Diversions

Finally, I have decided to take advantage of my new scanner to scan some of my old artwork into electronic form. Rather than clutter up the whole blog with pictures (I have mercy on those of you with dial-up connections) I uploaded them to my Comcast site, and here are the links instead.

This picture was painted in 1994, while JP and I were living together. In fact, there is a subset of these pictures which were painted on the same night, the night before New Years' Eve, when JP and his friend Justin and I sat at the kitchen table all night, painting and talking and making plans.

These three were painted by JP on that same night.
One
Two
Three

Here's another one of mine from that night. I couldn't begin to explain it.

I like spirals. Can you tell?

A few months later, I painted this and this. We had a collection of heroin-themed artwork; these were part of it. A year or so later, when I'd learned a little (both about addiction and Illustrator) I created this, which would have fit in nicely with that collection.

I think I must have been really, really bored when I did this one. It's not as impressive when it's scanned, but each of those shapes is cut from construction paper and glued to the background. (I think a few pieces may have been lost in the intervening years.) This came from North Carolina, while I was staying with Firefly.

This came from another bout of boredom, this time at work. I was just learning to play with Illustrator, and I was amazed at how it came out.

And finally, a few more random contributions:
eyeball
drown
heart

Once I can get my dratted evil digital camera working, I'll post pictures of my non-paper-based artwork too.

When the Party's Over

One of the hardest parts of addiction--and I had forgotten this from my last go-around, six years ago--is cleaning up afterwards. It's hard enough to close your eyes and grit your teeth and say "Okay, I'm DONE with this now,"--but it's a lot harder, while your teeth are still gritted and your knuckles are still white, to look around and say "...and I messed up THIS and THIS and THIS..." Because the easiest way to forget about all the things you messed up while you were getting high? Is by getting high again.

Well, that's not an option for me, in more ways than one.

After one last use, I threw out all my needles yesterday; buried them at the bottom of a bag of trash and walked it out to the alley myself. And normally, grand-sweeping-gesture-of-it-all aside, that would present only a very minor and easily-surmounted obstacle to getting high; after all, I know most of the places where the harm-reduction van stops, and they're very lenient about giving you supplies even if you're not "exchanging" needles as such. (They didn't used to be that way. It used to be, if you didn't have needles to dump, you couldn't get any fresh ones. Not sure when that changed.) And I've made this gesture before; the only outcome would be that a few days later I'd drive to the van and pick up a new batch of needles, and drive home feeling more defeated than before.

Except I can't do that now. The harm-reduction van is on vacation, til after New Year's Day. I think they come back on the 3rd, but I'm not sure, and either way I don't care. I have thrown away all my needles and I am not going back to get more. I have over a week to get my head together, a week during which I absolutely cannot get high. I have put an insurmountable obstacle in between myself and my addiction.

Well, not "insurmountable"--I'm sure if I was feeling ingenious enough, I could manage to scrounge up a needle somewhere. But I am in no way prepared to WORK at getting high. I am prepared to work AGAINST getting high, as a matter of fact. I am tired of feeling defeated, tired of muttering under my breath "I am NOT a bad person" and not being quite sure I believe it. I know what I want out of life and this isn't it. So I made it so that I CAN'T get high, at least for a week--and if I want to get high THEN, I'm going to have to take a concrete, thought-out action by going to the needle-exchange. There are about a million points in that process where I can stop myself and say "This is not what I want from my life." I'm not saying it's 100% guaranteed to work, but I'm giving myself a better chance, at least.

And it's a good thing, too, because now comes the hard part.

The wreckage is not so bad, I don't think. I should be grateful the relapse was only two months--a couple more months and there would have been a lot more mess to clean up. There were a couple of bills that didn't get paid, I know, and I spent a lot of money I could have used more productively; but all in all it could have been much worse. I can catch up on bills, and my tax refund will be here by early March (I always file as soon as I have my last check stubs for the year), so I can patch up any financial leaks when that check comes. But it's still scary. I've avoided opening bills for a month or more--as if they'd go away if I didn't open them! That's the sort of thing I used to do when I was really, REALLY in debt. It didn't work then, and it's not going to work now. (Don't you wish things DID work like that, though? Where if you didn't open a bill, you wouldn't have to pay it?)

I think I'm worrying needlessly, exaggerating the amount of damage I've done to my life because I feel guilty for relapsing in the first place...and THAT is a perfect example of the sort of thought process that's characterized my latest depression. I question EVERYTHING about myself--I don't trust even my own good intentions. For months now I've felt as though I've completely lost faith in myself; I've felt like a fraud, like all the things people admire about me are just an elaborate facade, hiding someone that NOBODY could admire. And it's horrible to feel that way. It's hard to describe what it's like...like not only am I questioning what I believe, but I'm questioning the whole concept of "belief", and even the existence of the words I would use to discuss that concept...or the letters in the words, or the pixels that make up the letters....I feel like the core of my world is completely unstable, but in a very narrow way. Everything else goes on as usual, but everything I believe is shaken all the way down. I wish I could articulate it better, because I know this doesn't make a lot of sense. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, either; I just know I want it to go away.

