Cricket: Ember's Story

Endure Forever

Jesse's being all sweet to me. He must sense that I've got something on my mind because he's trying very hard to distract me. First he made me breakfast. Okay, not like we can cook or anything but he did bring me cherry PopTarts, and I'll take that. He's also doing all these things I usually do, like tidying up the house. We might be homeless, but I will not tolerate being gross and we all take pride in our squat house. It has stood the test of time after all, and if anything it's earned some beautifying. And then he's all, "I'll get that, baby," and, "No, let me," and, "Why don't you go relax?" Finally he brought home this bag of dope, and since I figure the drug tests won't start until next month I smoke it with him. He also got us a pizza, some sodas and my favorite: a bag of Reeses, which I'll have to hide from Adam 'cause he's a Reeses fiend even more than he's a methhead.

Jesse sure is trying to get on my good side. I love it when he's like this. It always comes after a bad beating or a long time of him acting like an asshole. He'll say how sorry he is and then try to make it up to me. Honestly, I live for these times when he makes me feel loved; worthy of affection, safe and treasured. Sometimes it'll be months before the next explosion. I've played this game many times so I'm not dumb enough to think he'll "never do it again," but I can at least enjoy myself for the time being.

We're sitting on the couch so relaxed and so high my limbs feel like they're made of Play-Doh. I lift one finger just to make sure I still can. God, the effort!

If anyone was watching from the outside, this would seem really boring to them. Gus, especially, can't understand the appeal of using a drug that makes you slow. He's a freaking squirrel and needs to move all the time. But it's not just about the relaxation to me. First there are waves of honeyed light that rush through your body over and over in an infinite loop. The honey starts in your head and rolls through you like a slow shockwave of pleasure, and when it gets to your feet it comes back up again to your brain. Then it starts over and goes again, again, again. Meanwhile your skin is tingling the way it does when someone gently runs their fingers through your hair.

Also, there are zero problems. This is the most important thing to me and the reason I have a little issue with drugs in the first place. Problems. Not wanting, knowing how or sometimes even being able to solve them. Those problems. It makes all of them completely irrelevant. If a stray worry does manage to worm its way into your thoughts, it is easily dismissed. Your brain assures you that everything will be okay, the way your mom did when you were little. You don't have to think, solve or fight anymore. Just let go and drift in this warm honey river.

Most people only feel like this for seconds at a time: orgasm. And that's all fine and great, but what if you could feel that feeling for, like, two hours instead of five seconds? You would, wouldn't you? Who wouldn't? Especially when you are so far from any good feelings in your "real" life. Only people who have lived with misery as a roommate for years on end can understand why a person would accept this poisoned fruit straight from the devil's hand while he laughs in your face. If you have suffered for a long time, in a bad way, you can understand the overpowering need for escape.

A person can live with pain for a long-ass time, much longer than you thought you could when it first hit. Hell, just listen to stories from Holocaust survivors. They went through stuff worse than I can imagine, but they kept going. No, pain itself is no killer. Despair is the real reaper. And after a while, all pain becomes despair, and that will drive you insane, drive you toward death or oblivion.

No one can just endure forever.

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I'm on my way to my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting, one of the requirements I have to complete to get Cricket back. I felt nervous all day.