well, i won. i am officially superhuman. i watched him shoot up, not once but three times (in a row), and i didn't do it. i didn't want to do it. at all. i sat in the exact place where i used to shoot up, i could smell the dope cooking in the spoon, i watched the needle go into his arm, and i felt nothing. it was amazing. to feel perfectly free and disconnected from that whole cycle of need. then i left, because i told him i wouldn't hang out with him if he did it. i just wanted to prove to myself that i really had no desire. i feel so free, it's beautiful.
i've walked all over the city, to some of my favorite places. i fell asleep lying in the grass in laurelhurst park. i bought a book and a cd on hawthorne, because i figured i should buy myself a present with the money i'm not spending on dope. i can't even remember the last time i bought a cd.
and i bought a 2.5 pound flat of blueberries for $5! it's about 5 times as big as a normal container of blueberries. i always eat one of those boxes in one sitting, so now i have this massive amount of blueberries and i can eat them without worrying about running out.
and my apartment is insane. my landlord put in this balcony while i was gone (about 6 x 14 feet), it opens off my room with sliding glass doors that practically take up the whole wall. at first i was scared, but i'm getting used to it. i'm afraid of change sometimes. i'm mourning my old windows but it is beautiful when the sun is going down and my room is bathed in light, i feel like it's part of the outside.
when i got here the entire apartment was covered in a thick layer of dust, plaster and sawdust, and my room was draped in plastic sheets, but there was even more dust under the plastic when i took it down, and in rooms that were nowhere near the construction. this is what happens when i leave for too long. my world starts turning into dust. while i was cleaning i felt like i was in a gabriel garcia-marquez story trying to turn back decay. i just barely escaped being carried away by ants.
i can't get over how much better i feel than last time i was here. i feel new. like a new hat. do you like my new... self? i remember, when i was here before, struggling unsuccessfully to not do dope, i wrote that i had to get to the point where i could watch someone shooting up and not want it at all. and i finally reached that place. freedom, freedom, freedom.
this person wrote in my guestbook "most people can't get into Reed and you complain that they won't let you "experience" heroin addiction." actually, it's really easy to get into reed, just hard to stay there. i was an A/B student even while i was on dope. and i never said i wanted them to let me experience heroin addiction. of course i should have known that i couldn't get away with it while i was in school. in my last entry, i didn't mean that i intentionally became addicted. but in retrospect i can see that the reason i let myself slip into it, the reason i wasn't more careful, was that i was so enthralled with all of it, i was too curious to stop. it wasn't a conscious decision. that would be idiotic. and the reason i relapsed was that the first time i quit, i was forced into it by other people, i wasn't ready to quit. i don't think anyone can successfully stay clean unless it's their own decision, when they realize for themselves that it's evil. when i relapsed, i had that experience of pure torture and misery and then i decided for myself to quit. and i did. and i'm not going back. the end.
it's so sad to watch c., though. on the car ride home from the airport, i asked him if he was still clean and he said, "i don't want to talk about it." i guess he started again about a week ago and was lying to me. so then he said, for the millionth time, "this weekend. this is it." and said it would be different now, because i'm here and i can help him. yesterday we walked to powells, we sat and drank coffee and read the paper. he was in a lot of discomfort, but it was only the first day. i got up to look at magazines, and when i came back he told me he'd called his dealer, was going to meet him in an hour. i did everything within my power to convince him not to do it, i gathered all my strength and reason and stretched myself so far, but he would not change his mind. it was unreal. the way addiction takes over your mind.
i mean, he told me that it would be easier with me here to comfort him, and then he called his dealer while i was there!, before the withdrawal had even gotten bad. i've totally lost hope. so i told him i wouldn't spend time with him while he was on it, because i don't want to make the experience more enjoyable. but i have NO idea what the best tactic is to help him not do it. i'm totally lost. i guess there's nothing i can do.
i'm just going to concentrate on myself, being healthy, making my life good. everyone else can fuck themselves. no, i just can't expend energy on trying to help him when i've only recently recovered. coming back to portland made me feel 50 times better, though. it's like i was struggling so much in minnesota, learning to make myself happy, and then i come here and i feel like this huge weight has been lifted and now it's effortless to feel good. i don't know what it is about this place, but it takes me to a higher level of being.
i'm sitting at my desk and a warm wind is blowing through the open door, i'm looking out onto the balcony and across the city. i had to rearrange my room because of the doors, and i got a new chair at a garage sale, and everything is being transformed..