@averagejunkies-blog - Tumblr Blog

Long, long time... no see

For posterity I changed this thing’s theme to something more reader-friendly where the font doesn’t require a magnifying glass.

I am currently in the process of gathering all my writing from this blog to post somewhere chronologically.

That said.... anyone still alive out there following me?

deep breaths.

It's been awhile since I've felt I needed to write in this blog.

But tonight, I do.

Because I keep getting the feeling lately like everything and everyone is letting me down, and always will. I have pretty much everything I say I want... at least so far as I can see. Yet I still feel this hollow inside, like something is missing.

And still people continue to let me down.

Sick as it is, wrong as it is, repulsive and awful and stupid as it is,

in these moments I get this irrational feeling something along the lines of

Meth would never do this to me. Meth never let me down. It's always been there for me. It'll always be there, waiting, patient and understanding, ready to catch me and cradle me in its cocoon of blissful isolation.

I curl piteously into the fetal position and I cry when these thoughts start. I realise how true it is that addiction is a form of twisted love. Because my want for it feels almost identical to the lonely yearning that I feel for my mother. Instead of wanting to be held and comforted by someone's arms, I want to be held and comforted by the smoke.

How sick is that.

I fucking hate myself.

#ugh #story

Confession

You know what's pathetic?

Lately I've been missing it.

That's not pathetic on it's own; it's the nature of addiction.

What's pathetic is why.

I miss it because I miss being that fucking thin.

#shallow #as #fuh

How long have you been sober

about four months and counting.

You're never really out.

"So yeah, you can use that if you want. I'm not sure how many good CDs I have but it has radio so you can at least listen to that if you get super desperate for music,"

I clumsily set the stereo on the counter, using my chest to support one of the speakers. My friend grins at me, helping free the power cord from a cupboard door. She looks nervous but is putting on a brave, happy front. Something I always admired about her.

We're on the upstairs landing of the suburban dream-house-turned-tweaker-den-turned-bachelor-pad that most of my things are still in, going through some of my forgotten stuff. Kate, one of my good friends from the high school we both attended on the other side of the country, is moving into this place for now, and I'm helping her. She's hardly been in the state for a month and after an unsuccessful stint sharing my boyfriend's tiny room between the 3 of us, we decided that temporarily this would be the best solution.

I wouldn't be staying here with her, unfortunately, because my job was still an hour north of here. As soon as possible we intended to get another place for both of us to share.

"Let's see," I move to the top cupboard now, peering in and chuckling when I'm greeted by the site of a forgotten half of a ghetto-rigged bong. I gingerly pick it up and shake my head, glancing sidelong at Kate. She snickers at me. "Ghetto bong," I say, as if that explains everything. In a way I guess it does, because she doesn't say anything. "Can't believe that's still in here," I mutter. Setting it carefully aside, I push back on one of the many big Behr paint cans that fill most of the shelf. Something crinkles, and I notice a small brown paper bag squished behind one can and against another. Confusion then a kind of amazed shock registers on my face as a faded memory trickles back.

I vaguely remember hiding a pipe in that bag some time oh so very long ago, trying to store any evidence of drug use out of my room but also away from the other druggies that occupied the house back then. I must have kept the bag in there after I'd fetched the pipe later. I grab it and start to crumple it up, mouth already open to give Kate the anecdote to go along with it, but something stops my hand. Something hard, and small, and I'll be damned if it wasn't shaped like a pipe.

Now a morbid wonderment grips me and I slowly straighten out the bag's edge. My eyes are wide, my mouth still half-open. I feel myself shake my head slowly, trying to kill the sadistic hope that has begun to dawn somewhere deep in the bowels of my Id.

My fingers feel as if they belong to someone else as I reach into the bag. Cool glass slides against the tip of my finger at the bottom of the bag. I hesitate, then pull it out. It comes out with the bottom side of the bowl facing down, and I twirl it hardly expecting a thing.

It's full.

Fully fucking packed.

A fully packed fucking bowl, sitting here in this baggie in the back of this cupboard for months, and now here I am holding it and four months sober.

"Fuck..." I whisper. My eyes are bugged out and Kate is looking at me with a kind of cautious concern.

It's like suddenly my whole body has become traitorous. The small pipe begins shaking as my hands tremble. My breathing gets fast, my heart beat too hard. I feel dizzy and half-crazy for want.

It's like the past four months mean nothing.

