we've got difficult days ahead. but it doesn't matter with me now, because i've been to the mountaintop

We crossed into Mississippi a few minutes ago, going south on I-55 to New Orleans. We had breakfast at The Arcade per Ashley's suggestion -- the oldest reataurant in Memphis -- and it was wonderful. Then we had to pick up some antique goblets at Blanche's couson's house for her grandmother, and then we were off.

We're listening to the Sun Records 50th anniversery CD set I got at Sun Studio yesterday. We did the tour -- which was too much Elvis and rock n roll and not enough Johnny Cash -- but it was still really interesting and I got to take photos of some old Johnny Cash 45s framed on the wall. The whole place was amazing.

I got a Sun t-shirt, and I also got one for Chris. The whole reason I love Johnny Cash is because of him, and the music always makes me miss him and his cowboy accent, the lazy golden days we spent in his apartment in Portland playing guitar, his crazy dream that he and I would buy a ranch in Utah and have kids -- he was 15 years older than me and we were both hopelessly strung out on heroin.

His apartment was spare and clean. The only decoration was a five foot tall poster which was mostly black except for an illuminated figure in the darkness: CASH, it said in huge letters along the bottom.

But I was trying to get clean all these years since I left Chris in August 2003. He was just sinking further into misery. Now he's in SLC selling to support his habit. All his friends are dead of ODs or they're clean and he doesn't talk to them much. He seemed so lonely when I stopped to see him in February, still trying to convince me to be with him. I loved him once and seeing him like that breaks my heart. So I kept him in my heart at Sun, said a little prayer in front of the big Johnny Cash photo with a red rose above it, and got him a T-shirt. It's a medium but he'll probably be swimming in it cause he's lost so much weight. But I'm going to mail it to him -- at least he'll know that I still care and think about him, however far away. That someone remembers who he is even if he doesn't.

There's a lot more I want to write about Blanche's friends, who are all from old South establishment families and told me unbelievable stories about the realities of living here. And the latent racism that reminded Blanche why she doesn't live in the south anymore. But my computer broke so I'm writing all this on my blackberry, and it's kind of difficult. But I just had to write about some of that.

Oh and we also went to the Civil Rights Museum which is located in the motel where Martin Luther King Jr was shot. There's a wreath on the spot where he died. Inside, I could have spent 2 days reading all the civil rights history, but we only had 2 hours. I did see the room where he stayed, restored and arranged just how it was that day.

I stood looking out the window at the place where he was killed, and cried.

The quote on the wall read:

I may not get there with you. But I want you to know that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.

MEMPHIS 61

(See entry below for Missouri.)

I forgot to bring any cds and I was desperate to hear Johnny Cash. So Blanche hooked up her laptop to a power source she has that hooks up to the cigarette lighter, and burned a CD full of Johnny Cash songs for me, and we listened to it and I sang along to all the songs. Then we played it again.

It's amazing how we were able to harness the power of so many kinds of technology at once, to be able to listen to a copy off a computer on a car stereo -- of a Sun recording probably made with one mic and one guitar, in just a few takes. So long ago.

We crossed into Arkansas (the natural state!) a few miles back and should be to Tennessee soon. We have a friend to stay with in the city and tomorrow we'll explore.

MEMPHIS: 48

The stuff that dreams are made of.

how much longer will it be till we cross that mason dixon line?

Location: Hannibal, Missouri.
Title: my favorite johnny cash song
This entry: courtesy of my blackberry. And this is exactly why I bought this thing, so I can write in the middle of nowhere.

Blanche and I left Minnesota today around noon and we should get to Memphis around 3 am. I'm relieved to get out of Flatland if only for a few days. I already feel so much coming back to me, the energy I felt last time I was in the south. I don't even know if that was real, it felt like a dream.

We stopped to take a picture of the "Welcome to Missouri" sign, and there was this trailer down the hill. It was dark and apparently the crackheads who lived there saw my camera flash and got paranoid and started yelling, "Hey!" and "Who the fuck are you! What the fuck!" It was a little scary. Just a little. Blanche took the pictures really fast and we drove away.

Welcome to Missouri!

We're driving through Hannibal now. We passed the turnoff to downtown and the Mark Twain historic district, but we're in too much of a hurry.

At least we saw it once and it wasn't lost on anyone.

And we drive back into the darkness of US Route 61. St Louis: 99. It's getting a little more hilly and a little warmer and the Mississippi is close by, I can feel it to the East.

Blanche is smoking and the road is curving back and forth, up and down, ever so slightly.

Keep the river on your left.

The goal is to try for the impossible and fail, but end up closer than you would have otherwise.

I feel better than last night. There are things I need to explore in order to get better, and I guess I explored them -- all at once, and at great speed. Actually, that last sentence could be applied to my life in general and not just last night: "She needed to explore things, all at once and at great speed."
And I am still full of hope about Donna and our future, even though I'm apparently not over the pain of what happened. I wonder if things will ever be like they were before. We could never return to the innocence that caused such destruction -- but the joy and weightlessness, the ebullience. Right before everything fell apart, in spring 2003, Donna and I thought we were discovering something. We thought we were standing on the precipice of something great (a phrase Obama used in that conference call I listened in on, which endeared me to him). We were always talking about being on the edge of a cliff.

I'm posting some excerpts (below) of things I wrote just before I fell. It was my first semester after deciding to switch my major (midway through my junior year) from art to anthropology -- it was spring 2003, and Donna and I were living in a beautiful 3rd-floor apartment on Division Street. I started doing heroin in February, but I didn't write about it directly until I was doing it daily. If you read carefully, you will find subtle references to "pleasure" and "the infinite experiment" and things "beneath the surface" of life. I had a lot of ideas about heroin, basically a bunch of romanticized bullshit. I also wrote about not having money for food, which was true, but the main reason I wasn't eating was that heroin killed my appetite. The last entry I include here was the first time I wrote about heroin without hiding behind poetry: This subtle violence.

I'm still fascinated by this period of my life. It was one of the most electric, exuberant times. And yet we were always hungry, my reading was way more than I could handle, and I was becoming a heroin addict. Cognitive dissonance. Some of the most beautiful parts of these entries are the parts about Donna and me becoming "the same consciousness." That's the part I miss the most, the part I wish we could recapture. Maybe someday we will find that childlike, open sense of wonder again.

We used to say: "We're living in a sunset time."

* * * * * * * * * *

My joy is covering me, soon I will disappear
16 January 2003 - 10:21 am
"you are evil." "you are dangerous." "you will be the death of me." what do i do to make people say these things to me?

i'm going to try for the kingdom if i can
24 January 2003 - 3:49 pm
the few days i was in minnesota i mostly spent with gabe, who tends to reoccur in my life. when i got home, donna greeted me with tapioca pudding and a paradigm shift. we hung out with some old/new friends and talked about entropy and drank tea. after he left i felt kind of sick so i lay under the covers in donna's room. we are confused.

