Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Addicted to the Needle: Short Story on "Madness" Inspired by the Romantic era. (Humanities of Enlightenment and Romanticism project)



A narrative of a day in the life of an intravenous drug addict (dedicated to someone very close): 

I wake up after slumber; everything is an opportunity for me. I go use the bathroom and then I look in the mirror. Today is another day that I will do nothing. When I go downstairs I face my father, my aging Iranian father and he just says hello. It’s not really morning anymore because my sleeps don’t start until the early AM and they last until mid PM. My father’s eyes are dark and he has lost his sparkle. I open up the bare fridge to find something to aid my hunger but not much can satisfy me. A piece of toast with an apple will do. I am bored and I feel like there is nothing to do anymore. My parents tell me to get a job, they tell me I need to create a schedule, but I don’t feel like I can do it. Actually, I don’t need it. I have to get my life together first but I’m just not trying. My father keeps telling me he can’t do it anymore but I am too selfish to give a damn. I have to make sure this day goes alright so I make a few calls to my local connects. A little bit of pot will hold me over and a handful of those pills. I can always trade someone a few pills and get a ride to my mother’s house so today I think I will. I am bored here and my mother and sister are much easier to be around than my father.

 It’s about 4pm and I am at my mother’s house. My sister’s angry at me again, she overheard a conversation between my parents about something I did wrong again, and how badly I need to get my life together. I know she loves me but deep down I feel this hate towards me. I sat down for dinner with the two of them; we had steak that evening. I stared at my plate eager to fill the cravings from the munchies. I cut it slowly and watched the blood ease its way out. The food tasted great, but it just wasn’t cutting it for me.

After I finished eating I made my way into the bathroom. Out came my needle and another mark is made in my arm. The rush into my veins feels so good, it feels better than anything you can possibly imagine. And my brain starts begins to enter overdrive... Everything is my fault, everything that has ever happened, it’s all my fault. I burnt the house down; I destroyed everything after the divorce. I exposed my sister to madness and devilish acts of my peers and escapades. I stare into the mirror at myself to realize it’s 10 years later. I am almost 25 years old and every day I can’t live without the needle. I have nothing, the devil is taking me down and I don’t care anymore. Look at my parents! Look at their eyes, they’re bleeding, they’re losing their light. Every bit of compassion and mercy is slipping away from everyone that loves me. My friends aren’t my friends they are all using me. The only people outside of my family that ever even cared about me won’t talk to me. What have I done? A flash in my head of my entire childhood was playing like a film. I’m pulling my hair out, I can’t even think straight. I want to go back in time, I need to relive my entire childhood and do it all again. I want everything I had back, I don’t want this anymore but my body says I need it. Without the opiates, I can’t sleep at night. Without them I can’t breathe, I can’t move and I can’t stop sweating. My heart even feels like it stops beating sometimes. Life is too hard to face sober, I need to be numb. I just need to not face it all anymore but I am even too scared to end my own life. Am I really addicted? Is this addiction really a disease? I want to break these chains but my life isn’t worth it anyways.

 I survived overdose on multiple occasions. I lived through two car accidents in which the first one my car was totaled. I lived after falling off a three story balcony. I recovered from three seizures and many nights of convulsions. God keeps calling out to me but frankly I am deaf and blind. They tell me I am selfish but I honestly just need to be high. Life is passing by me at speeds I can’t comprehend and here I am just watching it all. This life I am leading is a mess within a mess and this entire situation is ultimately madness. When you have lost all hope in yourself and everyone around you has let go of all respect towards you... When you have given your life over to the devil and let go of your future... When you give up on everything; what is left?

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