For a terrifying, horrid minute I think I'm going to run into my room, grab the lighter from my incense box and smoke the whole bowl before anyone can even say anything. I realise now I'm helpless. All the strength I thought I had was never real. It was all a lie. Sobriety was a lie. I just know I'm going to smoke it. I have to.

Kate says something then. I can't hear it through the rushing sound that's filling my head but it's enough to snap me out of it for a second. I take a deep breath, steadying myself, then shove the pipe back in the bag and back in the cupboard before I can look at it again. I laugh nervously.

"Holy shit."

It's all I can say. I turn tail and run into my room, throwing the balcony door open hard and jumping out into the fresh air. I let the sun and the air fill me and burn away any of the insanity that pipe created.

Fuck, I think. Fuck. It doesn't matter how fucking free you think you are. It's always there in the shadows. Lurking. Waiting. When you least expect it it will tear through the thin new reality you've created and try to suck you out back into the void.

It's always fucking there. And I'll never really be free. I'll never be out of this game.

The pipe sitting in the cupboard consumes my mind and I don't breathe a sigh of relief until I'm well on the way home, leaving it a safe distance behind me.

#never #really #free #of #any #vices #are #we #?

What really did it.

How?

It wasn't really a conscious decision so much as a sudden thought coming to light. I realised I didn't ever want to do anything that could destroy my body literally... and have to live with the fact that it was nobody's fault but my own.

I guess, in the end, I realised I wanted to experience my life.

I wanted control and a clear conscience.

Fear of guilt did it in the end.

#why #did #I #quit

gothgasm

Getting ready to go to the Sunset Strip Music Festival Street Fest today to see none other than MARILYN FUCKING MANSON

GWAHHHHHHHHHHH

aertkhjaltkal;t

so excited!!

#gothgasm #marilyn #manson #ssmf #FUCK #YES

INTRODUCTION/PART 1 CHAPTER 1

Disclaimer.

[/why]

The words on the pages that follow this are not meant to offend anyone. I just want to say that at the beginning. To get that out there. I am not trying to hurt. I am also not writing this as a means of seeking absolution. I’m not asking for forgiveness for the many mistakes I am about to confess to. Neither from society nor from anyone else. Further yet I do not write any of this with any intent to glorify the very wrong behavior described in these pages.

Why, then, do I write?

I write because I feel driven to do so. I know that these stories, these people will never be known if I do not. And despite all that has transpired, I know the people I’m writing about and I care for many of them very deeply. No matter what they have done, I see a glimmer of hope in each one, and even those who cannot reach it I care for because it is mostly not their fault. I don’t mean that it wasn’t their choices that ultimately led them to their fates. Nobody made anyone do anything. In the end we all chose, and we all suffered the consequences that sometimes come along with the oft taken for granted freedom of choice. It was our fault in that aspect, but that doesn’t make us evil people. Bad choices don’t make bad people. Bad choices are often made by bad people, yes. But so too are they made by naïve people, and inexperienced people, and desperate people.

I write because I need to get these stories out, and I write because I love my friends and I believe each of them deserves a chance to be heard. They all deserve an opportunity to explain themselves before they are condemned by anyone.

You can’t judge a book by its cover, right? You also can’t judge a person by what you think is going on. There are good people that fall into bad situations and do bad things, and I just want to show that. I want to show the heart beyond the flesh. The pages beyond the cover.

I want to show the world some good people who would otherwise be forgotten, and the sad stories that they became entangled in.

All that said, I ask that you read on with an open mind. Please do not be too quick to judge. Allow me to tell my side of the story first.

[Introduction]

[/what.when.where.who]

Everything I am about to share is not a work of fiction. It is a true story, as unbiased and clearly recalled as my memory will allow. I know because I was there. I lived it. Thusly, the following book is an extremely personal work. I have pulled it directly from a combination of my memory and a journalistic blog that I worked on for over a year. The blog started as just an outlet for my desperation and fear and developed into something much more important. On its digital pages I detailed much of what was going on. Pictures, journal entries, drawings, poems. The blog became a scrapbook for all of my friends’ lives.

I didn’t tell many people about it because a lot of it was private. I was brutally honest about everything I wrote online, and I feared that my friends might get offended if they read it. A handful of those involved were let in on the secret blog and they helped with it sometimes, whether by proofreading my entries or taking pictures or just sharing their opinions.