The crowd was the veil from behind which the the familiar city as phantasmagoria beckoned to the flaneur. In it, the city was now landscape, now a room. The flaneur is someone abandoned in the crowd. In this he shares the situation of the commodity.
-walter benjamin, "the arcades project"

no one knows, i live in a dream
28 January 2003 - 10:29 pm
donna woke me up this morning at 8, like i asked her too. even though i had two hours before the bus came, i managed to miss it. i thought a walk might be nice anyway, as i saw the bus cross division from my window. it seemed so warm today, and i saw a cherry tree starting to bloom, and camellia trees. i like to look at the outline a bare tree makes against the sky, like a fractal. i compare the angles made by the branches of different trees. i like some outlines better than others. i pulled two leaves off a hedge and put them sticking out of my jacket pocket: big, heavy, waxy leaves.

all day i felt like i was in love. maybe it was the sun glistening on the wet sidewalk. my classes are so amazing, i almost can't sit still. my first class today (anthro of communism) is taught by a hilariously charming professor from yugoslavia. he referred to us as comrades and told us he wanted to run the class like a soviet bureaucracy. the class was large -- 25 people or so -- and we were squeezed in a little basement room in eliot hall, crowded around a big wooden table, light coming in the high windows onto the blackboard. he put on a documentary to give us some idea of the history of the russian revolution. it felt more like propaganda. heroic marches played behind frantically flickering black and white films of heroic russians. the narrator dictated at breakneck speed while crowds stormed the winter palace, peasants threshed wheat, or soldiers galloped off on horseback. they even threw in some of the more thrilling parts from mahler's first and third symphonies, while russian workers marched around with large banners, which made me extremely happy.

my second class, "signs," was on the top floor of eliot hall, in an even smaller classroom, an attic room with sloping ceilings and a little window opening out into the sky. before the teacher arrived, the group of mostly linguistics students discussed the class. one person asked what the professor was like, and someone answered "he's extremely nervous." living up to his reputation, he walked in late and flustered, spread a stack of books on the table, and said, "so this is 'Signs,' and here are some signs." he threw a handful of postcards at the class, on which were printed random images: a platypus, a housewife opening a fridge, a skull. he stuttered and said "um um um um um um um" and rubbed his face with his hands and sighed deeply. the class was the same size as my first one, but the room was about half as small. students who came in too late to get a chair crammed onto the few feet of floor space not taken up by the table. it felt like a big slumber party. the windows were wide open and i looked out at the sky and wondered how i got so lucky.

all my classes this semester are in eliot hall. it's my favorite building, the oldest one. it looks like a big gothic castle. when i was a freshman my ancient greek class was on the 4th floor, and i remember walking up all the polished linoleum steps holding onto the big wooden banister. it's always dusky and thick with ghosts in those hallways.

never got cold wearing nothing in the snow
29 January 2003 - 11:46 pm
imagine that you are somewhere you've never been before. someone offers you a ride to somewhere you've never heard of. you agree, and get in their car. you don't know them, and you aren't sure where you're going, but you feel at ease, and relax in the backseat, while the driver and another passenger talk to each other. the music on the radio is vaguely familiar but you can't quite place it. you stare at the images flooding by outside the window. sometimes there is a great spectacle of people and excitement; sometimes there is just the bare road and an empty field. sometimes your thoughts drift and you don't notice what you're looking at, or you hear bits of the conversation from the front seat. the memory of where you started fades as everything passes by. you feel safe and content, although you aren't sure why, since you know neither your destination nor why you are going there. the world is blurred by raindrops on the window that make light bounce off the sky and dazzle your eyes. you try to make sense of what you see but the images come too fast, all you can do is let them hit you.

sometimes i feel like that's what my life is.

it's a question of not letting what we've built up crumble to dust
07 February 2003 - 3:19 pm
harsh extremes or consistency, which is better? today is blindingly sunny with gusts of icy wind -- it looks like love but it feels like hate. i prefer the warm, wet, gray days where there is no deception.

this week has been one long read the book get on the bus go to class read the next book. i've never had 4 reading intensive classes at once. each one requires at least 50, usually more than 100, pages per day. is this humanly possible? no.

the goal is to try for the impossible and fail, but end up closer than you would have otherwise.

i was starting to get nervous in my "signs" class, because for the first two weeks we read saussure and some other dense linguistics classics, a crash course for those of us who didn't know the difference between phonetics and phonemics (now i know). the high number of linguistics majors in the class is intimidating. on thursday, to my relief, we turned to levi-strauss, which is more on the anthropology side of things. i finally understood the reading enough to talk in class. i never want to be that silent person whose voice you never hear all semester.

my other classes are delightful as well. i just hope they don't kill me. i'm really glad i changed majors. the switch from talking to art majors to talking to anthropology majors has been refreshing. i haven't figured out what the difference between these people is, but there definitely is one.

we are about to embark on a fantastic adventure. love, becky

I told you when I came I was a stranger
12 February 2003 - 1:46 am
I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul.

i just finished "shattering silence," an anthropological study of nationalist women in northern ireland. it was pretty amazing. i didn't know much about the politics before i read this, but it's fascinating the way feminism and irish nationalism interact with each other, and the way women play a huge part in the struggle. i had to read 160 pages at record speed so i could write the paper by the midnight deadline.

i read to the heroic and tragic music of mozart's requiem, while overhearing bits of donna's polite but slightly frantic phone conversations. it was kind of like that part in the godfather when everyone's getting killed during the baptism. worlds intersecting.

i am officially fucked in every way: my hardest semester ever, and i have no money. i paid our rent with my "food" money so i would be starving if it weren't for the generous assistance of T, who sent me $60. i am deliriously overworked and undersleeped and running on ramen + hummus (not at the same time).

and where do all these highways go, now that we are free?

i am the late fruit
22 February 2003 - 7:02 pm
i am in love with nietzsche. i am reading the genealogy of morality; it is the most amazing book i have read in a long time. it ties my brain in knots even more than marx's 1844 manuscripts. it's like a drug. every sentence is a revelation. grant me just one glimpse of something perfect, completely formed, happy, powerful, triumphant, in which there is still something to fear!

recently donna and i realized that we are one consciousness. it's been like this for a long time, but it's getting more intense. talking to her is like talking to myself, another part of myself. donna said, "i'm wondering why i'm not able to move your hand with my mind." maybe soon we'll be able to do that. i think it's already happening, to a certain extent. we talk so much, about every single thing in our head, that we influence each other's actions. although she may not be able to move my hand, she affects most of my decisions. she might be the only person who does not "tire" my brain, because being around her is like being alone.

last night i wrote nietzsche phrases all over my arm. my reality is crumbling. i feel like something is opening up before me. When I am on a pedestal, you did not raise me there. Your laws do not compel me to kneel grotesque and bare. I myself am the pedestal.

there's a dream in my brain that just won't go away
26 February 2003 - 12:51 am
being the same consciousness can be scary sometimes. just as she can't move my hand, i don't have control over the actions that lead to these emotions. i have never felt so strongly as in the past few weeks that i am in her head. and it's not just sympathy -- of course i feel sympathy, but behind the sympathy, there is a faint glimmer of emotion that is provoked by the circumstance itself, not by my sympathy for her. as if i am her. footsteps on the stairs make my heart beat faster, then disappointment. that is not a sympathetic reaction.

we are in the midst of several crises; the most pressing is money. our source of rent disappeared, and while rent is not the worst aspect of the disappearance, it is the most tangible.

but today was one of those days when i was in awe of everything, especially my classes. stacks of epiphanies handed to me on a sliver tray. scribbling notes in shorthand i make up as i go along.

"Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme which we cannot escape."

noa noa
02 March 2003 - 10:06 pm
i am really close to the point where i can't take it anymore. yesterday i wrote a 6 page paper on structuralism, and i'm supposed to write an 8 page paper on nietzsche for tuesday, as well as keep up on my 200 pages of reading per night. i also have to go to study groups for the anthropology qual. a physics major friend agreed that the physics and anthropology quals are the hardest ones at reed. and one of my professors, who has a ph.d in anthropology, said he couldn't pass it unless he studied! it's on april 4. i'm so fucked. as far as money goes, we're still $15 short on rent, and we have $0 for food, and i was supposed to buy medication 3 weeks ago but it costs $30. fuck.

we became what we wanted to be, like a dream, or a ghost
03 March 2003 - 9:49 am
i feel better today. last night i read a book about the pyranees. now i just have to write a paper.

nietzsche: "The world, as far as we can know it, is our own nervous activity, nothing more."

donna and i feel like our life is ascending to a new level.

i'm done feeling like a skeleton, no more sleep walking dead
07 March 2003 - 7:35 pm
i was feeling pretty crappy today. maybe from not eating enough. this is the first time in my life i've lost weight without trying. but i've been making some money, so today we finally bought groceries. donna made corn muffins and pancakes.

everything feels so real lately. before i moved out of suburban minnesota i had this obsession with things that were real. where i lived usually didn't feel real: strip malls and 50s tract houses that looked like bad set pieces. there was a small town next to my suburb; it had been there since 1900 or so, built along the railroad. it was the oldest place anywhere near my house; it actually had old houses, sidewalks, and a main street. there was a path that went there from my house, through a forest. i used to walk there and read at the coffeeshop by the lake. that was real. i don't know why i use the word real but i don't know what other word to use -- when i feel like a place has history, like i'm participating in some genuine activity. cities are always real; that's why i like them.

ever since i moved here real things have been increasing. but the more real my life is, the more it feels like a dream. while i was waiting for the bus today i looked at the field across the street where the cherry trees are in bloom. under one of the trees a dirt path stretched out across the field into the forest. i read the newspaper while spring rain fell. everything is black, pale green, and white. tree trunks and streets black with rain. small green leaves appearing. white blossoms.

lately there's been kind of an excess of reality. being completely broke has new meaning every day. i haven't been able to concentrate on my reading because i can't stop thinking about rent. even if we have this month's, what about next month. i always think "the universe provides." but it's been getting harder and harder to make that come true.

and i feel like every second i'm walking into a dream.

i've got this hunger and i can't seem to get full
10 March 2003 - 11:38 pm
today i:
-walked to school (2.3 miles). it was sunny. i wore a sleeveless dress and it was too hot for a sweater.
-listened to a lecture on freud and took extensive notes.
-went to class -- the teacher was gone. it was the same as usual, just no teacher. i argued a lot with my classmates -- i don't like freud.
-read 70 pages of "where the world ended"
-picked up the 83 page article for tomorrow.
-went to yoga for 1 1/2 hours. (i can almost touch my nose to my knee when we stretch our legs!)
-halfheartedly participated in my europe class. excessive intellectual jargon annoys me.
-read for a half an hour until i started worrying about money and couldn't concentrate.
-walked home (2.3 miles). it was dark and i had pretend conversations with people in my head. the walk takes 45 minutes.
-read about hermeneutics. i was getting sick of levi-strauss so it was nice to read someone pick holes in his arguments. is that mean?

my assigned readings for tomorrow are 83 pages for Signs, 51 pages for Communism. is that possible? who the fuck can do that when anth of europe ends at 7:30???? i'm almost done. i'll try to finish during lunch, i guess. my only satisfaction is when i tell someone i'm taking 3 anthropology classes and humanities, and i get their reaction of shock. "that's a lot of reading!" no, you don't even know.

you come to a wall and it unfolds
14 March 2003 - 12:50 am
I am standing on the edge of something vast and breathtaking. I pick up the corners of life and peer underneath and this fantastic tangle consumes me with vertigo. I am the one who was lost in the crowd, whom the spinning lights made dizzy.

I'm always curious and fascinated by new experiences, glimpses into another world. I like realizing how atypical my life is -- but more importantly, how atypical everyone's life is. So many universes. But keep it strange. Those three things. Below the surface of what one person can perceive is a labyrinth unfolding. Move delicately through the tricky interlocking pieces of the puzzle. Or: fall feet first with your eyes closed. This precarious precipice won't stay still long enough for me to back away even if I wanted to.

"We have the assurance that, come what may, the universe is full. Stars and blossoming fruit trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity." -simone weil

i hope he never lets me down again
20 March 2003 - 4:56 pm
i took a long walk today and enjoyed the sun on my arms. it smelled like cut grass and flowers. i always try to rush summer. summer is my lost dream always out of reach.

no, it's not just pure pleasure like they say. it's something else entirely, like a different planet. i'm trying to understand. it's not pleasure, but it's still the infinite experiment. because it's never over. they know that just as the word leaves their lips, it will never quite escape.

"That drive to return to the past isn't an innocent one. It's about stopping your passage to the future. It is a symptom of the fear of death and the love of predictable experience."

fill the bathtub with ice, hope this fever will break
22 March 2003 - 10:16 am
a voice said, hidden on the wind said, get out again, get out while you can, and you're gone away for awhile.

a play in three acts
31 March 2003 - 3:04 pm
These scenes keep going through my head:

Scene one.

In some wild hope, I walk barefoot down the stairs and across the hallway and knock on Chris's door. Immediately I see that my plan is impossible: he answers the door clean and well dressed, shirt tucked in. His apartment is impeccable; the late afternoon light illuminates the Oriental rug, where his cats meow at me. Chris looks at me expectantly. Knowing that my dream is too wild and unhealthy for this wholesome person who is strong and free of my silly problems, I say, "Hey. I just wanted to see if you wanted to go to downtown and get more."

No, he can't (like he told me, he can only do it once a week), he's just going to watch this movie, do I want to watch it with him? Awkward, because I have no desire to spend time with this paragon of good health -- if I can't get what I want, I have better things to do, like agonize in my empty apartment because I am unable to do my homework -- I make my exit as quickly as I can, and walk back upstairs. The light is gloomy and I kill time by drinking tea, glancing hopelessly at my reading, looking out the window. After a while, I feel my sanity returning a bit, maybe I can try to do my reading.

Scene two.

As I sit at my computer, almost forgetting about my futile request of a few hours ago, someone knocks. I know it's Chris, maybe he wants to talk. I run to the door, turn the knob, and open it a crack. I peer through and grin childishly at him. "Hey," I say. "Hey," he says sheepishly, "I can't stop thinking that maybe we should go downtown and--." I open the door a little wider and lean on it, my body draped limply as I hold onto the doorknob. A faint smile comes to my lips; I look away, out the window.

