Surviving on Your Own

Goodbyes and Violet Eyes

I think I'm lost. I've been lost since the day I was born. I've said that before, to her. But I think I'm more lost now, especially after stealing that shit from work. That was a week ago.

After I got home that day, I shoved the bag I stole into the back of my top dresser drawer. I sat on my bed and glared at said dresser for a long while. I kept asking myself why I did that. Why would I be so reckless and unbelievably stupid now? I couldn't find an answer.

Eventually I moved, grabbed my laptop and dove into researching heroin. What is it? Why do people use it? What are the short and long-term effects on the body? How do people use it? How addictive is it?

After consuming all the information I gathered - most of which I already knew - I grabbed the baggie from its hiding place and marched into the restroom. Opening the toilet I had every intention of flushing my mistake out of my life, but I couldn't drop it. I just kept staring at in my hand. I ended up putting it back in the drawer.

I spent the next three days in my normal routine. Awake up, eat, go to work, exercise for an hour after work, come back to my apartment. I was nervous. I was expecting someone to notice that I had taken it, but no one ever came into my office. I didn't speak to anyone over those three days. But that's not really abnormal for me. I intimidate people thus, no one talks to me.

When I first came to the Preventers it was intentional. I didn't want anyone to bother me, I just wanted to work. If I was working then I didn't have to think about my lack of purpose, of the innocent people I kill. She was the first of many innocent people to die by my hands. And when I showed remorse and sorrow for it, I was ordered back into training. It was then that they worked on dehumanizing me. It was kind of like what violent street gangs do to suck you into their click. They force you to do horrible things you don't want to do, and in the process you have to denounce your emotions, your heart, in order to live with what you've done. It's a brainwashing mechanism.

But what life am I left with now?

I was forced into the role of the "Perfect Soldier", and I became that to the best of my abilities. They made me very efficient in that role, so much so that now I don't really how to be anything else. But there's no need for soldiers now, we fought for peace and got it. And I've given up the gun, metaphorically. I don't want to be a soldier anymore. Maybe I should have carried out my final order. I was to terminate myself once I was confident wars would be over. But I wanted to live, and in order to do so, I need to find away back to being human again. I need to feel again.

The others helped me feel. Being with them and working alongside them brought me back a little, also believing in what we were fighting for helped with that too. But we're not in touch with each other anymore, or maybe they're just not in contact with me. I wish Duo had kept his promise. As we were all splitting up, and I was leaving with Relena, Duo cornered me while I was alone. He hugged me tightly and whispered, "I'll see you soon, okay Heero?" Well maybe that wasn't exactly a promise, but still. I waited for sometime and once it became clear he wasn't going to contact me I stopped anticipating It.

But it's been over a year now, almost a year and a half, and I couldn't, or wouldn't, make any connections with other people around me. And now that I want to, I don't know how. Not to mention I pushed everyone away when I first got here. I should have just posted a sign to my office door, "Gundam Pilot 01", then even my commander would have left me alone.

Anyways, after having that shit in my house for three days, I took it out of the drawer again. Every time I was in my apartment, I could feel the presence of it there, and my curiosity was getting the better of me. Without really thinking, I took the baggie and my first aid kit from my bathroom into my kitchen. I paused and stood there for a while not doing anything.

Then I resumed mindlessly moving about. I knew what to do. I read about it all. You could snort it, smoke it off foil, or inject it. It's like everything happened in slow motion. It was also like an out-of-body experience, I could see what I was doing, and a voice in my head telling me stop only got quieter and quieter.

I took a spoon from the drawer, then a cotton ball and a syringe from the kit. I tore the cotton ball into tiny bits of fluff. Then I took one of the small baggies out of the big one, opened it and dumped some of its contents on the surface of the counter. Spoon in hand, I filled it with water and then pushed some of the white powder into it. It looked like too much, but I wasn't sure. Turning around I used the stove to heat up the spoon until the mixture bubbled. With that achieved I put in a tiny bit of cotton. Using my teeth to uncap the syringe, I hesitated for a brief moment before pressing the needle to the cotton. I pushed the bit of fluff around the spoon with the needle. Then I pulled back on the plunger, and soaked up all the liquid through the cotton. Once that was done I pushed the plunger up to get rid of air bubbles and some of the poison leaked from the tip. Setting the syringe down on the counter, I backed away and went into my bedroom.

