Feeling strange

I just finished the book Crank by Ellen Hopkins. It was an easy read and finished it in four days and happy to be done with it.

Much like the book Prozac Nation, Crank induced my experiencing many different emotions, feelings, smells and tastes. A book written by a young girl's mother about her daughter's meth addiction. I for one have never done meth but in reading about it, I see it's really no different than crack.

I was fine with the book for a while seeing little to no similarities between the dual personality sixteen year old Kristina aka Bree. That was until she smoked meth for the first time. Sitting on the train to work I read that section and I immediately smelled freshly cooked rock in my flared nostrils and tasted the sticky sweet in my mouth. I sat, silent and amazed yet horrified for a moment before sucking on my tongue to get the taste away. Can a book really do this to me? Make me taste and smell what I haven't tasted nor smelled in all these years?

It passed and I continued reading.

I picked up the book again on the way home and started to feel a wave of anger, guilt and pure humiliation come over me. I cried in the car on the way home and remembered things I've long tried to forget.

Mike was home when I got home. My partner, my love, who knows so little of what I've done. He's never asked, I've never told and we don't see it as secrets but as the dumb shit we've all done.

I wasn't myself but Mike understood the book was just a bit of a difficult read for me. "Why don't you stop reading it?" he asked.

"I'll be done with it tomorrow morning."

I cried a little and don't remember why. I let go one of my most shameful memories and Mike giggled. Through my sobs I told him, "It's not funny!" but his finding humor in my shameful act made me see that maybe that little thing wasn't so bad afterall, just bad from my point of view.

After a little while I suggested, "Fuck it. I'm taking you out to dinner."

Getting out and having some diner grilled cheese and a pickle and some diner conversation really made me feel better. On the way home Mike told me about his brother's experience with the psychic he went to the night before. A very legitimate psychic that Mike's family has gone to for years and is very consistent.

"Why haven't you gone yet?"

Those words were like a blessing.

"I'm willing to tell you if you're willing to listen."

"Ok"

So we went home and I started with that fateful October day six years ago when I went to Connecticut to see a Reiki Master and left Connecticut a monster.

I gave him the abridged version filled my current perspectives. I cried a little, mostly for my family and told Mike some of the things that made me the most sad. I smoked some cigarettes and felt wonderful when I finished with:

"...and that's why I haven't gone to any psychics. I still hold that woman partly responsible for what I went through." I do. The drugs, the abuse, the wreckless hate, the downward out of control spiral my visit with that women led to.

After telling a bit of my story to Mike I felt empty but not sad. Rather, I felt light, airy. "Thank you for listening."

After that the night was great but this morning, not so much.

Mike had to wake up extra early this morning to go to a meeting. His alarm partially woke me out of some sort of drug dream. I still have them but they are few and far between. My right arm hurt from shooting up; that weird pain that runs from the crook of your arm partially up your bicep and down just an inch or so like a soreness in the bone. I was wondering how Mike could possibly get up so early after smoking crack with me all night. I wondered and stressed over how I'd be able to function at work - is today the day I lose my job?

I went back to sleep and woke up feeling to a feeling of haze. I went about my business lost in my own thoughts and kept running into disorder.

No apple. Today was the first work day in as long as I can remember I didn't have an apple to pack with my sandwich.

Coffee in the pot left for me from Mike but the thought of sweet n low making me feel sick to my stomach.

No train ticket. Have to stop at Wawa for cash. Bought a coffee and put lots of sugar in it, feel and see sugar in my belly mutating into giant glob of fat.

Got to train station parking lot at 7:52, one spot left just for me. What the hell is going on here? half a parking lot left for me. Never ever before.

Don't remember walking from train to work. Arm still hurts.

I'm here now getting this out and off of me and happy to be doing so. I feel strange but I thank God these little oddities are only that; little oddities and not the monster that once lurked in my shadow.