Do you remember when people told you "Some day this is all going to be so trivial when you look back. You will remember it and laugh,"?

I knew they were wrong.

I knew they were wrong when Patrick asked out Britney Fleet. I knew they were wrong when I got back from San Diego and found out that Ryan and Trish were dating. I knew they were wrong when a lot of those things happened.

Most of them never granted me an apology. Most of them I had to learn to forgive without the apology. But it's 4 years later now, and I feel like I just got one. Thank you, Trish. Consider it "let go of" now. It may seem like it had been before, but if I were to be honest, I always had a bit of anger. I don't need even that little bit anymore.

Afterall, Ryan Fraser was hot. How do I know I wouldn't have stolen him from you if it had been the other way around? Haha, I'm kidding. But we're best friends and we have been since the day we met.

I miss you and I desperately hope I get to see you someday soon.

For the protection of the not-so-innocent we will call him L.

I first meant L through Jason. He had somehow talked me into borrowing my dad's car to drive to DC. I was terrified and I had never met this man we were picking up. My dad's SUV was quite the change from my Toyota Echo, which was being repaired at the time, so I had a bit of adjusting to do. It was raining that day and I remember getting off to a poor start when I tried to make a u-turn and almost tipped the car in the middle of 123. My heart was pouding through my chest. It did not make matters any better when I finally got to the house, and this man L was an older, long-haired hippie, dirty grunge Butthole-Surfers-listening junkie. I kept thinking "I can not have this guy in my dad's car."

But I did anyway. I was deserate. And he turned out to be incredibly nice, and polite. Full of knowledge about our hometown that he had lived in all of his 30-something years. I drove where they told me to and we came back with plenty of that God-forsaken brown power.

L was not a dealer back then. He was just simply a guy with a connection and the deal was we all threw down together to get a gram. I was a 17 year old girl  hanging out with two guys in their 30's and I felt strange, so I didn't do it every day. Maybe 3 times a week. I would go to work at Cafe Deluxe as a hostess, and especially on Fridays after pay day, I would scoot on over to his house, by my 30 or 40 dollar worth of heroin, snort it up and leave before the sight of needles made me puke.

It was a secret little connection of mine. And I trusted L. I liked it that way. No one around that I might have to show my face in front of. No one to see what I was doing. It was always "This is only until the OC comes back." Or, even better, "I'm not a junkie if I'm just snorting it."

I guess lots of people had that same idea because more and more of my friends found their way to L's house and I would walk in, probably turning bright red and saying "What you doing here!?" The same thing as me. Snorting heroin. NOT being junkies! But their attention span was much shorter than mine. Everyone was using needles within a few months. Everyone, that is, but me.

"Jeanette," they would ask me, "when are you going to bang it?"
I would say, "Fuck you. Never. Needles are for junkies." And I would snort up my now $100-a-day habit of heroin and be on my way. I could never stop thinking to myself... this is getting too expensive. Those damn needle users are spending less than half of what I am and getting twice as high.

There were two options left. Pick up a syringe, or start working as a server at my job to make more money. I chose serving. I worked a double every day to afford my habit. At the end of every shift, exhausted, I would trudge over to L's, do my shit, and go home to bed. Broke again already. On some nights, the swarms of people who had rushed to L wouold buy out all of his shit and there wouldn't even  me enough left for me. I thought to myself, things were so much simpler before these people showed up. I wish they would just leave, fucking junkies.

It was L's connect. He made all the trips. He took all the risk. So it was only natural that after a matter of time of simply hooking people up, he asked for something in return. He never charged too much. He just supported his habit with ours. But that made ours more expensive. That made mine more expensive.

And then there was the crack... but that's for another day.

Every time I relapsed, one of my first thoughts was that I was letting the late Ms. Sharron Kates down again.

I loved that woman so much.

I left her side at the time of her death for heroin. I missed her memorial for the same reason. At least she never saw me anything besides sober.

Every week I pass at least one person that I think is her.

And here is the song I played the moment I found out she was gone for good.

It's rather unfortunate, I think, that I was completely in the mood to write last night, with heads full of honesty and intelligent ways of phrasing it. I just happened to be out at Norm's restaurant. Simultaneously having a blast with a bunch of people in Alcoholics Anonymous as well as realizing how much I absolutely need to be here. I am beyond fucked in my head.

(I am starting to wonder if this blog breaks the traditions... oh well, I'm a newcomer. I have an excuse.)

Have you ever had to put on so many face smiles in a room full of people that you start to get that pain behind your temple? It was bad this time. I was so delighted when I finally sat at Christine's table. A breath of fresh air. Someone I know. A few minutes later I found myself smiling again but it didn't hurt. Because this time I meant it. My God, I laughed, too. Hard.

It's so strange how a thought will cross my mind and my insides will just twist. Like when Yvonne told her story at the meeting last night and she said she  never prayed when she got to AA because she felt like an idiot -- like she was talking to air. She said, "and God forbid I feel stupid in my bedroom alone, y'know?"

I immediately flashed back to myself. Sitting in my bedroom alone. Wanting so desperately to believe in God, but finding myself completely unable to. Arguing in my head back and forth all the possibilities. There is no way that our existance means nothing. And I already know that if the Big Bang had accellerated or decellerated at a millionth of a second faster or slower, the entire universe would have immediately collapsed as soon as it.. banged. There. Something had to be controlling it. And what about the chemical of DMT? This phenomenon used to be my main argument for why there was no God and no Heaven. It's just a chemical released in our brain before we die to put us in a state of uphoria. I remember impressing my first sponsor, or so I thought, when she tried to take me through the second step: "Came to believe that a Power greather than ourselves could restore us to sanity." I knew there was no God and I was going to tell this woman exactly why she could never convince me otherwise. See? DMT!