At this moment everything becomes clear. Even though my previous desire was not enough to make me take the bus to downtown, the desire I planted in him grew and now all I have to do is give in, surrender, and the events will unfold before me. It is no longer my choice, so I laugh, and look him in the eye with a look of, well, I shouldn't, but it's so easy. "Ok. Just wait, I have to put my shoes on." Minutes later we're in the car, driving through the night.

Scene three.

I'm walking to school in the morning, not because I missed the bus, but because I feel like I should be doing something healthy, like getting exercise. Except I have to walk really slowly, because I have this pain in my side. I walk slowly and clutch myself where it hurts. Maybe I can push the pain back inside. Focusing on these details, these tiny things I can do to make myself healthy. Eating the right foods, exercising, getting enough sleep, avoiding alcohol and caffeine, getting fresh air. And then. Pushing this death directly into my bloodstream. This subtle violence.

* * * * * * * * * *

I passed the anthropology qualifying exam (the "anthro qual" I was worrying about) a few days later, on April 4th. We had eight hours to write three long essays. As I walked to turn it in my formerly tiny jeans were so loose that I had to hold them up as I walked. I kept thinking they had stretched out -- then I realized I was reading my scale wrong and I had lost ten pounds. Heroin helped me finish my reading before the qual AND eliminated my hunger. How useful! Some of the anthro majors who had been studying for the exam since they were freshmen didn't pass, so I was pretty proud of myself.

There is only one of these entries that expressed the danger of my situation -- the quote about how addiction (the "love of predictable experience") halts one's passage to the future. And at the time I included the quote only because I found it pretty. Aesthetics blinded me to many things. I no longer trust art and appearances, one reason I have turned to writing instead.

Three days before the end of the semester, my counselor told me that if I didn't tell my parents I was doing heroin and go on medical leave immediately, I would never be able to go back to Reed again. It was blackmail; the threat could never have been carried out, but I was too strung-out at the time to protest. I had managed to pass the qual, which means I was officially a senior anthropology major and could write my thesis the next year. But somewhere in those few months -- in the mountain of reading, the lack of money, the hunger, the crazy world in my head, and the neighbor who fell in love with me and bought me heroin every day -- I slipped into the void. I was longer standing on the edge, as I had done for so many years. I was free falling. I never made it back to write that thesis. That was five and a half years ago.

I think this, from the February 7 entry, is telling of my worldview at the time:

"The goal is to try for the impossible and fail, but end up closer than you would have otherwise."

Maybe that's what I've been doing this whole time.

I am getting closer.

fuck

Wow. I am kind of wordless. Just put myself through an incredibly upsetting process for no reason other than my own fascination. Well there was a reason initially and then it just became me reliving the events of March-June, except from a different perspective, and then back to my own perspective, so I got to relive it all twice. Wow.

I got this book the other day about how to learn to regulate your emotions, which is a skill I desperately need to learn. Clearly. At some point in the book there is a list of things to do to "distract yourself from self-destructive behaviors." You're supposed to check various activities that you think would work for you, and then write them on an index card to refer to later when you are upset or overwhelmed.

One of them is:

"Cry. Some people do other things instead of crying because they're afraid that if they start to cry they'll never stop. This never happens. In fact, the truth is that crying can make you feel better because it releases stress hormones."

I didn't check that one. I used to believe that, and sometimes crying used to make me feel better, even in a situation where I couldn't change the outcome (like a breakup). I guess I was getting those "stress hormones." Or sometimes crying would help me think of a solution to a problem, if I was still in the midst of something I had the power to change. But it's not like that anymore. I can literally cry for hours, sometimes even as I'm trying to distract myself by doing other things like driving, talking to friends, etc. I've almost crashed my car because I was crying so hard I couldn't control my arm muscles enough to steer. One of those times was only a month or so ago.

Anyway I think that particular paragraph of the book is a bunch of BS. If I can keep myself from crying things are a lot better in my little world. There is no freaking way I would choose to let myself start crying if I could choose another distracting activity. For a while I thought I could do it tonight. I was all proud of myself. But you can only stand so much. God, I am the shittiest writer when I'm upset. I can't even stick to first-person.

So I'm going off on this whole tangent maybe because I don't want to and/or can't write about this stuff. It's all locked away at my previous blog, and for good reason. Holy fucking shit, I should have just deleted it all while I was reading it just now.

The most ridiculous part is that it's over. I mean, the part that was so upsetting to me, is over. Donna is back in my life. We talk. There is nothing to be upset about -- nothing! I'm even going back to Oregon and will probably see her in the next 3-4 months. Maybe it will be a year, total, from March - March, at the very most. We have been apart for 7 months before, I think that was the longest? And another 6 months when I was in Thailand and we could barely communicate even by email. But it's not that, I guess. It's not the time. I don't even know. Maybe it was the seeing it from the other perspective part, just this pervasive knowledge that everyone I know hates me. This is the kind of overwhelming emotion that used to push me to do heroin. I haven't been drinking and have been finding alcohol completely disgusting even in tiny amounts, but I did have a glass of wine. It didn't help. I need to finish reading this wonderful book. At least, the other parts, not the part about letting yourself cry.

The funny/not funny/totally fucked up part is that nothing this bad ever happened to me before I did heroin. Ok, maybe a couple things, like a really bad breakup -- but that's the kind of thing that, deep down, you know is inevitable and you know you'll get over it. Nothing ever happened to me that I really couldn't handle, before I became a junkie. I brought it all on myself. I mean especially all this, the really bad part, was a direct result of me doing heroin.

And the worst part is that I didn't start doing heroin to cover up some gaping chasm in my soul or heal my anguish after some horrible event -- I did it just to do something dangerous -- and also to help my anxiety when I was at Reed, which may have stemmed from pervasive fear-of-failure shit, but really, it was not that bad. I could have gotten over it. If I had known how bad the "cure" would be.

So that's the lesson for you. Never take the easy way out. It just gets worse.

A lot worse. Like, stuff that I didn't understand was possible even when it happened.

Wow. I have no idea how my life got that fucked up. Actually I do, it was all my fault. Is. Oh yeah, and I also learned tonight that my writing is immensely boring. When did I stop writing about interesting stuff? Holy shit, I have a lot to learn. I'm not being facetious. Maybe I lost too many brain cells to drugs. I used to be a lot more intelligent and thoughtful. I used to be a good writer. And don't tell me anything about my writing; I was just reading a lot of really good writing and I'm not going to believe you. I have definitely always been emotional but I gave my emotions a lot more power by trying to kill them with heroin. They didn't want to die. And oh my fucking god are they ever back.

Don't ever forget that you're alive.

I love you.

the pattern grows more intricate and subtle & being swept along is no longer enough

title -- Rainer Maria Rilke.

Well, that was hard. Not writing for a day, that is. I *almost* finished those things I mentioned. I finished my tax forms; I just have to send them in. I might even qualify for that stimulus check most people already got. And I filled out the application for the organic grocery in Minneapolis. They had room to list seven jobs, and this is what mine were -- bakery, politics, English teacher, bakery, politics, bakery, politics. It's kind of funny. Anyway I still have to turn it in & try to look for other jobs.

