GHOST

If a house can be haunted, can I ?

So begins the story of the last two months of the year of living dangerously. Though I guess knowing a bit about the months that lead up to them is required.

I've been raked over the coals for being to depressing, too real, self-destructive, indulgent and well - I guess I should warn you, the following passage is no different - so change the channel if it bothers you (I'm sure "Everybody Loves Raymond" is on in someone's time zone.)

Hell isn't what you go thru. It's not the dead body, or the riga-mortis, or the tongue he bit off choking down the carbon monixide. It's not the blood and the vomit and the shit - it's not the moment you sit there cradling him, despite the forementioned; it's not your screams, it's not your tears, it's not the funeral and the looks and having his best friends blame his death on you, it's not telling your parents or your boss, it's not the way your neighbors stare at you, it's not the hours of therapy or the medication, it's not those akward social moments where you explain - "he's not with you because he's dead", it's not the night terrors and the sleepless nights, it's not packing up his belonging - his life - in a box...

Hell is the aftermath.

Hell is every moment from that day after.

The silence. Worse - a noise at 3am.
The unspoken things. Worse - the things people try to say.
The days. Worse - the nights, the dark, lonely nights.
The crying. Worse - not being able to cry anymore.

So this was the first few months.

The terrible firsts.

The first time I slept in my house again, the first time I read his love letters, the first time I heard another speak his name, the first time I talked about it, the first time I kissed a boy, the first time I slept with a boy.

All these moments left me in tears.

Yet - you do move on and you do laugh again. I remember what guilt I felt the first time I really, really had fun - I felt like I didn't deserve to have fun - I shouldn't be seen having fun. We think fucked up things when we are grieving.

I hid out, did lots and lots of drugs, drank lots and lots of Vodka.

Then the medication started to work it's magic - I started to feel lighter.

I could walk in to a room of people and I wasn't short of breath. I started to chuckle lightly and feel horny, and remembered how much I wanted to live. Boys started to ask me out, I sucked dick and fucked ass.

Something was missing though - a sentence without punctuation, a car without wheels - it felt incomplete. When I held another in my arms - I wasn't trying to connect to them - I was trying to press HERO into them - to hear them speak words that I could find absolution in. I behaved cruely - if I couldn't see an apology on their lips I condemned them - highlighted their flaws and pinpointed their faults. I'm not proud of this - I'm ashamed, deeply.

I pulled back from the drugs after a scare with my heart that sent me back to the Arizona Heart Institute. I'm killing myself I thought. The holidays were nightmarish - hours lost, always covering up for where I had been or what I had been doing. Being single was working out for me though - it made it easier to be high for days on end without interference.

I pushed away boy, after boy, after boy.

I began to push away friends.

Then came a sort of calm in the storm, I felt like my head was clearing. I worked hard, I stopped doing drugs, I eased off on going to bars, I worked out and read and played with my dogs. I met a man with blond hair and blue eyes. I seduced him. I swept him off his feet. It seemed great, until it began to go very, very wrong. My friends made comments sparringly about his jealousy and outbursts, at least at first. But the more I gave, the less I was getting and the more he wanted his control. I ended it, but unfortunately left the door cracked open - an opening made through lust, lonliness and fear. He came through that opening and betrayed me - making a key to my home without my permission, sleeping in my home when I was out of town - and then the final - the ultimate sin - he read this blog.

There were other things that brought me back to where I had been the year before - but it was these betrayals in my very own home by someone I cared for - that brought HERO back to the flesh and that's when the nightmares began. Hideous, cruel, painful nightmares. There was always a common element - death. The second element was always - guilt, my guilt - people who loved me would die. It was absurd and stupid - I know this, but at three AM, my heart and pulse racing ahead of me - my bed soaked from night-sweats - they felt real to me. Naked, alone - halfway down the hall - they felt, oh so fucking real - and I was screaming, again - that scream.

I can't just bust out the last two months in an entry - I need a breather - and I'll try to get the rest out of my system tomorrow night. Sorry - I'm doing this on my rules.

One man, three dirty dogs and a bath tub.

Exhausted.

I need to sit down and write - there is so much to write, but it deserves it's moment and I want to express all that's been going on in my life and my head accurately.

One day I will re-read these words and that is the greatest purpose of my writing - as powerful as the ability to connect with others over like experiences, dreams and pain; so I can look back and understood who I was and what I was going thru at the time.

I'll be 35 in eleven days, I'll drive out to Palm Springs, lay by a pool, read, maybe have some dirty sex - and heal. Friday the 13th is the anniversary of HERO's suicide - how friggin appropo, I can't be in my house on the day at 5:45am...but I hit my low last week - a dirty, humiliating, dark, empty low and it made me furious - absolutely fucking crazed - I will not be controlled - by drugs, booze, depression, or myself.

At that moment I decided enough was enough - I had to purge myself of everything. I called my ex-therapist and asked him to help me to put an end to this - to redirect me, remind me that I have a future before I ended up dead.

So I want to write an entry that does the past two weeks justice - that is gritty and real and fucked up and probably will scare the shit out of my readers - just know the reason; I need to read that entry a year from now, when I'm in love and healthy and feel joy again - and here on this blog I'll see how bad things can get and it will be a high for me to know how far I've climbed out of this abyss.