From age 8, risky behavior was my best friend.
It started with cutting my wrists,
not for death but for the sensation.
It was like my brain took too long to register
the pain that I felt, so long that I sometimes didn’t feel it.
At age 11, I got drunk for the first time.
Felt a little silly, a little lighter. Everything made me laugh just a little harder.
At 11, I gave myself a tattoo. The burning sensation of a too dull needle
and not skin safe ink made me feel
ALIVE.
The bittersweet sensation of pain was the only thing that kept me here.
At 12, I smoked for the first time.
Nicotine was fine, scratched an itch in my brain.
Pot was even better, became an itch.
At age 13, I took pills for the first time.
I thought alcohol and weed were great, but
a 30mg Vicodin just made everything else go away.
The sensation of being everywhere but here, everywhere but my brain
made me feel amazing.
I tried other stuff too. Acid, shrooms, coke, amphetamines, heroin, even
It was all great until I had to get sober. And I did for almost 2 years.
But two months before my 15th birthday, I fell off
the motherfucking wagon so hard.
I drank every weekend, blacked out by myself in my bedroom or the bathtub, for 3 months.
I hid it from everyone, I kept doing it.
And when I stopped, I started talking to guys on Snapchat.
We would exchange nudes, not because it turned me on,
but because I knew I shouldn’t
but because I knew it made me feel like shit
I did everything in my power to feel bad,
Self destruction became my biggest hobby.
The drunker I got, the better I felt
the higher I got, the better I felt
the better I felt, the worse I was
the worse I was, the worse I felt
the worse I felt, the more I did things to feel even worse.
Living with your head in the clouds is a great way to forget but it only gets you so far.