Craig stared out the window into the blue sunny day. He wanted some coke. He always wanted it. It wasn't so addicting as heroin, not in the same weird physical way, but it had it's hooks into him.
Rehab. That seemed pathetic. But so had most of his life. Beatings, that was pathetic. And he'd stayed and stayed with his father for years, and who cared that he was a scared kid who still loved his father so what was he supposed to do? Who cared? And psych wards. That was pathetic. This was just one more pathetic step in a lifetime of them.
He tried not to care. He tried to believe he could kick this stupid cocaine, this stupid desire to do something so he wouldn't have to think and feel so much. What was the drug replacing, what void was it filling? If there's too much void then you're gone. Gone.
He thought it might have to do with Ashley. What shape hole did she leave in his heart? He'd loved her, loved her sometimes romantically, sometimes psychotically. He'd really believed that they could have been married, a tiny part of him believed this still. He remembered how he felt when she told him yes, told him she would marry him, and he stubbornly refused to hear the "someday" tacked onto it. He had wanted it right then, wanted a family just for him.
He liked the look of this landscape outside the rehab place, kind of wide and empty. He felt wide and empty, felt everything going from him, his lovely addiction, his desires for things. Leaving. Leaving him as empty as this road and the straw colored grass.
The sky touched the ground out in the distance, and he saw a figure walking there, two more steps and the person would disappear beyond the edge of what he could see. He wasn't used to so much nothing to do. There were groups to go to and meals to eat but that was about it. This place didn't overwhelm you with options. It was out in the middle of nowhere. But it was away from the pace he was used to, the heightened pace of Vancouver and Toronto.
He had his guitar here, his notebook that was empty. Where had all the songs he'd written go? He remembered that first frenetic night of writing song after song, each idea more glittering and wonderful than the last. He could remember the first flush of the bipolar and how it felt good before it felt so scary bad.
The blue day with its hint of clouds still stretched over him. This was in between time. No drugs to do. No shows to play. No girls to toy with. And Ashley had just been gone so long he shouldn't even be thinking of her. And hadn't he seen her with Jimmy? He was quite certain that he had. They were holding hands across that little club table, and Ashley's hair was much longer and curlier than he remembered it, than he'd ever seen it.
The desire for the coke was like some homeless guy begging for money that he kept sending away and he'd go, reluctantly. Then when he wasn't looking he'd come creeping back with his matted hair and grime streaked face, baggy dirty jeans and ripped leather sneakers, his hand held out, the nails long and lined with dirt. But there was no coke here and he didn't have the energy to chase it, to find some city where he could find it.
He wanted to write songs but he had no ideas, no real motivation to start it. He was content to fight off the drug cravings with whatever metaphor he used to represent it. Some siren call, mermaids lulling him, making him think it was a good idea. Everything's a good idea until you're stranded on the rocks.
It was building, though. He could beat this coke thing, this drug thing. He could not care about Ashley. He could pick up his guitar again. Pick up the pen, the ideas flowing like water.