Changes....

Four years ago, I was subletting a little one room apartment from a friend in Hollywood. When I rented the apartment I was sober, had 2 jobs, a nice car, a great band, and was killing it in life for the first time ever. I had self esteem and finally felt like a part of the universe. Eventually my head got the best of me as it usually does, and not soon after I had gotten my life together I started drinking again. It didn't take long at all before I was drinking and doing coke every night, having to take pills to fall asleep. My infatuation with sticking a needle in my arm overpowered my vow to never do that again, and before long I was spending most of my time in the bathroom shooting coke. I got my hands on a pager number for a heroin delivery service and lost the car, the jobs, the band, and was about 4 months back on my rent.

My insanely big life had become smaller than the tiny bathroom I was spending most of my time in. I was afraid to come out, fearing someone might be at my door and I would actually have to interact with human beings. Even though my windows were completely boarded up with magazine covers and postcards, I still thought people could see through. All my friends knew exactly what I was doing and stayed far and clear of my house anyway, but I would still panic that someone might show up to intervene on me. When I wasn't in the bathroom I would creep around my apartment, just in case someone was outside my door, I didn't want them hearing if I was inside.

My life was the size of the keyhole I had jammed broken with a screwdriver so my building manager couldn't just come in and check on me, and if I was to die in that apartment, it would have been weeks before the smell crept out into the courtyard arousing suspicion. The hot water had been shut off for weeks, there was no internet, and my phone had been disconnected for months. My only communication with the outside world consisted of a dope-sick hobble to the pay-phone at the end of the street to call my dealer. Then standing on the corner waiting for him as I watched the living drive by on their way to do life stuff, hoping no one I knew would see my pale, skin and boned ass shaking on the corner waiting for the balloon of isolation and regret. No matter how sick and cold I was, as soon as that shitty Honda civic pulled up and I jumped in the back seat, the smell of shitty mexican cologne would fill my nostrils and everything would automatically feel calmer. That spit covered balloon shaking in the palm of my clammy hand was going to wash all the shitty feelings that were rushing through my veins away like a piece of driftwood, and for a few more hours... I was going to be as ok as I could be in my situation.

I had successfully pushed just about all of the love out of my life, surrounding myself with nothing but dark, sticky, piles of disgust, covered in blood. It was always there waiting for me, I just had to go and get it. The laces in all my shoes had become ties for my arm to try and find a vein, my feet and hands were so swollen from missing, that I couldn't use them anyway. It got to the point where it took me 20 minutes to get to the end of the block in the morning to use the pay-phone, because I could barely walk. Most days it was a no brainer decision to buy food or drugs, drugs... won... every... time...

I hadn't eaten for three days, just shooting speedballs and smoking butts that my neighbors had flicked into the bushes by my apartment. There was a tiny piece of Trident gum that I had been staring at on the table, and was saving for when the time was just right, and when that time came... it was the best fucking piece of gum I ever had in my life.