And it just pops up, the page so blank…with nothing there except what I put there. If only life could be like that. Ha. Of course it can't, oh well. So here I am at rehab. Rehab, Jesus what a joke. At first it was the lovely detoxing off cocaine. You know it's reached an unacceptable level if detoxing becomes involved. And I thought I could handle it. Just a little. Just one bump. Just a party favor and it wasn't hurting anyone, least of all me. But that wasn't exactly the case now was it? Nope. I ended up hurting everyone. Joey and Manny and Ellie and myself. I had to talk to Joey on the phone today and I heard that, that something in his voice. Like hidden disappointment. Like veiled fear. Joey was good at sounding like he was trying to hide those things…no. I shouldn't be mad at Joey and I'm really not, but for some reason he makes me feel so…so pathetic.
So here I see a psychiatrist and a counselor but the psychiatrist doesn't have much time. It's a meeting a week. They are busy people. There's a lot of crazy in the world. But the psychiatrist, a woman with polished nails and fancy hair and fancy clothes, she suggested that the cocaine use was a form of "self-medicating". Maybe it was. Sure it was. And why would I need to self medicate? She listed off the reasons. Bi-polar. My parents' deaths. My "abuse history". The school shooting. She forgot Manny's abortion but she doesn't know about that. Yet. She will. These people are like vulgeers, they pick at you and tear you apart. And I'm not spelling that word right, that bird that eats dead things, the dumb word processor keeps wanting to spell "vulgar". It's vulgar alright.
But the counselor, also a woman, wants me to write in a journal. She says that doing this is therapuatic. Damn I can't spell that word right either. Screw it. The counselor woman is like one of those aging hippies with long straight hair and no make-up and jeans and stuff. I see her everyday. I think playing music is therapuetic. And I guess snorting cocaine felt therapeutic. That's it, I spelled it right, holy shit! There's hope for me yet. Yeah. When I was doing cocaine it felt better. Like I could do things. Things like going on stage and talking to people and succeeding in the fucked up music business. It was confidence. Now I felt tired and pretty much like shit. This was being better? I didn't get it.
Both the counselor and the psychiatrist say I wasn't dealing with the traumatic events in my life and that they didn't go away even if I pretended that they never happened. Great. One of them said that when my dad was hitting me all the time that I had to pretend then, to survive it in my head. But that now he was dead and no one hit me anymore and that I had to deal with it and not do drugs when I felt bad, or not confident enough, or whatever. So deal with it how, I said. It's over. No, they said. Part of you is still 13 and getting the shit beat out of you for no reason. Like being late and disobeying all the time isn't a reason. She said to write about it.
Okay, my dad. So when my mom left us for Joey that's when things got real bad. I just really never knew what he was going to do, how he was going to be. And things got worse. Like one hit one time was nothing much but then he'd…shit. I really don't want to write about that. And I don't want to write about either of them dying and I don't want to write about being bi-polar or Manny and the baby or any of it.
They say that you get stuck at ages where traumatic things happened, like when my mom died when I was 10. Instead of dealing with being 10 and growing up I was dealing with my mother dying, not dealing with being a 10 year old. And when my dad used to beat me when I was 13 I was dealing with that and not maturing past 13, even when I was 14, 15, ect. And the bi-polar episode when I was 16. So emotionally they figure I'm only about 15, and moving across the country and having a career in music and all that is too much for an emotional 15 year old so I had to find a way to do it, and that leads to the drug use.
Ellie's pretty pissed off at me. I don't blame her. I was awful. Kissing her like that, toying with her emotions. In two days I managed to alienate Manny and Ellie. Manny. I love her. I really do. I've missed her so much and she's so sweet and she has always been better to me than I've been to her. Except the abortion…well. It was her choice but it hurt me so much when she did that. What chance would that kid have had? I can't even take care of myself never mind a baby. But maybe things would have been better with the baby because they would have had to be better. I would have had to get my act together for that daughter or son. And maybe with a baby to focus on I wouldn't have become bi-polar, I would have been stronger than that.
About the bi-polar that stupid psychiatrist says that "child abuse" can cause it, traumatic events before the age of 16. So there. That's fitting. Not only did my father beat me but he made me crazy, too. Thanks dad.
This isn't going so well. It isn't making me feel better. I get so sick of myself and my problems and I just want them to go away. And I don't like being stuck here like a prisoner, trapped in this place. Sometimes I wish Sean hadn't stopped me that day in front of the train, that he'd just let it hit me. Because I was in so much pain then and I'm in so much pain now and it just goes on and on that I think, sometimes, that I had the right idea back then.
Cocaine is a stimulant. And the lack of energy I'm feeling is because the stimulant I was becoming accustomed to has been taken away. So what if it can cause heart attacks? So what? I don't care I just want it. I want it back.
I didn't think my mother would really die. Jesus, I was 10! I thought there would be a cure, and there wasn't. There wasn't anything. And it felt so empty when she died. Things were easier when she was alive, more things seemed to make sense and after she died it was like, if that happened then any terrible thing could happen. What would stop it? What would stop my dad from kicking me so hard that I'd barely be able to breathe the next day? Huh? Nothing. What would stop him from strapping me with that belt so hard that it would hurt to wear a shirt the next day and the next day? Huh? What? Nothing. There was nothing to stop it. And I knew then just like I know now that I am a terrible kid, that I made him mad and that's why those things happened and kept happening.
And when I was in the hospital with the stupid bi-polar I was so out of control that they had to inject the drugs into me with needles and tie me to the bed with these, these leather restraint things and…fuck. I am so messed up it is no wonder…
And Manny, that was my baby, too, it was mine and she, she killed it and I didn't have any say and it was like some part of me was being killed. I knew that whole day, I felt it like a freight train running over me, that day she got the abortion is burned into my memory and it's super bright like a picture that's over exposed.
I stopped taking pictures somewhere along the way. At one point it was all I did. Everything I saw I'd think how it could be a picture. I liked taking pictures because you could make things look the way you wanted them to look. But I just stopped doing it like I'd never even done it.
Joey is coming up for a visit soon, he said. So that's good, I guess. Maybe he'll bring Angie with him, not like I really want her to see me here but she must know by now that I am a fuck up. It isn't exactly a secret. Well, I guess that's about it for the therapeutic journal writing. The counselor will be happy I did it, at least.