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Where is Everyone Going?

While in active addiction I would watch from the balcony on early mornings, such as the one that I am enjoying right now. The difference is that I have a full night of sleep under my belt. On the mornings I would watch from my balcony I had not yet been to sleep. I was often craving fresh air after a night of suffocating on toxic chemicals. The fresh air provided a reprieve from the drugs.

Also a note worth mentioning, on the morning I’m writing this essay I have just enjoyed some delicious fresh avocado toast while I drink a smooth honey latte at a local cafe in Lancaster. On the mornings spent on the balcony in Pittsburgh, I hadn’t yet eaten because the only thing I could stomach was an ice cream sandwich and a freezer pop and I didn’t dare touch a cup of coffee because I had this fear that my heart would explode from too much speed and caffeine — some told me that was possible once. I was easily manipulated and duped when I was in active addiction.

On these mornings I would see people pulling into the parking lot and rushing to their yoga classes, returning from the gym, dressed in their Monday office best, and on their way to work.

I envied these people and at the same time, felt pity.

“Do these people even know how to have fun?”

Every person that came into that parking lot was given a back story — and their lives were utterly boring. I wanted that life.

I imagined myself on Monday morning, waking up well-rested because in my imaginary life bedtime was 9 pm, except on Saturdays when it was 10 pm — 10:30 if there were a good 20/20 or Deadline. Never past midnight though — especially if the cold open on SNL was terrible. Back to Monday. In my fake life, I’m a writer for a local magazine in one of those posh downtown offices with glass doors, an adult jungle gym, and pods instead of cubicles. We had lunch delivered every Friday and allotted exactly two hours to eat it and then promptly call it a day at 3 pm. Or maybe it was a greeting card company — my job was to write the cute — inspirational sayings on Birthday and Sympathy cards. Let’s go with the greeting card job.

So Monday morning — I’m up at 5:30 am, yoga at the studio below my apartment at 6 am — completed with a mindful meditation by 7:15 am. Stop at the coffee shop on the corner for a honey latte (and a sweet — who can resist freshly baked lemon tart or blueberry yogurt muffin?). Run back to my apartment. Shower — do my morning routine of face creams (unsure if they do anything but the girl at Sephora told me I had fine lines and guys don’t like fine lines.) After that, I spend about 15 minutes adjusting the three hairs on my head to make them look like a full thick pompadour. I don’t have to think about what to wear because I laid the outfit out the night before. My lunch was already packed — a piece of all-white grilled chicken, brown rice medley, sweet potatoes, and a 32-ounce bottle of bottled water (my goal is to drink at least two of these a day).

I hop on my bike by 8:30 am and head for work — a 15-minute bike ride. Traffic doesn’t hold me up because I’ve become a master cyclist in the city and know exactly how to get around any roadblocks. Once at work — I would attend a morning meeting. Discuss whatever the latest episode of some true-crime podcast at the ‘water cooler’ and head to my pod to begin writing.

The first half of the morning would be me cruising Facebook, google images, Twitter, TikTok, and youtube — this would be ‘research’. Lunch — after lunch I would take some extra time to run to the local florist near the office. Order my mom’s birthday flowers just in time for them to arrive after her birthday, I don’t send cards — I find them tacky! Return to work — do just enough writing to keep my job and send my day’s work to my supervisor, Helen, a forty-something single woman with three cats Harry, Hermoine, and Ron. She has a crush on me and has yet to figure out that I’m gay! Poor girl, but she’s the reason I’m employed so I don’t want to rock the boat.

I leave around 4:30 hop on my bike and head for the gym. At the gym, I pretend to work out — take selfies, and finally, just get in the tanning bed and call it a good workout. Bike home, where I am greeted by my favorite companion — Charley, a Pit Bull mix I rescued from the local shelter (I can’t believe I forgot to mention Charley — he’d be so mad at me if he knew). Charley and I go for a walk/run — he insists on peeing at every light pole, fire hydrant, tree, sign, and sidewalk sign within a 3 block radius of my apartment. He has no concern for my bursting bladder — he has a routine — just like me. When we finally make it back to the apartment I go to the bathroom. And then begin dinner. I make Charley and I whatever meal prep kit was delivered that week and we enjoy our Asian-inspired orange chicken with sesame rice and asparagus spears while watching reruns of Bob’s Burgers. After dinner, we go on our evening walk. This is less hurried and Charley would much rather sniff than pee, when we return we sit on the balcony while I search for gadgets on Amazon and Charley watches the birds bounce from limb to limb.

We go to bed around 9 pm — satisfied with another day tucked away and another on the horizon.

That all sounded so utterly boring to me but I wanted that life so bad.

The drugs; however, took the chance of that life from me. Instead, my daily schedule flowed like such:

6:00 am — come downstairs, stand on the balcony, rather than sit. Look at my phone — scroll through the Grindr grid at least forty-five times.

