Brand New.

I am still adjusting to the idea that I'm not going to die of an overdose. I can't really wrap my head around leaving a promising and proud legacy for my family. I always just assumed I would probably accidentally do too much one day and it would kill me. Shain would want to call an ambulance to save me, he'd be crying over my near-lifeless body, but Alex would remind him that not only do junkies just drop you at the hospital and leave you, but those were my wishes. I'd hit the concrete in front of Doctor's or East or Riverside and some observant passerby would alert staff I was dying in front of the hospital. They would wonder for half a second why I was foaming at the mouth, why my eyes were rolled into the back of my head, why I was sweating profusely, and limp or stiff or shaking or seizing, until they grabbed my arm to take a pulse. They would see the rash-like tracks in the inside of my elbow, the top of my forearm, the side of my wrist and up to my thumb. They would feel the cysts that had formed from blown hits, the calluses that had built up. They would shoot me full of Narcan to get me breathing, but it just wouldn't happen. Maybe they would try epinephrine, because my heart rate would be next to nothing. I'd be failing fast. I would die in some nameless, faceless, intern or EMT or surgeon's arms right there on the pavement. They would ID me, somehow, maybe Alex would have thrown my liscense out with me, and my mom would get a call. She would sit silently on the phone, burdened by the thought of what to tell my siblings, but ashamed because she felt relief that it's over. It's finally over, I'm finally over. No more waking up with money missing from her bank account, no more wondering where all her possessions are disappearing to, no more worrying late at night why she can't get ahold of me. And at my funeral, people would cry over my casket. They would touch my cold, hard face and weep about what could have been. When people talked about me, gave my eulogy, they would speak in past tense. "She was such a beautiful girl." "She used to be so ambitious, so talented." They would know I was gone long before I died. And that would just be it. I would have a picture in the paper, next to a headline like, "Local Girl Dies of Heroin Overdose" and a story about how many young people are getting into dope, we're all fucking addicted and dying, I'm just one of many. It would detail how I had all of these things lined up in high school and I threw it all away because of dope.


That is no longer my fate. Today, February 18, 2010, I have three months, two weeks, and four days clean. To return to the the state of absolute misery and pain I was in when I was using would be nothing less than insanity. I love the life I have now. If I were to die today so many people would come to celebrate the life I lived. I am proud now. I am unafraid. My thoughts are always on my new associations, people who are not using and who have found a new way of life. So long as I follow this way I have nothing to fear. I am ever thankful, ever grateful for how much I grow and come to know myself. I feel like a person again. I am me and I am happy. Every day clean is a miricle. The people I have in my life today I never would have met if I hadn't gotten clean. I am so proud to know them. This is where I am today. Pass.