it's 2:51 pm, on September 21, 2001 - cyber-smack.
~
Disclaimer: I do not condone drug usage unless it is for the enjoyment and enlightenment of the spirit. After today I don't know whether I condone drug use at *all*, drink, cigarettes, pot, coke, smack, K, E, coffee, caffeine, crystal, whatever. Also: this has to do with addictions.
Hooray, hooray, it's a new day.
A friend (name withheld) called me just now to talk about Something.
That thing being: he is an addict. I'm happy, and sad, that he's admitted it to me. And to H, but she doesn't count because she's an ex crackwhore. I hope he's ready to quit. Because I'm not strong enough to push him to quit, and I don't think I should unless he wants me to. Which I think he might, but.
Anyway. I wanted to talk about addictions today.
See, I could be him so easily. I have a very addictive nature (hello, AIM on all the time, much?) I cannot live without the monitor on and the buzz of the harddrive, whirring gently. I am in front of this gawdawful machine fucking, like, six hours a night. I compulsively check email. I don't know how to live without the buzzing of machinery.
How many people live like me, I wonder, and not in the cloudy haze of alcohol? Has IRC become the new tequila? Mailing lists the new smack? I can't shoot your words into my veins directly, but with this new streaming media I can have it 24 hours a day, whenever I have access. I can click and click and click and click. I can stay up nights, eyes bleary and ignoring my schoolwork, my friends, my family, my life, to bury myself down deep.
This is the gutter of the twenty-first century. We are in the thick of it. I can almost feel the silicon dust clinging to my nostrils.
--he's on coke. I didn't know. I don't know if this makes me a bad friend, for the lack of knowledge; naive, for the lack of knowledge; or... heartless, for the knowledge and ignoring. I never asked him. I probably should have.
I hope the coke is new; perhaps we can wean him off without him having to lose his dignity.
He hasn't done smack. I say, thank christ.
~*~
And so I say to the keyboard, I'm done with you for a while. I don't think I want to feel your solid, comforting weight underneath my fingers any longer. I don't want to know that you're there, a silent friend. Something I trust. Something that defines me.
I don't want anyone out there to eat up my words like cake. They should be retracted, pulled within, sent into something... less cyborganic. I feel like the stash of marijuana plants hidden in my closet has been trampled on, seeds swallowed whole. I feel like I'm dealing.
I had bulimic friends in high school; this is kind of the same thing. I gorge on other people, their intellectual thoughts, and then I spew out. Bulimia is an addiction.
I couldn't help them either. Eventually, I guess they stopped.
I never asked them, either.
~*~
I'm not going to be a drug dealer anymore. I'm going to go out, and get a new cell phone, and *try* to be a good friend, which is something I'm not good at because I never really *care* enough to do it. Maybe he wouldn't have gotten this far if I'd done something about it in the first place, but.
--the worst part, he said, was being able to get up in the morning and function. I mean, he hasn't failed any of his classes, he's scraped by, he's coped. Things buzz and screech and grind at night, and in the morning, we wake up and our addictions aren't enough to pull us into the abyss while the sun's still up.
River's online right now. I'm really glad. Hey, sweetheart. Thanks.
That's three addicts I've known. Maybe four or five by now; I don't keep track. I still feel so *normal* in the face of this, just like I felt so *normal* in the face of the wtc. Things don't really change that much in the face of history, do they? We still crawl around in the gutter, still reach out and try to clutch those addictions that stop us from being so alone with ourselves. That fear of looking around and being faced with only a mirror...
No wonder so many people use it to snort a line, use the glass to front a fancy box that whirs and shows other people's words from thousands of miles away.
~
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