She just smiled at me, God bless her, the gentle lady she was. And she said to me. "You're very intelligent Jeanette, But so am I. And there's one things you forgot to consider." She had my attention. "Why would that chemical even be there is something didn't want us to die happy?"

And that was it. She had me. There was nothing I could say to that. Nor did I want to. Finally I  had everything I had always wanted. A glimmer of hope that maybe there is a God. Maybe something amazing does happen to us after death. Maybe we don't just rot in the ground and become a fucking tree. And most importantly: Maybe I will see my brother again someday. Maybe his death was not in vail. That was pretty much all I had wanted to believe.

That was a year and a half ago in Beach Lake, Pennsylvania. And the woman's name was Jeannie. I still think of that from time to time when that hope begins to fade. It was all anyone has ever been able to offer me. But it hasn't been enough. Because when I'm in my bedroom alone, I never pray. The reason being that no matter how hard I try to pull my window curtains shut, there is always a crack left open. Granting the possibility for someone to see me. As long as the possibility stands that someone will actually SEE me pray, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Shame. That keeps me from God. I'm still angry that I feel like I need Him so bad. If Nate Cheatham never shot my brother I could go on in blissful Ecstasy-taking declaring gleefully to the world that God is dead, but it's ok. Because you can cop Heaven off the streets for 20 bucks a pop!

After this lengthy train of thought last night, I snapped back into my surroundings. Only to find where I was. At an AA meeting. My own insanity was so pure and raw in that moment, I knew that as much as I hated it, I need to be here. For human to find something so comforting, poetic, and romantic in 30cc of heroin... that could be nothing short of a disease. I'm just desperate for anything to save me. And God is the only one I haven't asked yet to do the job.

I promised myself that I would go to the Watch that night. I would not be afraid. I would not be embarassed. I would have fun and talk to people. Try to be myself and maybe find out who that even is.

No, I did not pray last night when I got home. But I thought. And well fuck me, if thinking is my God.

Oxycontin used to be the love of my life. I remember Trish one time getting upset with me. She said "I've heard from pretty bad things about that drug." The truth of the matter was that so had I. Far too many nights I had seen Laura and Will in arguments because he would come home with pinned eyes, unable to will himself to stop no matter how badly he wanted to. He was about to ruin his relationship with the girl of his dreams and it just was never enough to make him stop. Him and Pat and Dee kept on his downward spiral until things got out of control.

I walked into Laura's room one day to find a belt on the floor that all too obviously been used to tie off someone's arm. I asked her what was going on and she broke down. She was terrified for will. Oxycontin was taking all the people we loved by their throats and sucking the life out of them. One by one.

But I think what I said to Trish was something along the lines of "Don't worry about it, I don't do it that often."

And it was true. At the time I viewed it as a mental vacation. A break to take once a week where I wouldn't have to feel so miserable. God damn it, I thought, I deserved it. I can't say I didn't know what a dangerous game I was playing. I did. And I just didn't care.

It used to bug the hell out of me when people would do things without even knowing what they were signing themselves up for. I think at the time I had seen the downfall of enough decent-minded people and I wasn't so full of myself that I thought I would be the one to beat the game. There IS no game. Oxycontin leads to heroin - heroin leads to use of hypodermic needles. How miserable do you have to be to say to yourself... "I think being a strung out dope fiend would hurt a lot less then what I'm feeling right now?" I don't know, but I was there. Because never for a moment did I kid myself into thinking that it wouldn't happen to me. I knew it would. I just didn't care.

I remember back then however, it didn't seem so bad. I had this concious choice every day when I woke up in the morning. I would either say to myself "I don't want to do any OC today," and that was it. I wouldn't give it another thought the rest of the day. Or I would say "Yeah, I think I could go for an 80," and then it was all I could think of for the rest of the day. Off I'd go on some mission to scrounge up $60 and if I didn't have that blue pill in my hand by the end of the night, damn it, you were going to feel my wrath.

I had begun fucking people other. Dealing ice tea mix to have money for my own real shit. Stealing. And best of all, using people. I found out rather quickly that the servers at the restaurant I hosted at made a lot of money. I befriended one of them. "Hey Mikey -- you ever done Oxycontin?" I was not a pretty person. And those "breaks" I was taking from my painful reality? They were becoming more and more frequent. Needless to say I finally reached a point where I was doing Oxycontin every day.

A friend of mine Jason was very into it as well. He asked me one night if I wanted to throw down on a pill for us to split. I said, sure. So we threw in our money and got an 80 and headed downstairs to do it. As I'm peeling off the coating and crushing it up on my cute little mirror, I see him pull out a needle. I paniced.

"You're gonna have to wait for me the leave the room before you do that shit, Jase." He agreed.

A few days later my dealer went to rehab. I was fucked. Pure luck had me run into Jason in a parking lot that week. I asked him where he was finding shit. He informed me that he could not find any OC, only heroin. He explained to me that it was the same thing, only cheaper. I don't know about anyone else, but that sounded real convincing to me. I decided, hey, it will at least do until my dealer gets back.

The good news is I never did OC again.