I have since told everyone about it, and feel that with everyone’s knowledge I can at last write this book, say what I have to say, and be done with it. This book, just like the blog, is also about healing. I need to reconcile with my past in order to move on to the future. Dear reader, if you do not wish to share in this then you may stop reading at any time, and I will not feel any remorse for it.

Whether or not any of us deserve damnation is for you to decide in the end, but for now read without preconceptions. Give us a chance to share our memories and to tell our truths, our pasts, and our darkest of stories.

The following events took place between July 2011 and July 2012, in an area of Southern California that does not need to be specified.

All the names have been changed for privacy. Our real names are not important. I only wish to share our stories, not our identities.

[]

[SUMMER]

“They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed -- run over, maimed, destroyed -- but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished.

Drug misuse is not a disease; it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years.”

-Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

[Heat]

Anyone who’s ever worked there during any of the summer months would gladly tell you how relentless the sun can get. It tears through windows and bathes you in hot, sweaty misery no matter what. You could feel the air conditioning all around you but it was always pathetically ineffective.

Closing was the worst for it because when the baker clocked out she had to leave the oven doors wide open, allowing radiating waves of heat to escape and roll out across the kitchen. One of my closing duties was to cover the unsold pastries with big pieces of plastic wrap, and of course the only workable space that this was easily done on was the baker’s station, hardly three feet from the yawning mouths of both ovens.

It’s hard to say whether or not that was the exact place where all of this started, but it seems like as good a place to start as any.

It was early July but felt like mid August in the café. I stood on my tip-toes, bent at the waist to wrestle stubborn pieces of saran wrap over the baking trays. From right behind me came a constant heat as the ovens cooled. My shirt was sticking to my back and it was driving me nuts, but I just kept working so that I could get finished and get the hell out of the kitchen. (You know what they say about not being able to stand the heat? Well who am I to argue with the all-knowing ‘they’?)

All my work had been done for an hour and I was squirming with impatience to be out of this building, out of the heat, and back to my friends. They would be waiting, as planned, with my car. I’d let them borrow it for the day so they could try to busk for some money. Neither of the friends in question had jobs, you see, and while I was at the café/bakery doing my thing, they wished to try to—pun very much intended here—make some dough of their own.

It was the early, shaky beginnings of the constant monetary seek-spend-seek cycle that is the center of the lives of all the people like us. That is, to say, Junkies.

Now before you get all bent out of shape and pin us to that horrible stereotyped image you have ready in your mind, hear me out.

Yes, the main drive at this point in our lives was to get money. And yes, we wanted that money only because it meant we could buy drugs. But no, we’re not bad people.

Not entirely, anyways. I am a devout cynic and as such believe that most everyone is bad to a certain degree. Maybe not evil, but we all have our demons. Some are just uglier and stronger than others.

For example, the hideous beast of a demon I was wrestling with on this particular summer evening as I closed up my part of the cafe for the weekend.

The mundane normalcy of work made everything seem fine. I was going through the same motions with the same people as I had been for the better part of the past year. It was too easy to fool myself into not thinking about the huge thing I was silently battling. It was a classic case of the-elephant-in-the-room; only the sole ignorant occupant of the room in this case was me. I was both the elephant and the person blind to it. Not because of naivete; never think it. I was very much choosing to pretend everything was fine. Because thinking otherwise would mean facing the scary fact that even as I performed the closing duties that I’d done hundreds of times before, there was an altogether new something in my life… Literally in my self. In my blood. No. Better to ignore that and focus on the work at hand. Because I am in control, always. Because Hubris is a concept that only exists in greek tragedies and because I’m not that type of person.

My mopping job is hastier than usual because it’s Friday, and because I’m impatient. I want to be freed of my work responsibility so that I can go join my less employed friends. My boss does a cursory check over my counter to make sure everything is in order. (Of course it is, I may be hasty sometimes but I’m a decent worker always) She gives a satisfied nod and signs the clipboard that has a laminated printout of all the tedious bullshit tasks closers have to take care of. That’s the final thing and I’m free to go, tapping my foot impatiently as the time clock searches my digital fingerprint against a database of other workers’.

CLOCK OUT

18:47

A punch-out ticket whirs its way out of the machine and I tear it off, toss it in the trash, and wave a good-bye to the other closer. If she waves back, I don’t see, because I’m already heading for the door. Before I’m even out of the building I fish my cigarettes out of the bottom of my bag and slip one out.