I'm sitting here at Spyhouse on Nicollet. I met a friend here at 10:30 -- actually 11, because I was late, as usual. We talked about journalism, mescaline, Waffle House, politics, and snow. It was nice to get out of the house early. He went to work; I'm drinking coffee and finishing a few phone calls and things I needed to do.

E. and I are going to New Orleans tomorrow. Actually we're going to start driving and try to get to Memphis. We haven't decided if we'll go through Chicago or not. Now that Natalie isn't in Chicago I don't really have a place to stay, but E. has never been there. It's a little out of the way -- going through Iowa is more direct -- but I would love to show her "my" old neighborhood on the North Side. Anyway we'll try to get to Memphis as fast as possible, where we can stay on her family's plantation near the city. I am totally serious. We'll probably spend a day there and then go to New Orleans, where her mother lives.

As you know, I've been obsessed with Memphis since I went there in February, and I've been obsessed with New Orleans since I went there in 2004. Chicago is just in my blood since birth so I love going there too. But I'm so excited to go south again. I need to spend more time in the south so I can get over my obsessions and stop dwelling on those cities. Although sometimes, the more time I spend somewhere, the worse it gets. Like San Francisco. I went there when I was 17 and fell in love, and no matter how much time I spend living there or visiting, it just gets worse. I can't even think about San Francisco without getting this huge knot in my stomach and feeling dizzy because I miss it so much. Hopefully that won't happen after I spend more time in Memphis and New Orleans. The plan is to do acid in New Orleans. It's still pretty warm there, so that should be fun.

I shouldn't be traveling at all right now -- I need a job -- but I cannot pass up the opportunity. E. is driving to New Orleans anyway, for the holidays, so all I have to do is pay for half the gas and then buy a Greyhound ticket back to Minneapolis. Hopefully I'll get back by Wednesday next week, though that would require us to get to NOLA really really fast. Whatever. I'll be fine. I don't have to worry about UO tuition anymore; I just have to worry about getting to Eugene, so it's not as big a deal.

Oh yeah, I never wrote yesterday -- I talked to the UO admissions people and they said I can't get in until I take a college math class. Apparently everything else about my transcript and all the other requirements (foreign language, GPA, etc) are fine. It's just *MATH*. I took AP Calculus I and II in high school, but I only got a "2" on the AP Calc exam, and a "3" is required to bypass the math requirement. Who would have thought -- after all this time being a vagabond, traveling around with dubious jobs or no job, being a junkie for most of the last 5 years -- who would have thought it would be MATH that would keep me down? I thought maybe they'd find out why I left Reed, or do some digging into my past. But no. It's math. A class that was not required at Reed, so no one took it. Especially not artsy anthropology majors like me.

So all I have to do is move to Eugene by January 2, take a placement test, take a math class at Lane Community College, and then I'll be able to enroll in UO by the end of March for Spring term. They're on the quarter system, and UO and LCC have their terms coordinated, so I can just switch to UO in March. Also, while I'm taking math at LCC, I can take a few classes at UO as a "community member" -- including journalism or whatever I want to take -- supposedly.

So I'll still be able to start school in January and live in Oregon again -- those were the most important things to me. At least I'll be doing *something* -- unlike the last few years. It's a small hurdle, really, compared to what I've already been through.

But still -- MATH. W. T. F. ?!?!? Who would have thunk it.

So anyway, I have a bit more time to worry about financial aid for UO and all that stuff. I just have to save enough to drive back to Oregon (at least gas is cheap now) and rent an apartment or room in Eugene. I need to start doing some research on that. I also have to figure out how to get all my stuff from my storage space in Portland to Eugene so I don't have to re-buy a mattress, desk, shelves, etc.

It's going to be kind of a mad dash after Christmas, to get there by January 2 to take the placement test. Last time I drove across the country during the winter -- February 2008 -- a lot of the main interstates were closed because of snow, in Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. I had to do a weird detour through Nevada because of a blizzard. Hopefully nothing like that will happen this year. If I left on December 26, I'd have eight days to get there. It's only about a three day drive, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

This is so crazy to me. Not the driving across the country after Christmas part, or the moving my stuff from Portland to Eugene in three days part, or trying to find an apartment before school starts. I've expended huge amounts of energy in the last few years on equally crazy endeavors -- driving across the country in bizarre situations, moving to Thailand with barely enough money to survive, hitchhiking to Vancouver with only a few pieces of bread to eat, randomly leaving Portland for other cities when I got too strung out. It just seems strange now because I'm doing one of these wacky adventure things, but it's for a good cause. It's for something *responsible* -- going back to school. It feels so weird to tell people about my plans and not have them recoil in shock. Especially my parents.

Is this what it's like to be a normal person? It never ceases to amaze me.

Anyway, I have to go plan my trip. I guess driving to New Orleans will be my last crazy roadtrip adventure before I become a legitimate citizen and attend college again. Or maybe not. I'm sure I'll find a way to keep my life crazy enough to make my friends and family dizzy -- it just won't make them sick anymore.

So be it. Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

steady. step AWAY from the keyboard.

I am officially not going to write anything until I finish a few things... file my 2007 taxes, call my old boss about my health insurance, write a new resume, and do a few things towards getting a job (like fill out this application I got). If I do those things, I'm allowed to write again. I don't understand people with "writer's block." The only time I have ever felt unable to write when I was on heroin. Heroin is like death for creative thought -- I have no idea how all those musicians did anything at all on heroin.

Every entry I write is edited down to about 2/3 the original length -- and they're still really long. Brevity is not my strength. I could sit here writing all day, stuff about my past, stuff I'm thinking about, dreams, memories, etc. But I can't!

I am really not looking forward to getting some restaurant or retail job until Christmas, after working in politics since July. That was like my dream job. But I don't have enough money to get back to Oregon. I have about $1500. Technically that's enough, but not really. I'd have way more if I hadn't paid back everything on my credit report. I didn't even really need to do that -- I could have set up payment plans -- but this was the first time I had a well-paying job and wasn't spending it all on heroin. And I was so sick of those credit people stalking me all these years. So here I am, I have less than two months, and I need to save up another thousand dollars or so.

There was this guy on the Obama campaign from San Diego who travels around the country working as a field organizer -- in fact, he knew Brian (Brian is from San Diego too)! Anyway, he's worked in politics in a bunch of states, kind of how I used to travel around with Brian working on ballot initiatives. I asked this guy what he does in between campaigns -- with petitioning, you usually make so much money you can live off it for a long time. Brian and I saved up at least $10,000 working on Oregon petitions in May/June 2006 before we went to Thailand. But being a field organizer pays about 1/10 what you could make petitioning during a good season.

This kid told me that he just skips around from state to state. Even when it's not a big election year, he said, "There's always a special election somewhere." Before I became determined to go back to school ASAP, I was thinking of continuing in politics for a while. That doesn't sound very appealing to me, though. I'm so tired of traveling and not having a home. And being an organizer does not pay enough to make it worth it. Anyway, I want to stay here for the holidays and then go back to Oregon, so it has to be something short term. And I want my free time again. So retail/coffeeshop, here I come, I guess. Ugh.

