The Rockland Files pt. 1

You could tell that at one point and time, the walls in this room used to be white, at first glance they looked yellow. Not like French's mustard yellow, more like the shitstain in all your underwear when you were a kid before you properly learned how to wipe your ass kind of yellow.
The chairs were big, and might have even been comfortable if the cold red pleather wasn't making my already aching bones even colder, and the cigarette burns all over wooden arms from all the people kicking heroin before me, make me squirm at the thought of just how much funk and sweat had actually been dug into all this furniture over the years. The only thing separating me from the crust of some other dudes ass sweat was a thin, blue, backless hospital gown. The polyurethaned arms of the chairs may as well have been a sheet of ice when I rested my arms on them, causing a chill up my spine that made my teeth ache, creating goosebumps in my forearms giving my abscesses lonely little heartbeats, that were so fucking loud in my head I could almost hear them talking to me... telling me how much pain they were in. Cigarettes don't even taste good at this point, I could barely hold one in my shaky little fingers anyway. My senses came back so strong that the 60 year old african nurse behind the front desk was giving me a boner. There were cigarette burns all over the shitty red carpet that matched the pleather of the chairs, and the coffee table only had reading material on it that wouldn't strike up anyone's issues.
The art hanging on the wall was made from previous clients... I remember thinking how many of them were probably dead by now, or sucking dick in some crackhouse on 123rd and Broadway. You could barely see any life in these paintings from the dead eyes of the hopeless junkies that have sat in these same crusted seats before me. Pictures of families, sunrises, and smiling stickmen hung from the walls by old yellow strips of scotch tape, that looked like they had been there since the depression. All I could do was one day hope that I could raise my tortured arms up high enough to one day paint my own glimmer of hope. The halogen lights buzzed from the ceiling attracting my attention, drawing my severed, stinging, bloodshot, eyes to the water stained covers over them, infiltrated with dead bugs. My attention was drawn back to the lifeless paintings on the wall, hanging over a table where a balding man with a mustache suffering from alcohol withdrawal, played checkers by himself.

I used to be a good kid. I was a little crazy and in desperate need of attention, but I never thought I would end up here. The bow the nurse made in my hospital gown was rubbing the back of my neck raw, my clothes were so dirty and stained with blood that they took them to be washed, so it was all I had. I had no other belongings with me, or anywhere for that matter, so I just had to deal with the February chill of the New York air that was creeping through the cracks in the windows, and running right up the back of my dry, ashy, white, legs. I could barely move, but my brain was so awake that I couldn't sit still for more than 30 seconds without thinking that some other chair, in some other part of the room would somehow make me feel better. Plus my senses were so keen that every time I took a step on that disgusting carpet, sat in another crusty chair, touched a doorknob, or hovered over a toilet... I was sure I was going to die of mysterious rehab disease.
I was lucky enough to have a room all to myself for the first day or so, before they moved some whacked out ghetto bird into the other bed. the beds were small, smaller than a twin, and if you took the plastic mattress out of it, it might as well had been a coffin for a big dog.
I spent the first two nights moving from bed to bed, that idea didn't work with the chairs in the smoke room, but it might have worked here. No such luck... I would crawl to the bathroom, desperately needing to shit, I hadn't taken a proper shit in weeks... months... years. Pulling myself up to the toilet from the handicap rail seemed like it took days, but I finally got myself up onto the cold, white, porcelain, and proceeded to try and push out this boulder stuck in my ass, like a ninety pound girl would try to push out twin babies if she were to be knocked up by Godzilla. I would think about taking the plunger that sat behind me and seeing if that might work, I was willing to try both sides of the plunger at this point. I unfortunately was not ready to drop this "opium bomb" I had been accumulating over time for the next few days or so.
My brain was racing so fast that I couldn't keep a solid thought in my head for longer than two seconds. The only feeling I had was pain, the worst pain I had ever felt in my life. I could feel my toenails growing, the dried boogers in my nose forming, the sweat slowly dripping out of every tiny pore on my forehead, and it all hurt. The only thing that would make all of this go away in an instant, was a shot of dope. Just one little bag in a spoon, and I would be running down the halls doing cartwheels naked, laughing and joking with everyone. Making triple decker peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the kitchen, and eating all the black and white dixie cups in the freezer. Then topping it all off with a wonderful night sleep, waking up sometime in the mid afternoon.
Unfortunately at that time in my life the gig was up. I had no more hustle, no more family, and no more friends. If I was to leave that rehab I would be stuck in the middle of Rockland County NY with no money, and nowhere to go. I was forced to sit with the life I had created for myself, and all the pain and regret that came with it.