Permanent Twilight

It happened one day after school, my first kiss. As Harry's touch felt my lips like a whiff of air, like a soft feather, my eyes closed. A joy filled me unlike any in the 15 years of my existence, a light, a blanket of warmth on a cool September afternoon. Is this orgasmic pleasure some of my schoolmates talk of? When I opened my eyes that day, I appreciated the gift of life like never before, with a spring in my step, touching every flower brightly colored so bright, every yellow leaf, picking them and feathering them on my cheek. The clouds, the sun, life, life, life everywhere, and I love it!  Life and all things bright and wonderful.

The phone rang, disturbing my writing, but I didn't answer. Now at 26 I once again think before I restart, why I am writing my autobiography. Why do people write a tale of their lives for others to read when every life is different? Maybe they want to do so because they like to leave something behind, a history of time and space before they die. But I'm not old and dying. Maybe when you have too many experiences in a small frame of life you want to store it before you forget. Anyway I will now continue my tale tell writing. Please bear with me for my poor choice of words; I'm not in the 'mood' right now, just depressed. Maybe at night when I'll finish it. Ah, may be.

Since I was 14 I foresaw myself becoming a junkie as I was using opiates at least once a month, with a history of drug and alcohol addiction in my family. My mum had cancer and one day when I had a bad headache and as there was no plain Tylenol left, she gave me a couple of her pills. I loved the feeling and I soon found that they helped remove my emotional pain, for a while at least. Her pills contained (I later saw) a concoction of hydromorphone and paracetamol. From then on, the my keen interest in opiates increased many-fold, I read Huxley's "Brave New World" , John Lily's "Programming and Metaprogramming in the human Biocomputer". Huxley's words still bring tears to my eyes, no less inspiring than any piece of American history for a teenage girl, “Who lives longer? The man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or a man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes 'till 95? One passes his 24 months in eternity. All the years of the beef eater are lived only in time."

Then I finally took heroin, Harry, bought from a graduating friend of mine, chasing the dragon on a chocolate foil, after school behind the bushes on the way home. Then on the journey continued with concomitant codeine, dihydrocodeine, morphine, dextropropoxyphene, hydrocodone and anything else I could get my hands on.

Because my skin is red-hot with freezing sweat that pipes from my pores like ice-cream, curling up and settling until it spreads across the duvet that begins to tighten like a velum over my body. Because I sneeze and sneeze and cough and shiver and my eyes have to squint to take in anything. Everything I don’t want to, everything that has eluded its necessity, its reason. The kitchen is full of mess though I haven’t eaten. It is mugs and cereal dishes, about thirty thousand of them. The plants are dead but they were lovely, old, they had traveled with me, and now they’re dying. The sink smells of the fish I ate three months ago, it could be four, it could have been years. It could have been days. Maybe I never ate a fish, it seems unlikely now.

Any-who, as I was saying, the next July on a rainy afternoon my mum died; and my use of her pills by that time had increased to twice a week at least. Soon my entire mother's pills had gone but there are various opiates sold OTC in the UK (codeine, dihydrocodeine and morphine derivatives in very small quantities approx 90mg in a cough syrup bottle). I also managed to get my doctor to prescribe dextropropoxyphene and managed to steal or otherwise obtain hydrocodone from my granny. However, Harry with me I found mum's old prescriptions and bought various opiates, and when the pharmacist would ask how my mother was I would smile and say she's fine; long after she was gone. There is no heaven; paradise is only found in earth.

During that time the only problems I encountered were a build up of tolerance (removed by a yearly break of a week) and that the chemist became rather suspicious. I never really had money problems paying for the drugs as they were cheap, only Harry if I could have more of you. No one ever suspected anything, as I was already under weight and abnormally pale. And no one really suspects a 15/16 year old who looks young for his or her age (I looked around 12) of being an opiate addict, especially a Catholic schoolgirl.

I sent my girlfriend packing recently. Forced to being a lesbian for money. I remember her skin feeling like razor-wire on my thighs, her nails penetrating my skin and finding nothing but bones with the consistency of freshly quarried chalk. I sent her packing, but what would she have packed? She’s gone though. I look around, what has she taken? What might she have taken? What would she want to take from this museum of mine, of me, of what I was?