Anyway, here I am, writing. I said I wouldn't do this. Someone hit me. Ok, I'm going to go. I swear to god I won't write again until I do those things in the first paragraph. No reading, either. Not even the newspaper. Fuck. This is like hell.

so that a sanctuary can be created, a sanctuary must be shattered

I keep writing entries here and not posting them. I know I was only writing privately for one year, but all of a sudden I feel shy. Those of you who used to read my public blog know that writing publicly never stopped me from writing about whatever shocking, illegal things I happened to be doing at the time. Maybe I feel more separated from that stuff now that it's four months in the past, and a bit more like a legitimate citizen. Maybe I have more to lose now.

But I have a sitemeter, and it tells me that a lot more people are looking at this than just my old readers from Finding the Limit. There were 87 people with access to that blog, but I don't think all of them were reading it regularly. And I get a lot more than 87 hits a day here. But that's the point of having a public blog -- people randomly find it and read it. And now that I'm not working on a political campaign I really don't have anything to lose. Anything "bad" is in my past, anyway. And why would I write if I didn't want people to read it? I just have to get back to being my exhibitionist self.

I've been clean for four months now, as of Sunday. I wrote an entry that day but didn't post it. Yesterday I had a really bad day, for various reasons. I'm fine now. But the part that makes me happy is that no matter how bad I felt, I was not thinking about buying heroin. I drove into the city to see Gabe, and stopped at store on Franklin that was literally at the same corner where I used to meet my dealer. I even saw some street people hanging around who could have "helped me out." But though I recognized those facts, I had no temptations.

The reason I had such a horrible day was... well, various things... trying to taper off my medication too fast... and also worrying about stuff like getting into school, finding a job, getting a divorce, and filing my 2007 taxes. I never filed them this year because I was too strung out. In order to get financial aid I have to file taxes and also get divorced. Brian has his own tax problems -- huge ones -- and I don't want them to be linked to me. A combination of these worries and lack of medication was making me so anxious I could hardly function. My mother was so worried that she asked, "Did you buy heroin?" Which, considering my mood, did not help. No, I DIDN'T buy heroin. If I did, I wouldn't feel like this.

I know it's repetitive to write about every time I have a "reason" to buy heroin and DON'T buy it, but it is important to me. Even though I'm not tempted to buy heroin, I still can't stop thinking about suicide when I feel that way. I keep wishing there was a way to make my brain stop feeling horrible. I have no patience for anxiety that bad. I try to think it's temporary, it's only chemical, it doesn't reflect my worth as a person. I try to distract myself by doing other stuff.

Distraction seems to work best. When I used to relapse because I was anxious, I'd endure a few hours of feeling horrible, and then I would give in and decide to buy heroin. But I wouldn't have to wait until I got the heroin to feel better. Just the thought, and the actions, would distract me, and my mood would lift -- finding money, driving or walking or taking a bus to the corner, calling dealers, walking miles with a junkie friend to meet their person, waiting around on a rainy street for hours, bargaining with the guy, trying to find a needle and lighter and bottle cap if I didn't have supplies, looking for a public bathroom or some place by the river where I could shoot up. From the moment I decided to do it, and shifted my concentration from "I feel like dying" to step one of the heroin process, my mood would instantly change. Of course when I was strung out, heroin itself was necessary for my physical well being. But when I was clean and would relapse because of anxiety, the drug was almost beside the point.

So now that I'm not doing heroin, I use other distractions. Cleaning my room, going shopping, reading the paper, whatever. It usually works. The only time it doesn't work is times like yesterday when I was so depressed I could not move. Eventually I dragged myself up, washed my face, threw on some clothes, and managed to get in my car. By the time I got to Gabe's house, the distraction of trying to get there already made me feel 75% better.

Still, it seems like there has to be something else I can do. What if I'm in school, trying to do my homework, and can't concentrate because I feel anxious? I can't just go shopping or drive somewhere. I can't abandon responsibilities to distract myself from depression. That's one thing that got me started on heroin in the first place. I was so anxious about school -- convinced that I was doomed to a lifetime of minimum wage jobs because I would never be a good enough anthropology student -- that I couldn't concentrate. After the first few times I did heroin, I realized I could do my reading without being anxious. It was great -- finally, I was finishing all my work!

That's one reason I would never go back to Reed. The amount of reading I had to do that semester (three upper level anthro classes and one history class) was so intense that there is no way I could have finished it, even if I spent every waking moment reading. There was at least one whole book to read for every class, per week -- dense academic stuff, primary sources. And I had to take notes so I could refer back later for writing papers. Most students at Reed do as much as they can, and get over it. But I *CARED*. I wanted to do ALL the reading. And I don't want to go to a school where there is no way to finish the work. Maybe it's ok not to finish everything, and I'm sure I still learned more than I would have at a different college. But I don't want to have that constant feeling of failure.

Also, I want to go to a school where I have time for a social life and free time. When I had problems at Reed or felt anxious, I had no support system, other than Donna. We'd been best friends -- soulmates -- since we were freshman, and I never had the time or inclination to make other close friends. I had one boyfriend at Reed, from the beginning of my freshman year until the summer after my sophomore year. But when I returned as a junior, I knew almost no one, because I'd been gone for a year. I was living off campus with Donna and didn't have a boyfriend. Donna wasn't at Reed anymore, and this was before cell phones, so when I wasn't at our apartment, I had no one to talk to. It was so lonely riding my bike to class every day in the rain, sitting in the library reading between classes, and being too shy or busy to talk to anyone. At least I'm not that shy anymore.

But making real friends still requires a certain amount of time. Most of the friends I made when I was a freshman were just casual friends, other than Donna. By my junior year, those few casual friends were just acquaintances, or they had graduated. And even though I had tons of homework as a freshman, I had so much more as a junior, so there was no time for a social life. It seemed much more important to finish my work than to expend the energy it would take to talk to people. But I wish I had tried to make friends. I thought Donna was all I needed. We were so close, she was my everything. But I had no friends at Reed, to give me perspective, to help me see that I didn't HAVE to do ALL the reading, that I wasn't a complete failure. The few friends I had other than Donna were not in school, and one of them, as luck would have it, was a junkie.

The point is that I am trying to have a balanced life. I tend to do everything in extremes -- whether it's going to the HARDEST school (Reed is the only college that doesn't do grade inflation), or having the CLOSEST friendship and having zero other friends, or being the BEST anthro student, or being 100% vegan and beating myself up if I ever broke my rules, or feeling that if every detail of my apartment wasn't aesthetically perfect, there was something wrong. When I started doing heroin, I did that to extremes too -- I did more heroin than almost any junkie I ever met (sometimes more than $100 a day), and did it from the moment I woke up until I went to sleep. Most of my junkie friends could wait until afternoon to get high; not me. In a recovery group I was in, we were talking about triggers. I said, "Everything is a trigger for me. Even waking up." I'm glad I don't feel like that anymore.