Smoking is a fairly recent thing for me. I hate the smell of them and actually hate the taste too, but for some bizarre reason that only stupid teenagers will ever understand, I waste my money on them and smoke them and sometimes even pretend I really need one. They do relax me a little, but usually I am hardly able to even finish a whole cig. By the last third or so I start feeling nauseous and dizzy and usually snub it out.

The walk to my car isn’t too long, especially at the brisk pace I’m using today. As I approach the familiar black sedan I notice there’s an extra person in my vehicle, and at first I’m confused but quickly that dissolves into happy surprise. Elliot gets out of the driver’s side when he spots me, and moves around to the back where Haiden’s already seated.

Travis is sitting in the passenger’s seat, slouched low and looking smug and strangely attractive, as always.

“Didja have fun at work?” He intones, stressing the last word with sneering mockery.

“It was hot,” is all I say in reply. I’m excited and thrilled to see him. In all honesty though, it’s mostly because I know that Travis’s presence means that there will soon be more drugs in my system. Sad, really. Sad that I would judge how nice it was to see a person by whether or not seeing them would mean I would also be seeing drugs.

Ah, well. Such is the thought process of a junky.

Though I would never admit that at this point.

No, I think. I am just having fun at this point. There’s no demons, no addiction, no problem.

Looking back, that sort of thinking should have been my first red flag that there was indeed a problem.

#average #junkies #book #part #1 #chapter #and #introduction

Ze Book.

I'm gonna post the intro & first chapter soon. Unedited and verryy raw still but I figured I'd share my progress with my lovely followers.

Stay safe guys.

[/liz]

ladyofhighgarden

Like a premonition.

My mind is not on my work much today, but there are no customers inside at present so I do not try too hard to reign in my wandering thoughts. Reality is doing some strange kaleidoscopic thing to me between the exhaustion and the surrealistic grief of the past couple days. Inside is cool and quiet but my attention is projected far out the door and into the blazing heat.

I have my eyes locked on the front bumper of a black car across the street. It is very old, with a silver front that is throwing rays of sun back at me with painfully sharp accuracy. The car is far and warped by my pupils inability to adjust to both light and dark simultaneously, but I feel a tight ball of emotion in my chest that I can't help. Foolish hope and logical doubt are at war over my heart.

Blinking rapidly does nothing to help the type of car come into focus and all I can do is wait for it to turn at the light. When it does I see that it is a truck, and just as quickly as it formed the emotions disappear. Cold logic is left to rein.

An unwanted yet unstoppable slew of memories assails me. I look down at the counter and now the quiet noises of the cafe seem crystal clear. I think it must be my brain's way of trying to distract me from painful nostalgia. I take deep breaths. Unconsciously my finger begins to draw an invisible heart on the receipt I'd been fidgeting with.

It's not him. It wasn't him. Of course not. I feel ashamed of my childish hope, and told myself not to wait again for something that would never happen. To try to bring everything back to reality I pull out my phone to check it.

New text. I open my messages without much real interest but I blink in surprise a little when I see his name.

I will be there to pick you up at 2.

Hope rises from the ashes and squashes every other feeling and I can't help the grin that takes over.

For the rest of my shift I ride high on the hope.

Not until I get in his all too familiar car and the scent of his cologne washes over me does the feeling stutter a bit. I realise how much I miss him already and now there is fear, too.

"Let's go to the park," he says quietly.

We do.

We talk.

We make up.

Opinion?

I need your opinion, oh most brilliantly intelligent and wonderful followers!

When I start writing my book, should I rewrite everything from the beginning so it's just one smooth standard story, or should I right a past-tense narrative that fills in all the blanks the blog didn't cover and then put actual blog entries in where they belong? That was kind of hard to explain, hope you get my drift.

So like say I have a blog entry that says, "[8.3.11] Today we went to the store to get food."

Should I add on and rewrite it like: "That week was filled with shopping trips, and on the weekend we went to the grocery store to stock up on food"

should I write it: "That week was filled with shopping trips, culminating in a weekend grocery run. [[ [8.3.11] Today we went to the store to get food. ]]" With the actual verbatim blog entries embedded within the story as you go?

#decisions

ginalustarland

Nine Inch Nails - The Perfect Drug

#love #this #song

evilstepsister-blog

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.” — Jim Morrison

(via evilstepsister)

a god among men

#jim #morrison #how #I #love #thee #strength #and