were times when I hated her. But I made the decisions I made on my own, no force, no guilt, no pressure other than that of love. I could've let go at any time, could've gotten out before it was too late - I chose to stay. In fact I made the same choice many times over. I chose to fall together because I could not bear the thought of her falling again, alone. My memories are painfully shameful and I'm not talking about breaking the law or deceiving our loved ones. I mean the memories of the bed we shared and the boundaries we broke and the way we fell so far and so fast, the white bedtray and the black backpack and Lamberton and Cass Streets and all the words, the words, the words...wasted. I touch my arms when I am alone, horrified. No signs of abuse remains and there are no scars but I am not healed...
*I ended up changing this page later on. It still has the same picture, but it now says:
I pity the paradox/those who have never died/because they'll never feel/the beauty of coming back alive.
And then, just like that, it was over. Abstinence didn't work, cold turkey didn't work, detox didn't work, suboxone didn't work, subutex didn't work, rehab didn't work; methadone did. Methadone maintenance at MCMC in Norristown, PA, they start everyone at 30mgs of pink syrup and up your dose in increments until you stabilize. Amy stabilized at 150mgs, I stabilized at 120mgs. They didn't believe we were doing 8 and 6 bags at a time, 3-4 times a day, but it was true. It cost $95/week each but the staff was amazing. The first time I met with my counselor I cried. I cried because he was the first person in two years to ask me how I was feeling, and was I okay? Was it really over, I wondered. I cried because hope was on the horizon for so long, and finally it was here. We started the program in May. We had our final shot on July 4th, 2003. Is it any coincidence that it was independence day? There were no fireworks that fateful afternoon, no blow up bang to mark our end, just a quiet sigh of relief as we realized at last that it could not be any other way.
"When I leave you," he said, "I shall love everything. The air I breathe, the earth beneath my feet, the sheens of every individual blade of grass, the shape of every sun-flecked leaf. I shall love everything as one loves when they say farewell. I could not have this love unless you gave it to me. If I lived for a thousand years, nothing could happen again like what has happened to us during this night. It has been terrible and beautiful. It has been sufficient."
"It has been more than sufficient," she replied. "You are sure you want to go back? There are moments all through life which seem insufferable, but when they have been endured we are afterwards glad that we did not break under them. Always there is the desire, the passion, to go forward, to live on."