I don't think I could even get back into Reed, or transfer to another prestigious private college, because I only have a 3.0 GPA, and my transcript doesn't look that great. But at this point I would rather go to a school with a moderate workload, where I can have friends and a life and still finish my work. Undoubtedly I will still be a perfectionist, but at least finishing the work will be possible. And I've been through enough poverty -- lived in cheap motels all over the country, next to freeways, strip malls, or gas stations -- that I don't care about having the prettiest living space. Comfort is all I require. Aesthetics used to be huge for me, but not as much now. Working on that campaign, nothing was pretty, but it was all meaningful. Our office could not have been uglier. But the work I was doing made up for it. My "rules" are different now. If I have to live in some bland apartment on a boring street, go to a moderately difficult school, and feel that I'm doing something meaningful, I'll be happy. The important part is to be healthy, have friends, finish college -- not to adhere to those unrealistic rules I used to set about everything from my appearance to my homework to my living space.

I spent a few months in Columbus, in the summer of 2005, living on 25 cent Little Debbie peanut butter bars from the gas station across the street from our shitty Motel 6 next to a freeway, walking along ugly roads to get to the spot where I worked. I had to watch Robbie, Brian's friend and our motel roommate, eat huge Mexican take-out meals, because Brian always paid his workers first when he turned in our signatures to the ballot initiative company, and if there wasn't enough left for him and me, we went hungry. Sometimes Robbie would give me some leftover rice, which I devoured like a vulture. I didn't have that many clothes to begin with and I had lost weight. I only had one bra that fit me, which was black, so I couldn't wear any light colored shirts, limiting my wardrobe even more. It was so hot (110 degrees and humid) that there were only a few things I could wear and I rotated them every couple days.

Ohio law doesn't allow people to gather signatures in front of grocery stores, so we had to work on street corners. The place I ended up working the most was at a gas station in Delaware, Ohio (a small town north of Columbus). The manager didn't let me work there, but the employee who worked there during the day didn't care. I would ask people to sign a petition to try to get a initiative on the ballot that would limit gerrymandering. While they were waiting for their gas tank to fill, I would have to explain redistricting and why it was bad. Maybe they felt sorry for me, or maybe the men thought I was cute -- most people signed. I wore the same thing every other day, there was no shade and I sweated profusely in the sun, and after a while, everyone who came to that gas station had already signed the petition.

If I had enough money, I would buy $2.00 milkshakes from the UDF (United Dairy Farmers, this convenience store chain in Ohio). The milkshakes had a lot of calories and were cheap, but I had to walk across town to get to the UDF. There was a Subway closer, but there was no way I could afford a sandwich. Every day, Brian would scream at me that I hadn't gotten enough signatures. We were only making 75 cents per signature and we only had two petitions. Then one ended. In California we usually made $2-5 per signature, and often had as many as 15 petitions, and we could work in front of grocery stores, so it was much easier to make money.

The heat in Ohio, and the lack of shade where I worked, sometimes made me so dizzy I literally had to sit down or walk to the UDF just to enjoy the air conditioning for a few minutes. Maybe I could have gotten more signatures, but it was hard, especially because I was tapering off Suboxone (a drug like Methadone that helps people wean off heroin). As I tapered, it became harder and harder to endure the heat, because coming off opiates makes you incredibly sensitive to temperature. I only had a limited amount of Suboxone from my doctor in Portland, so I had to taper too fast, making the discomfort even worse. I had been clean for three months at that point. Brian believed I was exaggerating the symptoms of the Suboxone taper, and faking opiate withdrawal -- insomnia and heat stroke -- so I didn't have to work.

He told me I was a slacker and just wanted to live off him, even though I had only gone to Ohio because he promised we would live in an apartment, he would work and I could take college classes, and I wouldn't have do petitioning work. I didn't want to go, but he convinced me to leave California so he could take this job. The job ended up being nowhere near the amount of money he expected, and we couldn't find an apartment cheap enough, so we were stuck in the shitty motel. And I did have to work, or else we would have had even less to eat. But still, I was a "slacker," wanted to "mooch off him," and his temper would flare constantly, sometimes with no provocation. When the Suboxone taper got bad, and I'd stay up all night reading boring fashion magazines, he told me I was faking insomnia to avoid work. It wasn't until years later, when he experienced heroin withdrawal himself, that he admitted I had not been faking it.

One time we were eating breakfast at our favorite diner (Jack and Benny's, on High St.), where we'd eat whenever we could afford it. I always got a small order of pancakes and eggs, which was only $3.50. He started screaming about how I "refused to work," and I ran out crying. Later, while I was petitioning near the university, a guy came up to me and said he had been our waiter, and he was sorry Brian was treating me that way, and he didn't know why I didn't leave him. I told him I didn't have enough money, I couldn't afford the gas to get out of Ohio, let alone back to Portland or California. This nightmare went on for most of the summer. It seemed like an eternity. When we finally saved enough money to leave Ohio, I felt like this huge weight was lifted.

Our relationship only got worse back in California. I endured constant yelling and slept on the floor for two weeks -- we had barely scraped together enough to rent a room, and I didn't have enough left to pay half of the cost of a mattress. He refused to make up the difference because I was "a slacker" (not working 12 hours a day standing outside a grocery store, as he believed I could). He abused me in ways that are too personal to write about here. A day after I finally saved enough to get a mattress, a guy started talking to me at a coffeeshop and I could tell he was on heroin, and the temptation was too great. I just wanted an escape from the hell of my life. I left Brian soon afterward -- he threw me on the floor, blocked the door, and I barely got out of the house unharmed. He threatened to beat up the friend I was staying with, banged on our door and said he'd call the cops and report our drug use if I didn't come out.

I didn't get clean again for seven months. But at least it wasn't so hot. I was away from Brian, and I had enough to eat. Fade to black...


I've told this story before. And maybe that whole thing sounded like a bad Dickens novel, but it happened to me, and I have an infinite number of stories like it. These experiences have tempered my perfectionism. I'll settle for having enough to eat, not being in an abusive relationship, going back to school, having somewhere warm to sleep, and being able to stay in one place long enough to make more friends.

It's amazing how grateful I am for the smallest things now. Even being able to go out and buy a cup of coffee seems like a luxury, or being able to drive my car (which now has insurance and is not breaking down) with a valid license. I finally paid off all those debts that were hanging over my head for the last six years, at least $3,200 of old bills and student loan payments. I've never had a credit card in my life, but my credit is finally good enough that I might be approved for one. I'll be back in school in the near future, move on with my life, and work towards my goals.

And whenever I start to feel that perfectionist part of me nagging that I'm not doing "enough" or that my life isn't good enough, I just have to remember times like my nightmare months in Ohio. That puts everything in perspective. I have so much to be thankful for now.

saturday morning

I know the election already happened, but I had to share this, it's just too awesome.

It's Saturday morning and I'm reading the paper... supposedly going to a play later today (Arthur Miller at the Guthrie). I need to get out of the house. I was exhausted after the election and it took me a while to recover and get some sleep, but now I feel normal again.

