Beware. Before reading this post, you are forewarned that there is talk of abortions and related subjects. If that upsets you, don't read it. Thanks.
Wow, I'm so ready to move. We've been packing like crazy. The one good thing about moving is that you get rid of all the crap that you don't really need. Since this is the second time in six months that we have moved, we've really cleaned out a lot of clutter. I'm a big pack rat. I save everything, all my bills and receipts and school work. It's kind of crazy. So I've been tossing everything that is dated before 2008. Unless it's really important, like my tax returns; those I keep for seven years and no one will convince me I shouldn't bother.
I finally have gotten up the courage to throw away a ton of clothes. I'm not actually throwing them away, I want to donate them because they are nice, I just don't fit into them anymore. I gained a ton of weight when I got clean. I think it was partially because I actually began eating regularly. But I also had huge sweet cravings like I've never experienced before. And I guess because I was so skinny I didn't think much about it and ate whatever I wanted. Now I can't wear anything from back then. I've lost a lot of it but I'm still a ways to go to my preferred weight. I need to lose at least twenty-five pounds to feel like myself again. Until now I've been hanging onto all my old clothes thinking I would wear them again some day. But they are beginning to seem out of style or not age appropriate and I figure a new wardrobe would be good incentive to lose weight. Once I'm back to a normal size, I get to buy new clothes. Until then I have to wear all the bulky crap I've bought since I got fat.
I was doing well for a while. As I decrease my dose the weight starts melting off, but I've stabilized at 30mg for now until it warms up. Coming down in the winter is too hard for me once I get below 30mg, I start to feel cold all the time. I think it might be easier in the summer. I need to at least try every option I can think of before resigning myself to being on m-done forever. I really hate being associated with the clinic at this point. I feel like if that's the kind of place I associate with then that crap will always be in my life. I just don't want all the shit that has to do with using in my life. I don't want know-it-all junkies blah-blahing in my face every morning about why they don't work or why such and such is the way it is when they really have no clue. I don't want feigning freaks sniffing around my car and asking for rides and stealing my wallet and Cd's when I look in the rear view mirror. I don't want to have to hide my wallet in my own car or pad-lock all my doors where I live so the neighbors can't break in as easily. I'm sick of pretending I don't think the whole scene sucks. I just want out. And although I love heroin more than many things on earth, I'm not sure I love her enough to have to share her with all the fucking people who love her too. Sorry, I know I'm bitching and I don't mean to offend everyone out there who is not a sneak-thief junkie. I know because I've been there that not all H addicts are created equal. But the bottom-of -the-barrel junkies outweigh the functioning addicts in numbers and in defining the reputation of addicts and it sucks!
On a completely different note... I was riding in the car on the way to the clinic this morning. Mikey was driving the back way through Winchester along the river and it was foggy and dark. We were listening to early Bowie and watching the sides of the road silently, the mood was melancholy for sure. And I was thinking, as I often do, of the boy who I loved so much when I was younger and apparently still love. And it's kind of terrible because I feel like it's a mean thing to think about especially with Mikey there beside me loyally driving to the clinic like he does every day without fail. And it's not as if I don't love Mikey and the thought of leaving him makes me queasy. But almost every day a moment comes when I picture this man's face and wonder where he is and if he's okay. And I wonder what I would say to him if I saw him, and I feel lame about how bad I look, overweight and pasty m-done skin. And then I hope I don't run into him any time soon. And then I maybe it would have been better to see him when I was using because then I was so thin and had nice clothes and we had loot and partied all the time and I felt invincible for so many years. It would have been so easy then.
Now it would be so difficult it seems impossible and stupid to even wish for because what would be the point anyhow? If it were meant to be, it would have been. But I wonder if I'll ever love someone like that again. And do you give up someone who you know will always be there for you forever and who you really consider a best friend and truly love for something so elusive as this feeling you can't even really define?
Anyhow, I was seventeen when I met this guy I'm talking about, and we were together until I was about twenty-two or three. Wow. As I write this is realize that that means it has been almost eight years since we've even seen each other. Is it totally crazy that I still think about him? We had this crazy relationship, we fought all the time but we had a wicked physical connection. It's like no matter how much we fought, we could always have sex and we would be all in love again. I've been with a handful of other guys since then and it's never quite clicked like that. And even though we fought, it was, looking back, always about the most absurd things. But anyhow, as I was looking out the window this morning I realized that it was me who doomed the whole relationship. I always blamed him - for his short temper and his inability to be steady. I always thought he just didn't love me enough. But now that I have been through years worth of sad moments, I picture his face in this one moment, and I know it was me. If I could turn back time, I swear it would be to that moment. I would absolutely make the opposite choice.
So many feminists would hate me for this, if anyone read this blog. Anyhow, I got pregnant when I was eighteen and as the story would suggest, I had an abortion. I didn't even think about it, I was freaked out and my mom thought I would be throwing away possibilities if I had a kid, I guess there was a part of me who probably thought that too. My mom didn't really like this guy, she thought he wasn't that smart and kind of mean. He was mean, but he was smart too. But you have to remember I was already having this major culture clash happening. My parents had recently been divorced and I had moved out a year earlier. I had just graduated high school early from a public school I hadn't attended since I was in junior high. So I didn't have any friends from the school I just graduated from and my old friends were all caught up in their own little world of prep school graduation ceremonies and parties and college acceptances. And I felt like a total loser, living at my boyfriends mom's house in his old bedroom. I just couldn't picture myself anywhere and I definitely couldn't picture myself with a baby. But I just wish that someone who I trusted had sat me down and made me think about what I was really doing. I wish I had told his mom. She had him when she was fifteen and she was someone I admired and have mad love for even today. If she had told me I would be okay, that she would help me, that I could still be someone, I may have hesitated, maybe at least I would feel now that I made the decision after weighing all the possibilities. But I didn't. I didn't think about it. Like a lot of things in my life, it seemed to happen outside of my body. As if I were floating above this weird girl aborting a baby she had with a boy she loved, as if it weren't really happening, as if I, Nellie, could still change my mind.
But after eight years of swearing I would make the same choice again if I had to, I realize it is a lie. I just say that because it makes it seem less awful, less like the wrong decision. I'm sure for some people it is totally the right thing to do. And I don't in any way condone pro-life agendas. I think everyone should have the right to choose whatever they feel is right for them. I just wish I hadn't been so brash and quick to decide. I know now that I didn't ask him what he wanted. That sounds crazy, right? Why wouldn't he have spoken up? He did, in his way. His face was stone for weeks, maybe months. And he would come and go which he didn't do before. And even though we tried to keep it going for years afterwards, there was always a resentment underlying the whole relationship. I'm sure he resented me for not including him in something that was partially his decision and I resented him for not stopping me.
Why write this? Why even admit it? Just to feel sad? I want him to know that I am sorry. Even if I never tell him, the cosmos should know that I'm sorry.
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