My first appointment with my therapist is on New Years' Eve. She sounds very strait-laced and serious--but then again, I only spoke to her for a few minutes, so it's early to draw any conclusions. I'm nervous, I'll admit, but more than that I'm hopeful. I'm starting to visualize the kind of life I want, and I know I have to take some big steps before I can get there.

So here I am: Day One, And I Mean It This Time.

Damn!

Well, I missed my big milestone: At 6:59 PM on December 26th, The Story of Why received its 20.000th hit. It came from Arlington Heights, IL and they didn't seem to do anything interesting--dropped by, read something, and dropped out. And I am amazed that, on 20,000 separate occasions, someone thought "Hm, that sounds interesting" or "Gee, I wonder what Gladys is up to" or even "Holy God I'm bored--here, lemme kill another three minutes with this dreck."

So, anonymous non-message-leaving Arlington-Heights-dwelling reader: thank you. And thank you to the other 19,999 of you, as well. As I've said before, I don't know what keeps you coming back, but I'm glad you do.

Merry Christmas

I log in from my old room at Mom's (OS 9 Mac, dial-up connection, slower than the slowest thing ever) to wish you all a happy holiday and to thank you all for being a part of my life. I hope you're surrounded by the people you love, all your wishes come true, and all your holiday desserts are magically stripped of calories.

I'll be back on Sunday night or Monday. Take care, everyone.

Tipping Point

Today at lunch I got into the car and discovered that Q101, the local alternative station, is trying to kill me.

Their latest "gimmick" is: 13 Years in 13 Days. They're playing back the top 101 songs of each year they've existed in their current format: 1993-2005. Today was 1993.

Hearing those songs did something to me. I have often hypothesized a point at which I just wasn't going to be able to stand it anymore; where all the pain of losing JP would crash in on me and I would be completely helpless, completely wrecked beneath the weight. I have lived pretty much in fear of that moment, especially the part where I didn't know what would bring it about.

I think I ran headlong into that moment today. I can't even describe how lost I felt, how lonely those songs made me feel--and even more, how shaken I was to realize that of those thirteen years, only three of them ever really happened. There was 1993, when I wasn't speaking to JP; there was 1994, when we got back together; and 1995, when we were perfectly happy together until he died. After that everything is a blur, insignificant--as though it happened to someone else.

I do not want the rest of my life to happen to someone else.

I called the hotline number for the company's mental-health benefits provider, and I got a referral. I went through the whole rigamarole: I need a referral for depression, yes there's substance abuse, then answer everything about substance abuse and very little about the depression itself--oh, I know this game, and I think I managed to cover up the fact that I was crying through most of the conversation. "What do you think triggered this depression?" she finally asked, this nice lady, and I took a deep breath and said "I don't exactly know." Which was a lie, but not exactly a lie; more a case of How long have you got?

And I got my referral, and a number to call tomorrow--which I will do, even though today's call was about as much strength as I care to summon for a while. At least I did something, even if it took all my energy to do it.

I don't know what happens next. I know that I'm already tired of crying, and I'm not even an hour into this process yet.

And oh, god, how I miss him....

Arts, Crafts, and Memes

New meme, thanks to Brando at One Child Left Behind: Take the first sentence of the first entry of each month from the past year and stick them together--an end-of-year first-sentence summary paragraph, or in my case “just a mishmosh of words”.

Okay, so maybe last night was the cosmically couldn't-have-picked-a-worse-night night to do what I did. Never eat half a fresh pineapple in one sitting. Today is LJ's birthday, which means he gets to go out drinking with his friends and doing god-knows-what while I stay home. Last weekend, Q101--the local "alternative" station here in Chicago since 1992, which made it a major fixture in the better memories of the past 13 years--did an experimental thing called "Q101 on Shuffle". Today I found out that there's a good chance I'll be losing my job soon. Not to jinx it or anything, BUT...I had two interviews this morning. Fridays before the holiday weekends are generally ghost towns among the staff at Place Where I Work--at least, among the higher-up staff. Something I've never seen before: The drug spot in front of Chez Gladys now has its own sandwich truck. It's been a long week. Reluctantly, I've had to turn on that hateful "word-verification" feature in comments. Well, I'm back, thanks to a well-loved laptop no one at work wanted anymore. I'm not exactly dead...I've just had very little to say.

What scares me most about that paragraph is that there are places in it which actually threaten to have continuity. It makes me think about how lucky I've really been over this past year--largely in escaping the old job, which took up WAY too much of my emotional energy for the first six months of the year.

