anonymous comments are cowardly

In response to this comment:

Becky,
You = me at one time
You've been in tumult for so long, when you land you are already looking for a place to jump off of again. Repetitive tasks and working towards a goal are foreign concepts. Calm is terrifying. There must always be a drama in order to find peace. The trauma is a welcome, comforting distraction.

This is a reaction to living in trama. It breeds more trauma because the trauma has become "normal", even a comfort.

What will be magickal, fresh and new is breaking the addiction to catastrophe. It will be a brave new world when you don't pick up roots, when you build long tern loving relationships, and when you take on responsibility for something larger than yourself. It will all come to you when you are ready.

You do things, like sex, drugs, and travel, to get yourself away from that plodding along normalcy of nothing particularly exciting. When you can really face doing nothing, doing for others, doing what is boring you will really break the need to freak out. THEN you can start to build. And when you have built something completely for others, the family and the children will follow.

Challenge yourself to do NO drugs. To stay put. To work a day job where it is not rewarding to you at all, but you feel is for the greater good. In this space, this gap, this breath, you will be able to find yourself. Not in the cliche way, but in a way that you feel well, powerful and in control of your destiny.

You addiction to the adreniline rush is just as bad as your addiction to the heroine.

I am really confused about this comment. I have been in school since January. I've also been living in Eugene since then and don't plan on leaving until I finish my degree in a year or so. I'm single-mindedly pursuing a career in journalism, which has been my obsession for about five years, so it's really exciting to finally do it.

Repetitive tasks and working towards a goal are foreign concepts.

Really? Cause I've been working towards the goal of going to UO since last September when I started applying. I was clean for six months then and working on that political campaign, so I was finally able to start following my dream. Then I had to take two classes at a community college (math and college writing) to be admitted as a transfer student. Then I was finally able to start at UO in March, for spring quarter. I've gotten A's in virtually everything and I've worked really hard on my classes, even though I was struggling with heroin for part of last term. I'm crazy-obsessed with my journalism classes.

I also have quite a few "long term loving relationships." Maybe not in this town, because I just moved here in January, but I'm working on it. I still have Donna, anyway, and a bunch of other friends in other cities.

You do things, like sex, drugs, and travel, to get yourself away from that plodding along normalcy of nothing particularly exciting.

The only traveling I've done recently (since I started trying to change my life last summer) was during my school breaks: I went to Hawaii for spring break and San Francisco last week before summer term started. Last November I went to New Orleans and I went to Chicago for Christmas. Other than that, I stopped going to Portland when I stopped escorting in April. I think I'm allowed to travel a little on my school breaks, aren't I? It's not like I'm taking off randomly and leaving my responsibilities behind. I only left for five days, and came back for the beginning of the term.

Also, I don't do heroin to make my life more exciting. Heroin makes things LESS exciting. My emotions and the way I perceive the world are so intense and sometimes anxiety-inducing, heroin appealed to me as a way to blunt my emotions. Yes I am a thrill seeker, but heroin wasn't really about that. And I know I wrote about having casual sex with someone a few weeks ago, but trust me, that is extremely rare. It's not my thing at all. I can count two times in the last three years that I've done that. And I've had two boyfriends since I left Brian in 2006 -- hardly promiscuous.

My life is plenty exciting without drugs, sex, or traveling. It's TOO exciting. That's why I crave heroin a lot, because I have these insane moods. I'm not easily bored. In fact, EVERYTHING interests me. I don't know where you get the idea that I find life boring. That is so far from the truth. I get excited about the most random things, like reading the paper and drinking tea in the morning, looking at trees, chilling with my cat, whatever. I'm all about the everyday, and I love little rituals. (Remember, I used to be an anthropology student. Anthropologists love everyday stuff.) I am really a child when it comes to life: Everything always seems new and exciting (when I'm clean).

Challenge yourself to do NO drugs. To stay put. To work a day job where it is not rewarding to you at all, but you feel is for the greater good.

I am challenging myself to do no drugs. Yes, my SF acid trip was a mistake -- but since I have no more acid and don't plan to buy any, I won't be doing that again anytime soon. There are no other drugs that I do anymore; acid is the only one that interests me at all, and clearly I should wait a while before I try that again.

So I hope it's all right if I travel during my school breaks, but other than that I really have no idea what you're talking about. The only other "thrill-seeking" in my future is riding my bike really fast on my way to school.

What you describe is actually what I have been working towards for a long time: I realized a while ago that running all over the world at random was not productive, it just took a while for me to settle down. And I realized that I needed to WORK towards my journalism goal instead of just dreaming about it. Hopefully this is good enough for you, because I'm not sure how to work any harder. I'm already taking so many classes that my professors have advised me to drop one of them. I'm up to my neck in journalism and writing and it is making me incredibly happy.

I haven't done any heroin for almost a month, and I don't plan on doing any drugs in the future. I really am trying to keep my thrill-seeking in check and do healthy stuff like yoga and playing guitar instead. I'm not sure if you actually read my blog, because if you did, you would already know everything I just wrote.

Also, advice means a lot more when it's not anonymous -- when I know who's saying it, whether they know me or not, etc. Don't you think you would take a friend's advice a lot more seriously than an anonymous blog comment? It's hard for me to put anonymous comments in perspective when there is NO information about the commenter. Anyway, my litmus test is if Donna is happy with my life and not freaking out, I am happy too. And I think she is.

love, becky

ps I don't mean to sound defensive, it's just really annoying to have someone tell you to do a bunch of things you've been working really hard at for a long time.