Drugs.

Oi. Drugs are a long, graffic story. It involves sex at some points and quite honestly I doubt that I will be able to explain it all in one blog. With my first few experiences I was still pretty young. I was 14 abusing my anti-depressant and smoking pot with my best friends. Also at 14 getting into an argument with my mom that ended with me kicking her in the shins led to my first experience with prescription painkillers. She called the police, I got charged with 4th degree assault and she tells me to find someone to stay the weekend with. I was living with her Brook Lane friends at the time but they were out of town for the weekend. There was a 20 year old girl in my choir class, she was coming back to school after having a baby with her slightly older boyfriend. They lived in the trailer park over on University Way and she had always been nice to me, had given me her number. When I called her she said I could come stay with them, no problem!

Her man was a total creep. I was a 14 year old girl that was at that time still a virgin and still very afraid of men, he was in his 20's and saw me as an easy target. The first night I was there they offered me vicodin. I had never tried anything like it before but I was feeling worldy and hardcore. He used to go to the E.R. faking a sore throat and it must have been successful because they fed them to me like candy. "Take 3 of them at a time, that's the best high!" they told me and being worldly and hardcore, I complied. While I stayed with them I was taking 9 a day. The first night I took them they took me cruising around Ellensburg, bought me a banana split from Dairy Queen. I was in the back seat of a two door and had to have them pull over on Main Street so I could launch my head out of the back seat and vomit. They thought it was funny, this high 14 year old losing her shit. We went to Carey Lake the next day and had a picnic. I remember her man trying to rub his feet against mine under the table, remember pulling my feet away saying he was with my friend and I basically thought he was a sleaze. Eventually it was time for me to return to Brook Lane, and stay with Kiku until my mom's friends came home. I remember vomiting in their bathroom in the middle of watching "Schindler's List" even though it had been a day since taking any vicodin. When I saw her next in school she shunned me, told me her man had told her about how I had hit on him after they had taken me in. That was another black mark against men in general for me. I can't remember if I tried to explain to her, I just remember it felt bad.

For the next few years as I bounced through different homes and different friends, I got high. I was a fairly innocent little rebel girl, in 3 pairs of shredded nylons, 2 layers of torn up hippy skirts and a variety of blue, orange and black lipsticks. I was a short, loud thing, cussing out groups of people for being bullies, railing against injustice and getting high. I was becoming me.

I went to a few more group homes, wrote angry songs and jammed with my crushes. It was where I wanted to be. Fast forward to 18. At 18 I moved to California. My biological mother and sisters, the people I had clung to the memory of for years in an attempt to survive came and picked me up. We headed to California. At some point I will go more into what that was like but for now I will make this very quick: I went down there chubby, rediscover bulimia from the emotional stress of trying to deal with it all, became anorexic and tiny, obsessing about food but only eating a bagel a day and doing 300 stomach crunches first thing in the morning then again right after work. And when it all became too much I flew back home to Ellensburg.

That was the end of 1999. I came back here with a horrible dread in my gut, knowing I was being weak by returning home. 2000 started with an overbearing feeling of doom. I just knew that that year, 2000, was going to be BAD. And it was. I got my old job back at Dairy Queen, I worked my ass off. But I was to become very close friends with a drug I had only dabbled in before: meth. Now the allure of meth is probably hard to grasp for people that know how to deal with their emotions, but for me it was glorious. I died the day I flew away from California with my nephews crying as I left.  I loved them more than anything but I couldn't be strong and stay anymore. When I got home I missed them in ways I can't translate. I was missing parts of me. The memories from my childhood that I was staving off were always in the shadows of my brain, suffocating me. And along came speed. Meth was the first time I could think about these soft spots and not feel like dying. When I was high---I could face ANYTHING. My body issues became nothing because I shrank away, revolted by food. I felt cold and soulless, I loved it. But at the same time I felt like a creature of the night. The eyes of formers friends upon me was unbearable. Time lost all context, when you come down after being up for three days, five days. You sleep through your shifts at work and people seem like aliens.

I had a new group of friends, friends that used with me. Tweeker friends, though, have no loyalty. Because we smoke, snort, shoot away our souls. It started as snorting I believe, then gave away to smoking. I was SOLD. For the first time in life the white noise of my unhappy sub conscience was abated and I felt free. I was in it to win it. I wanted this game. It didn't feel good but for fucking once it didn't feel BAD. One thing I that I learned was this: I had something that men wanted and would pay for. I thought that, well, hell--I have been giving it away for free. Why not? I could dominate them for once. For once I could set the cost and they would pay for it all. I thought it would give me the upper hand on men in general. I was an idiot.

The first time it happened it was a prof from YVCC. He was a guy that lived in Ellensburg and I was afraid. I got shot up with shitload of meth that night and I went over to his house in full scam mode. This was the only night I truly won, the only night the money was free.  I had it ALL planned out. I told him he paid upfront, $100 an hour just to DISCUSS the possibility of a business relationship. It was empowering at the time---I didn't put out and I came home with $300.00. He was pissed and I was triumphant. And that was the last time I had my dignity for a long time.