Although I didn't do quite as well at school as I had previously done (I got an average grade of 'B' in my GCSE's instead of the 'A' I was predicted) but everyone just assumed my under achievement was due to the death of my mother a month before the exams, but once I got to college the under achievement continued. My friends began to suspect something was wrong but they assumed it was just depression. No one noticed that I only ever wore long sleeves I'd taken to extracting the morphine derivatives from anti-diarrhea medicines and injecting it. I had no scarring as such as I used clean, sharp needles and clean syringes each time but I had some bruises I didn't want to explain while at a friend’s house; her mum being a nurse. This was thanks to sterile needles and syringes that I bought on the Internet

At 18 I moved to a bigger city (Manchester) thinking that most of my problems would go away (boredom, depression; the doctor wouldn't prescribe anything for, my ever increasing drug use and so on) and for a while at least, they did. Once I got there I had complete freedom, found new friends that I actually had something in common with and didn't have to fake interest in (the crowd I'd always been warned about) and things seemed a lot better. I even enrolled at college and was predicted a grade 'A' or 'B' in all the exams. During this time I was still using heroin a lot, probably more so than what I'd done in Grimsby (a medium sized town with a high teen pregnancy and drugs abuse rate, this reflects the amount of interesting things to do) but I'd pretty much stopped using opiates as it was far easier to buy illegal drugs in Manchester than in Grimsby, not that I ever had any trouble finding what I wanted there.

Then in March my friends and I received the results of our module exams and as we'd all done reasonably well and decided to have a little party. We headed off to our dealer's flat to obtain drugs to enhance our night and whilst there he offered us some heroin (the pharmaceutical sort in ampoules). At first I said no, but my friends kept calling me chicken so I gave in (I'd never disclosed to them that I had chipped heavily at Harry and other opiates). It wasn't until later that night when we injected. The poor fellows tried to find a vein, poked the syringe through them or jammed it into a muscle and spilled blood all over. Seeing their pain for a long time I finally couldn't resist and shouted “You fools tie a band in your wrist and then slowly put the needle into your left hand at a 20 degree angle facing the heart!” The room resounded with silence. They noticed how easily I found a vein that they realized I'd had previous experience with injecting and I told them about it. Needless to say I was the one that administered all the injections. I hated giving those injections because I anticipated that at least 1 of the 6 people there would become an addict like me.

Sometimes I used with them but more often than not I didn't bother as I didn't plan on going back to injecting them every 3 days or so and seeing their misery (after a while it begins to hurt more and more as the veins bruise with that many injections.) Gradually they stopped going out places with me each weekend and one of which was the drummer in my band and he even quit that. It happened so that the only time I ever really saw them was when we used heroin together. Other "friends" began to distance themselves from me over this time as they took one look at my friends and me and just assumed. Tutors, employers and friends began to treat me with suspicion. They obviously didn't believe a thing I said. I'd lied to them prior to them thinking I was a junkie and they'd never had a seconds thought even when I deliberately slipped up just to test them. With me it always was the case that if my lips are moving I'm lying.

I was given frequent drug tests from my employer, several of which I've failed but each time I've convinced him it’s from Paracodol (paracetamol with 8mg codeine) tablets. I'll just have to hope he doesn't check with my doctor to see if I am actually allergic to aspirin and ibuprofen. I'm not. Over the next few months they became physically addicted and as I was the only one to hold a job down guess whom they kept asking for money. As I refused to give them it as I won't give anyone money to fuck themselves up with gradually I saw less and less of them. From sexual favors to trinkets they offered me all but I refused.

Last time I saw any of them was when one of them overdosed and I visited her in hospital. She still uses. As for me as hours, days, weeks, years slipped by I needed Harry once then twice and ultimately now more than four times daily. I still use. The years have slipped by, I've grown thinner and the first kiss was in my blood because I couldn't live a second without Harry. I tried the rehab then escaped for my dear Harry. Living now in a trailer, with hardly any money and no one to talk to, I sell whatever I can procure from dumps or any thing I can steal. I still use.

You must think that what an abrupt ending, I'm attempting here, of this nonsensical pontification, but I tell you nothing more happened. Everyday was like every other, years intervening forgotten in a cloudy mind, with just one motto that I will have my dear Harry with me the next day, beg, borrow and steal. All my dreams filled with one thought. I stole, I lied, I lie, and the worst ones are those I tell myself. Maybe I will change, maybe someone in this world will love me again, and maybe I don't need anyone. Yes, lies every night to get a few hours of sleep, that tomorrow I hope I'll wake up like I had a bad dream, desperately, desperately hoping tomorrow will be different.

Will I die soon? I don't know. Maybe we all lie to ourselves before we sleep, don't you? Except for one time, when we fall asleep for the last time. Death I guess is a promise we make to God at birth. It is inevitable. But before that promise is kept, all of us want to have some meaning in our lives, whether it's the romance of a first kiss, or having a family or even facing loss and separation. However, I guess there are only two types of people on our planet; those who choose to face their fears boldly and those who always choose to run away.

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