Hey dude,
I know that you are going through the most horrid time, but just keep going!
If you just keep chipping away, day by day, your life will take on new depth, and you will find a strength that will leave you a better person for your experience.
Think about how meaningless that expensive bit of clothing becomes when you cannot even afford a place to keep safe, or how trivial that meal of $100 is when you can't even buy a loaf of bread. I think that if you look at life as being made up of a few defining experiences, then this one may leave you with more 'soul' than when you started - and you have already said that you now would just like to help other people who may be going through some similarly tough times.
I know it may be hard to see at the moment, and you may even disagree with me, but i feel that this time you have spent, or are spending, clawing your way back is beautiful. It may not be the carefree, happy life that so many people will know each day, but it is powerful and beautiful. And you have such a gift as a writer that i am sure will allow you to achieve some great things, if that is what you want.
And if you can find the strength to keep holding in there, when you have seemingly lost everything, how much less daunting does that office meeting with a potential publisher look? Or how much more are you going to value the simple things in life , such as helping out a fellow human in need.
Jamie Lidell wrote some lyrics which i love: "life may sometimes be sad, but it's always beautiful". And i don't think beautiful always has to be all sunshine and bubbles, but rather it is beautiful that the world may now have one more citizen that has had the experience of facing a massive fight just to keep going each day. You cannot know white without knowing black.
Look at how much compassion and mateship you have brought out of your fellow bluelighters. These people may have never met you, and yet they all just want so much to see you get back to a place where you want to be. Had you taken a less 'Dynamic' route with your last few years, you may never have known the sorts of compassion the good people in this world can harbor.
As an artist, which you are as a writer, you have already had an impact on my life through helping me to see just how great some people around here can be (bluelight amazes me every time i am on here).
Anyway, if you find yourself in a hole that you think you are not going to get out of, and need a few dollars, or someone to talk to, you can PM me. I am in Australia but i would certainly do what i could to help you out.
And don't. don't don't beat yourself up about being a junkie. Beat yourself up for lying, and whatever else you may have done, but the world today is in such a state of confusion about how to deal with drugs that sometimes sees good people crippled by the fact that they now see themselves as a worthless criminal because of their drug use. I know because i have felt it myself and that can do more damage than anything.
If you have your fiction work published, then you can put me down as a customer. I would read with vigor.
Keep going dude!
Stuart