I also discovered (owing to an influx of new commentors and a spike in weekend traffic, which is notoriously low) that I've been given yet-more kudos in Eric Zorn's blog:

The most extraordinary and heartfelt site that I read regularly is "The Story of Why" by a local woman who goes by the nom de blog Gladys Cortez. Read this recent posting in which she describes her ongoing efforts to beat heroin addiction while holding down a full-time job. You've just got to root for her.

I am always amazed when I hear that people are impressed by this blog. I mean that; to me, it's just my boring life and my boring thoughts, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to read them. Especially now, when my life is not only boring, but transgressive and boring--when I've lost what was, to me, one of the few points of pride I had, my six years of clean time and my sense of being "one of the few" to move on from addiction and not look back...I'm amazed, is all, that anyone wants to read this. And I'm moved, not to mention astonished and thankful, that anyone at all would be rooting for me.

I'd like to say I've lived up to that level of support, but I haven't, completely; however, I've done substantially better this past weekend than last weekend, or the several weekends before. I'm trying. I will succeed. And I thank all of you--new readers, faithful regulars, and lurkers--for your unwavering support. I can't say I understand it, but I'm grateful for it.

I was thinking of maybe using this experience as thematic fodder for a quilt--a one-year-of-sobriety quilt. I have about a million little fabric squares, 3 x 3 in, in dozens of different colors and patterns. The way I've visualized it: each day clean gets a colored square; each day not-clean gets a plain black square. Each day I would stitch the previous day's square into the chain. I'd make it 14 blocks across (2 weeks) and 26 blocks long (total of 52 weeks). At the end of the year I'll have graphic representation of how far I've come--which will give me a strong incentive to stay clean, because I LOVE colorful things!--and I'll have a warm blanket, which I ALSO love. It's just a thought...I've been more in a craft-y state of mind when it comes to self-expression.

In fact: I'm going upstairs, take my shower, fold my laundry, and do some needlepoint before I go to sleep. Goodnight, everyone...

Urgh.

The nice thing about having one's work computer fuck completely up, so that one is completely unable to access any personal files: no work.

Of course, today was the Non-Denominational Holiday Event and Raffle (I paid $5 for tickets and won....nothin') so not much work was going to get done today anyway. Everyone milled around and ate chips.

(An aside: Could someone please explain to me the mindset which, faced with a holiday potluck, believes that "a bag of Tostitos and a jar of Old El Paso" constitutes an acceptable offering? At every company I've ever worked for, there has been at least one of these people--often more than one. And I certainly don't expect everyone to be a maniac in the kitchen and whip up a quick Chicken Tetrazzini or pan of raspberry cheesecake brownies--but seriously. Show some damn effort, you know?? If you HAVE to bring something purchased--if you're that pressed for time or talent--at least buy something GOOD. A bag of chips and a jar of salsa is like the lowest common denominator of "bring something" foods.)

Personally, I did very little milling OR eating. Our department had its own little holiday potluck yesterday (complete with two chips-and-salsa bringers) and I completely, entirely overdid it. When I went home last night (via Mom's house, where she contributed to the problem by throwing pizza at it) I was as sick as a dog, and I have not been able to eat more than a couple of bites since then. I'm not sure whether it's the result of overeating yesterday; or if something I ate disagreed with me; or if this is from the methadone, which has always been kinda rough on my stomach. I'm leaning toward the methadone.

I finally got to a dose where I'm not sick at night (not DOPEsick, anyway!) and so I've been a very good girl for most of this week. It's much easier now, which is a great relief. I'm still mad as hell about that doctor fiasco--being the wife of the clinic's owner is NOT a qualification to counsel those in crisis, nor is sanctimony and a holier-than-thou attitude. It saddens me that in this day and age, there are still people who think that way. I've never asked for anyone's pity--I'm aware I've made many poor choices in my life--but since everyone makes poor choices at some point, I would hope for at least COMPASSION, especially from an alleged member of the medical profession. And while I am certainly not going to let her lack of compassion interfere with my plans, I wonder how many people HAVE been badly affected by her perception of moral superiority, how many people have taken her words to heart. THAT'S the thing that makes me mad. I'm lucky enough to be able to see through the bullshit--but not everyone is.

I was supposed to go out for Margarita Night with the Girlies tonight, but my stomach just isn't having it; instead I'm going home, taking my shower, and nestling down among my eleven blankets and comforters to watch whatever Netflix sent me. (Netflix should really accept that a two-disc set is ONE title, and send both disks at once....it's maddening to have half a documentary at a time. I think I'm going to upgrade my account to thw two-disks-at-a-time option, which is probably the nefarious plan behind splitting up sets in the first place. But still, as a documentary geek, I adore Netflix.)

One more hour left....