That job, and the stress, did things to my body/mind that I didn't even know were possible. It was like living in a different world with different laws of physics. A half hour of free time, when I'd go out for lunch, seemed like gold. When I got home around 11 pm, often I would stay up until 2 am, just to savor those few hours of not being at work -- essentially sacrificing sleep to have free time. I'd have to wake up at 8 to get to work at 9:30 again, and I don't do very well on only 5/6 hours of sleep; it makes my anxiety worse, I get more emotionally volatile, I can't think clearly, and it's hard to concentrate. But those hours between 11 and 2 when I would be able to read, or watch the news, or whatever, seemed so important, like food -- even when I was exhausted, I stayed up, against my better judgement. It's like my body was starved for non-work awake time.

I always wondered about people in horrible situations like work camps or forced labor, people who have to work 14 or more hours a day, 7 days a week, and what that does to you. I guess I kind of found out. Although, obviously, other than the hours I was working and the stress, the situation was very different: I had enough food (usually), a warm place to sleep, the work wasn't physical, I wasn't undergoing any mental trauma, and there was no physical abuse. But just the 80 hour weeks had such an unreal effect on me. Other than the emotional effects I already mentioned, there were other things I noticed -- I stopped being able to enjoy music, I stopped wanting to see friends, and stopped being interested in a whole lot of other things, like photography, my favorite books, and even -- gasp -- shopping! But losing interest in music was the creepiest part for me. I always have such an emotional connection to my favorite music, and it was just gone.

After it was over I slept for almost two days straight, and when I was awake I was just zoning out watching the news or reading the paper. I've tried listening to music, and it still hasn't come back to me yet. It's not that I don't enjoy it -- it just doesn't make me feel anything. I am so tied to my emotions and I live by them to a large extent, and anything that disrupts these connections makes me feel like a completely different person, and I don't like it.

Anyway, I've been spending too long in this "recovery" mode and I need to get a job and wrap up some financial stuff to help me get back into school. It is really hard for me to imagine working in some shitty store for the two months until Christmas, but that's probably what I'll do. It's like coming back to earth again after that crazy world of politics I was in. Landing.

set your ideals to those of the image of your idol

It's strange -- those of you who have been reading my blog(s) since the beginning (2001 or so) (and it's weird, and kind of touching, how many readers I have retained since then, when I was only 20 years old [thank you!]) -- you know that I almost never wrote about politics before. Sometimes I wrote about the ballot initiatives I was working on in California, and a few times I wrote about world events, but the first time I really wrote about politics was December 17, 2007:

"Today I propped up the piano lid so now it's much louder and the sound is amazing! Also now I can sing a lot louder and not drown out the piano. I didn't do much else today except read, because I felt so nauseous...

And I've been watching the news obsessively. I think this is the first election that I have actually cared about, or had much hope. I was kind of undecided before I got here (Jason was trying to convince me that Hillary was better) but now that I've been watching the news a lot, I decided I like Obama. Of course I do; we're both optimists. And now he's beating Hillary in Iowa, 30% to 26%! That was the good news today. Bad news = everything else."

Then I promptly distanced myself from that paragraph by writing:

"I feel like I just sullied my blog by talking about politics."

And that was the end of that. I don't think I even mentioned anything about politics again until I got the job as field organizer in July.

My experience in San Jose that I wrote about in one of my recent entries -- when I got clean and kept staring at those articles about the new gay marriages -- has been in my head for years, and I actually wrote about it once before, here, in October 2004. I just reread it. Every time I would get clean I would think about it. That memory was the essence of hope to me, and I clung to it in darkness.

I also wrote about my relationship with the New York Times after I relapsed, here. And this, about bad news and a worse life.

As long as I'm linking to the few times in the past I wrote about politics, this is one of my favorites -- it begins with my emotional reaction to the tsunami in Asia. Then I wrote, for the first time, about my fascination with journalism. It's strange how long I kept it a secret -- it was like the idol I kept in my heart, too sacred to reveal. And I wrote about watching an interview with Ben Bradlee, which drew me out of my little world of personal sorrow and made me consider things like journalistic integrity:

"it also inspired to stay clean, just because for that hour my thoughts were immersed in a world of lofty ideals, and it reminded me that there are things worth doing that aren't sticky, black, and water soluble. it's funny -- even though most religions are morally opposed to intoxication, to me it never seemed like a real moral issue like murder or lying. it doesn't hurt anyone besides you, and it doesn't desecrate anything.

but the moral problem with it is simply that it is self-centered -- it doesn't hurt anything because it isn't concerned with anything at all except YOU, and it desecrates you as a person by implying that the search for euphoria and oblivion is a valid cause to devote ALL your energy to."

That was on December 30, 2004, when I had been an addict for almost two years, but was only just starting to hate heroin and realize WHY it was so horrible. It amazes me how long it took me after I came to that realization to find enough strength to get clean on my own. I managed to stop doing heroin for a few months at a time every year, but only when friends or a boyfriend would whisk me away to some new city, and keep me under lock and key so I couldn't relapse. It never worked for very long, because I would always escape or convince them I was ready to be on my own, not realizing the power of my addiction. As soon as I had my freedom back, I would watch myself, almost like watching a movie, wander the streets until I found my drugs and then the nightmare would begin again. I was never able to stay clean with my own strength for longer than a few days before the agony of withdrawal became too much for me and I would fall back into it.

Three years after the tsunami/journalism revelation, in January 2008, I was able to stay clean on my own for the first time -- without parents or someone else watching over me, without escaping to a new city -- I was actually clean in Portland for a few months. And even though I relapsed, I got clean again in July, and now I have managed to keep that strength going, especially with the help of my campaign job. It's almost like what I was writing about the Ben Bradlee interview: I found something more meaningful than the self-centered pursuit of pleasure. It drew me out of myself, turning me outward instead of inward.

It's been a long time coming.

When I started this public blog a few days ago, I told myself I wouldn't just write about heroin and my memories of the past; I would write about the present and the future. But there are so many things I still need to make peace with, so many untold stories. In due time, I suppose.

I actually sat down today to write a completely different entry, about the strength of local politics, and some other things. That's why I started writing about how I never used to write about politics, and then I went off on a complete tangent about that. Oh well. It's just that after I wrote that entry about journalism a few days ago, I have been thinking about it more and more, processing some of the things that have happened to me over the years, and just being in awe of how much I have been through and how I got to where I am today.

I guess the reason I feel like I have so much to process is that I haven't been able to write for the last few months, because of the campaign. The last time I had time to write was when I was still doing heroin. So I feel this cognitive dissonance between who I was four months ago, and who I am today, and how I got here. It still amazes me, like a fairy tale, and the last four months don't even seem real to me. But the way I feel now seems real. I don't even think I'll get into UO, because of the stupid college math credit I don't have because math wasn't required at Reed. I haven't gotten the final decision yet, but I talked to an admissions counselor yesterday and she sounded dubious. But I still feel calm and focused towards my goals, and have been making plans to take some classes at a community college in Oregon, and reapply to UO for next quarter.

Who is this person this chasm this lost event?

I have so many memories, sometimes it seems like they are all pressing down on me. But I also, finally, feel this enormous pull towards the future and what I plan to do. Finally I have plans and dreams that are stronger than my memories, stronger than the desires that used to throw me back into that familiar lull. I still have a lot of stories to tell, but they are just that -- stories.

Set your ideals to those of the image of your idol

Pull your collar tight

And walk into the storm.