21 Years Old – In the Middle of Winter
I was screaming words I would never, ever say in the making of a vigorous effort to assert that I did not belong in restraints. For being too drunk, on seven narcotic sleeping pills? Really? The ER, I owed, a huge apology to. I had apparently tried to swing at one of the security staff.
I was sent there subsequent to my boyfriend fucking with my head again. Had only I known guys you've slept with hundreds of times, who aim to make you feel unloved, and taken for granted, were not real boyfriends. I was naïve to think I could ever matter to someone, for how unhinged I started to become years into being a recluse.
He often remarked about my homebound ways and never wanting to leave the house. The truth was, from how overweight my medication made me, I had nothing to worry but hideous clothes that initially were oversized on my once slender figure. I hated myself more than anything. My circumstances were that of someone who was being punished by God or whatever.
I was a slug and a skid. Those were two things I had never known myself to be. There was no bright future for me. Another thing I would've not believed ten years before. Time changes you, if not events alone. I never recovered well enough to lead a life away from trepidation.
No, I wasn't going to be fine in coming years.
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21 Years Old — Summer of Heroin
There is something about heartbreak that leaves you scratched up on the inside. Like a cutter's wrist engraved in dozens of nicks from a razor blade, varying in size and line shape. I didn't know it was possible he could have a conscience that told him we were going nowhere together.
Yeah, seriously. He broke up with me, it wasn't the other way around. Not that time. With the worst part being that there was not a single moment of closure, I knew it was over when I finally said into the phone at 3A.M. in a state of sheer paranoia, "That dog on your leash must really love you, if it took you this long to remember I still exist."
"She actually doesn't." He confirmed.
I didn't know he replaced me. I only speculated it. And hearing that? It killed me. It broke my psyche. There was nothing on Earth I wanted more than to never look back at this malefactor again.
-
She made me feel whole again. That is the answer to why people smoked heroin.
I loved inhaling the hit and feeling my body warm up as I sat on the deck outside with my pet dog. My only friend left, I'd think to myself. That summer was going to suck, but I had a family member to help me get through it. He stuck by close in moments when I didn't have my mental health remotely together.
Nothing was peachy. But tolerable. Paranoia still crept up on me but as long as I smoked, I could differentiate between what mattered and what didn't. I was still standing after a war with a psychopath who wanted to make me shiver in fear and disgust. It wasn't until I took Seroquel and got high afterward that I realized it could cause problems.
Like an overdose after nodding out on the family recliner while I was drawing a portrait.
My use ended when, again, I was hospitalized for a manic episode. At least that time around I was told by my floor psychiatrist to inspire others with my gifts, talents and skills. I had never been recognized by successful people before.
I kept my head on straight for awhile after that. Essentially I went straight back to seeing the fucker who ruined me once he noticed I valued myself again. They always come back, these psychopaths, to destroy what foundations you made while you were recovering from the disarray that came with getting too close to them. They are vengeful, over your own healing, and I am ashamed to say I knew such and didn't care.
What I didn't know was that he was just homeless and using me for a place to stay.
It lasted four months.
He never saw me again after he didn't come see me to spend New Years together.
It took awhile for me to see life's challenges as winnable after that setback. I was a mess of a human being but I had intent to recover. I did begin my hobbies again in good time and saw my life getting better, and sure, it felt great. I really saw myself growing past my trauma and embracing life for what it was. Nothing could hurt the shell around my fragile mind.
That was, until I met this new drug dealer.