Ich brauch' dich doch auch nicht mehr als du mich
                                            I don't need you more than you need me
 

K.A.T.I.E

Heroin.

It gets to a point where you look around, and although you feel so shitty, you have to accept that this is it. And it’s not going to get better, either.

You have to accept that this is nothing more than a lucid moment in the ever-present downward spiral that you’re living.

Living, huh… I guess that’s what it could be called. Or not. You’re sitting down; or, rather, you’re sprawled on your bed because your legs won’t support you. You’re scared because you don’t know why. It could be because you haven’t been eating too well - can you honestly remember your last decent meal? Sometimes food shopping seems so damned superfluous…

Your hands shake too, but you’re not going to accept that. Yes, find something to do with them, so you don’t notice. You run them through your greasy hair, then you think better of *that* particular action.

One thing will stop the shaking, you know. Well, two. Your suddenly steady hand reaches for the little box of neatly wrapped razor blades that sell oh-so-cheap from the specialty shop. (And it’s funny, but you buy so many damned razor blades yet your legs never get done…) But… something makes you snatch your hand back. That little voice that says ‘not yet’. Course, it doesn’t really matter or anything. A few more scars on your street-map legs, another stain on your skanky, red/brown-spotted sheets. Sort of like the cum-stained quilt cover, if you think about it. As if chronic masturbation ever made anybody sane. And as if you get anything out of it - gods, you know your life is shit when you start wondering if there’s such a thing as ‘orgasmically challenged’.

Pick a long, dark hair from within the weave of the sheet and remember that you haven’t had your hair cut in over a year. Not that it matters, not that there’s anybody around to notice how shitty your hair looks. For fuck’s sake, the last time you got picked up in a club you went out and bought $100 worth of underwear, in the hope that he’d call and want to see it.

But they never do end up calling.

And so what if you know that that’s the point of a one night stand: that there’s no commitment. Or maybe it was your fault, something you said. Despite yourself, despite the constant ‘reminders’ in your head, you can’t help but talk about the shit that’s on your mind. Maybe it’s because you haven’t seen that expensive psych for a month. It’s cool to talk with a stranger and babble for an hour every week (forty minutes, really, since he’s always late and never bothers to make up for the time) because then, at least, you’ve SAID it. Somebody has LISTENED, even if they do charge $150 for the privilege. Charges more than you earn in a fortnight, damn him.

At least if you’re (or, well, if daddy is) paying for it, you don’t feel so obliged to suck his dick.

You need to pee. You lie there breathing heavily like it’s an effort just to exist. You want to turn up the music and scream along but you can’t because it’ll wake everybody up. Hell, everybody in the street even, considering how loud you want to scream right about now.

But… the tourniquet is there, and a needle that’s relatively clean. You hope.

***

Katie sucked idly on a strawberry chup-a-chup as she shot her vein with the last of the heroin she’d managed to afford. The sugar and the drug - it would get her through the night.
 

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Bourbon.

I’ve always heard that you can’t recognise if you’re crazy. That you do your crazy thing without knowing how incredibly fucking crazy you really are.

Sometimes I wish that I had that liberty.

Things… everything hurts. And I know that it’s gotten worse. I don’t know exactly *why* things have gotten worse, but they have. And the realisation, that’s the scary part. When you go to your room and reach for the bottle of bourbon. I held it up, right, and just saw the light reflecting off the liquid, and off the scars on my wrist. Scars… I don’t remember making most of them, but they’re there, so I guess I must have. I swore because the bottle was only a third full, but I gulped the shit anyway. Straight. It burned my throat and I stopped drinking after a few gulps, but that’s how life is at the moment. Cold, miserable. Teetering constantly on the verge of tears. And the only thing that can possibly brighten up my life is that bottle, glowing in my mind, brighter than the goddamned sun.

I steal things. It’s something I’m not particularly proud of, but it’s something that I manage to do from time to time. That’s pretty much a necessity when you’re a heroin addict, living on the streets and all. I’ve stolen… too much. A month back, though, I stole a computer. New, all equipped and shit. I didn’t sell it, though. On a whim, I took it back to the apartment where I’m actually paying some amount of rent for once (funny how much money you have when you’re trying out the cold turkey deal) and got it connected to the net and all. One addiction for another: I’m a net junkie now.

Napster. That’s part of the buzz of this new addiction. I know that dad wouldn’t approve, but he can fuck himself. It’s not like I’d buy the music anyway, and downloading it is easier than listening to the fucking radio. I downloaded a bunch of different covers of The Cure’s ‘Lovesong’, just because I could. Tori Amos, A Perfect Circle, Snake River Conspiracy, Jack off Jill. Yeah, man. And the original. Pretty fucked up, but they work together.

So I can curl up here, in my shitty apartment. Bottle illuminated by the glowing, perfect, stolen monitor, half-pissed and lulled by the music. A bastardisation on Nirvana for the druggie chick, but it works. It works pretty well.