grey_matter
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2013
- Messages
- 4
*This is a vent probably best not read if you're feeling low. I've posted about this before under a forgotten handle, but having got clean I'm faced with a renewed perspective.*
There is no such thing as sleep, and in the fugue state I've awoken from he doesn't talk. His musty smell is vivid as I support his weight, one arm around my shoulders, treading mud through a treacle-thick atmosphere in a desperate bid to get him the help he never had and so badly needed, my younger brother. This survivor's guilt takes delight in returning me to that claustrophobic crawl-space into his bedroom where I discovered his corpse delicately hung in the closet at the far end, his face pulled taught in an eternal effort to make it all stop, leaning into the noose he'd strung from the rafters, a cherry-red tongue protruding from his mouth. I scream something animal, appealing instinctively to a god I don't believe in. Or my ribs ache as I return to minutes earlier, when I repeatedly threw all my weight into the barricaded door of his room.
I sought the needle almost immediately afterwards, and I don't regret it. It was a panacea in a time of great need, but now I have to heal. It is two years since the event and three months since I got clean, impatiently kicking a multiple bag-a-day heroin habit and 80mg worth of methadone maintenance in what turned out to be the most lengthy and horrific acute withdrawals I'd ever dared imagine were possible. During those two years I chalked up a depressing criminal record during an animal rage that lasted months, a harrowing mammalian anger fuelled by alcohol and drugs. My arms and hands and legs have been scarred by needles and are pockmarked with cigarette burns.
I narrowly avoided jail in light of my obvious attempt to get clean, to turn this husk of negativity I've been dragging behind me into something positive, but I've become unstuck. I don't know where to go from here. Before the venlafaxine took charge I'd spent weeks in a foetal position trying not to think, looking in vain for the lost art of sleep.
I'm sill an insomniac, but at least I'm a lucid insomniac. I have the benefit of hindsight but am cursed by my past. How do I get to the point where I can hold another's gaze in an honestly held belief in my potential to do good and that I'm not the wraith I feel I've become? Is it even possible? Because it seems such a long way off - beyond the post-acute withdrawals and the crushing depression, the restless legs and the ever-present insomnia, buried deep in the grey matter and the myelin firing in my mind lurks a horrific tangle of distress I can't imagine overcoming. Getting clean wasn't enough. I'm now confronted with what I really am and I don't like it.
But I will give it time. Perhaps one day I'll wear these scars with grace.
There is no such thing as sleep, and in the fugue state I've awoken from he doesn't talk. His musty smell is vivid as I support his weight, one arm around my shoulders, treading mud through a treacle-thick atmosphere in a desperate bid to get him the help he never had and so badly needed, my younger brother. This survivor's guilt takes delight in returning me to that claustrophobic crawl-space into his bedroom where I discovered his corpse delicately hung in the closet at the far end, his face pulled taught in an eternal effort to make it all stop, leaning into the noose he'd strung from the rafters, a cherry-red tongue protruding from his mouth. I scream something animal, appealing instinctively to a god I don't believe in. Or my ribs ache as I return to minutes earlier, when I repeatedly threw all my weight into the barricaded door of his room.
I sought the needle almost immediately afterwards, and I don't regret it. It was a panacea in a time of great need, but now I have to heal. It is two years since the event and three months since I got clean, impatiently kicking a multiple bag-a-day heroin habit and 80mg worth of methadone maintenance in what turned out to be the most lengthy and horrific acute withdrawals I'd ever dared imagine were possible. During those two years I chalked up a depressing criminal record during an animal rage that lasted months, a harrowing mammalian anger fuelled by alcohol and drugs. My arms and hands and legs have been scarred by needles and are pockmarked with cigarette burns.
I narrowly avoided jail in light of my obvious attempt to get clean, to turn this husk of negativity I've been dragging behind me into something positive, but I've become unstuck. I don't know where to go from here. Before the venlafaxine took charge I'd spent weeks in a foetal position trying not to think, looking in vain for the lost art of sleep.
I'm sill an insomniac, but at least I'm a lucid insomniac. I have the benefit of hindsight but am cursed by my past. How do I get to the point where I can hold another's gaze in an honestly held belief in my potential to do good and that I'm not the wraith I feel I've become? Is it even possible? Because it seems such a long way off - beyond the post-acute withdrawals and the crushing depression, the restless legs and the ever-present insomnia, buried deep in the grey matter and the myelin firing in my mind lurks a horrific tangle of distress I can't imagine overcoming. Getting clean wasn't enough. I'm now confronted with what I really am and I don't like it.
But I will give it time. Perhaps one day I'll wear these scars with grace.