I really wish I owned a television, or something that could have distracted me. I wish I had walked out the front door. I wish I had flushed it down the toilet. I wish I had never grabbed the baggie in the first place.

I laid on my side on my twin size bed for what must have been an hour just thinking. Maybe I had been immunized, or something, from drugs. When I had been vaccinated for truth serums I had been put under. They could have pumped me full of a bunch of shit, and I would have never been the wiser. Standing up and loosening my tie, I made my way back into the kitchen.

I picked up the syringe and sat on the hard wood floor, leaning against the counter. I took off my tie and my work shirt, just leaving on my white under shirt. Using my tie as a tourniquet, I wrapped it around my left arm above the elbow. Then I sat staring at the floor for a few moments. Inhaling a deep breath through my nose I picked up the syringe. Laying it almost flat against my arm, I pushed the needle under the skin and into a blue vein. Pulling back on the plunger I saw my red blood mix with the substance inside.

I gazed at my arm for a few seconds, and then took the plunge. I watched as the drug disappeared from the syringe and into my blood.

I yanked the needle back out, and torn my tie off my arm. And then, there was nothing. I didn't feel anything, I was actually disappointed. Two seconds later I felt it.

It began in my arms, a tingling hot sensation. It creeped through my chest and down my legs. And then it hit me. Like being hit by a fucking car, it hit. And it hit good. I gasped loudly as I slid to lay down on the floor. I was melting through the wood floor. I tried to stretch out further but it was like moving through heavy water. It felt amazing. I had died and gone to heaven.

I can only describe it as orgasmic. Take your best orgasm and multiply it by ten and this is what you get. Ever inch of my body felt like it had been kissed by the sweetest angels. And for the first time in a long time, I felt peaceful.

In my research, I read that one of the reasons people use drugs in general is to escape. And that's what I was doing. I escaped to some better place where I could feel happiness. Behind my eyelids, I saw the faces of both Relena and Duo. But Relena faded and there was just Duo. His laughing face and sparkling violet eyes. Why is it always him on my mind?

I don't know how long I laid there for before the nausea hit. It could have been twenty minutes, it could have been two hours. There is no sense of time in the heaven I have found.

But suddenly it took over, and I rolled on to my side and vomited. It came out of nowhere. I felt like I had puked for an hour, but when it was over, I was back in heaven. I made myself get off the floor and slowly made it back to my bedroom, leaving my puddle of vomit behind.

Collapsing on my bed, I closed my eyes and just enjoyed the sensation. After a long while I succumbed to sleep. That night I had vivid dreams, that were really more like flash backs. I dreamt of the time I danced with Relena. Of when Duo busted me out of the hospital and I didn't open my chute until the last possible moment. Waking up to find Trowa had nursed me back to health after I self destructed. Of Quatre fighting the Zero System. Of my argument with Wufei during the Eves War that ended up with me and Zero falling from the sky and into the ocean. I dreamt of our goodbyes, and violet eyes.

When I woke up the next morning, I was surprised that my internal alarm woke me up right on time, and that I felt fine. I went to work and did my duties. All the while just wanting to go back to the peaceful place I had gone to. I've used it every night since. I knew I was lost before, but I think I'm more further gone now than I ever was.

I've loosely based this chapter off a friend of mine. Like most people who use drugs, we don't start off with hardcore narcotics. Alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana tends to come first. A friend of mine from South Central (real bad part of LA) shot up heroin with her older brother when she was twelve. It was the first drug she was ever exposed to and she started doing it everyday after that first time. I want to portray Heero as just as fallible as another person.