7:00 am — Double check to make sure that the police are not tapping my phone or watching me.

8:00 am — take my fifth shower of the morning.

9:00 am — attempt to do something productive, an adult activity like grocery shopping or go to Starbucks

9:15 am — promptly leave any public location. I made it to because the paranoia has driven me back behind closed doors.

9:30 am — clean — try to do something nice for my roommate to make up for the shit show from the night before.

10 am-1 pm — fall asleep

1 pm — begin planning my night.

1:30 pm — send four different text messages to different dealers.

1:30 pm — 9:30 pm — chase drugs and sex until I finally get a response back

12:30 am — finally get my drugs and do my first hit online for the camming world

1:30 am — invite someone over

3:00 am — the guest arrives

3:10 am — I immediately regret my decision

5:00 am — they get the hint and leave

5:05 am — clean up the evidence

6:00 am — back on the balcony.

This was a pretty easy day — the days when I had no money would require many hoops I’d have to jump through to get my fix. So while my dream life was boring, it seemed like absolute paradise compared to my current one.

I should clarify, I didn’t want to be living this way- no one ever wakes up and says, “I think I’ll become a meth addict today.” That would be ridiculous. But, it so happens that life takes you in a way and people, places, and things change your course of direction. This is not the essay on the who, what, when, how, and why I started using — those are questions, for now, best left answered between myself and my therapist. What you need to know is that it happened.

So for those who have not — don’t do meth, because as those who have, know you’ll like it and it will eventually ruin your life. Trust me and the countless others. If you want a life worth living, choose the boring same-day-every-day-the-same life.

So back to my “imaginary self”. Since treatment and relocating, I can’t say that my new life is exactly like that in the dream but it follows along pretty similarly. I wake up around 5:30–6 am, have coffee. Yoga, meditate more coffee. Then I plan my day. I’m not working yet so my afternoons leave me a lot of spare time to focus on my essays and attend meetings. I bike a lot because I have no car, I live a pretty quiet life. There is no Charley, yet, but I look forward to the day when I can finally go to a shelter and meet him. There are no drinks with friends after work — because I don’t drink (total abstinence for now — honestly, I was never much of a drinker) and well, I don’t have many friends. I covered this in one of my other essays — while sobriety is fantastic it can be isolating. I’m afraid to let people in and get too close because I don’t want to lose focus on myself.

As I inch nearer and nearer to stage three of withdrawal (The Wall) I fear that my imaginary life will melt away and I’ll find myself back to chasing the dragon instead of chasing a promotion or finally telling Helen that I’m gay. Being cognitive of relapse is only a small portion of staying sober, it’s a fear all recovering addicts have. It doesn’t help that at every meeting it’s being spoken about, it’s what I think about when I wake up, it’s the last thing I think of before I fall asleep. Relapse has even been haunting my dreams — I just pray that I don’t wake up before I feel the rush.

That’s the dark side of recovery, that’s what we addicts are faced with every day of our lives. That’s why my imaginary life will never become a full reality because in that life I never took the first — the only way of life I know in that reality is a sober one. In this life, on top of being a well-adjusted member of society — I am constantly weighed down by my addiction — imagine your daily routine. Now add to those cravings so strong you can’t look at your veins because they make you want to use them. You can’t drink Red Bull because it hits the same receptors in your brain as meth. You can’t walk past houses with colored LED lights because they remind you of your party days. These are nothing to some people, but to the majority of us addicts — they could change their whole course of life. This is why we are always encouraged to take life one day at a time.

For a lot of us, this is difficult. I have always been a worrier — about finances because I’m terrible with money, work, and plans that have yet to happen. In my mind, if I take it one day at a time; how will I find comfort in knowing that tomorrow is taken care of? Well, there is no answer to that. I have to trust that what I do today will help care for me tomorrow and in the months ahead.

Someone once told me “if you are depressed, you are living too far in your past. If you are anxious, you are living too far in the future. But if you are calm — then you are living for today.” It’s not the best quote in the world but it works. In sobriety we give our future over to the High Power of our understanding, allowing us to focus on the hard work of the day and leave time to clean up the wreckage of our past. Trust in yourself that you can care for yourself. Do not worry about the things out of your control, but become a master of those that are. Change your thoughts — rather than say “I have to go to work” or “I have to go the DMV” — say, “today I get to go to work” or “I get to go to the DMV.”

Every day for us now is a gift. Because we are sober, we have the opportunity to a fresh new life — we get to go to work because for the first time we are employable. We get to go to the DMV, even though no one ever wants to go there because we can finally get a driver’s license. Life is full of opportunities now — don’t waste your daydreaming or wishing you could be or do something different. Go out and do it — one day at a time.

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