ostranenie, III

(written october 7, 2005, trinity college quad)

I used to drink my coffee with no less than two sugars and two creams, and likely two shots of Irish whiskey. Then, for a long while, I took it black, though I rarely omitted the Bailey's. Now it's back to cream and sugar, though this time round I limit it to one of each, and that whiskey is still present more often than not.

I find the older I get the more things truly hate my stomach. I have to wonder exactly the nature and extent of the damage I did to myself years ago. It's frustrating to look back on those times, through a lens that either fortunately or unfortunately has become clearer and more distinct over time. I'd never go back, of course, because if I am to be totally honest I never actually did anything to be proud of.

On the same token, and still striving for that honesty, I get tired of downplaying whatever constitutes the life experience I gleaned from those days, simply because the actions that precipitated that experience were admittedly foolhardy and immature and dangerous. I talk to people all the time who ind it easy to point down from their moral high horses with a Clint Eastwood glare and Supreme Court finger, and lay judgement on people like me, confident in their superiority on the matter because they've never smoked, snorted, eaten or shot anything - ever. Now, on the one hand I can't truly blame these people for their choices; if truth be told - again - they've probably made the right decisions as opposed to the wrong ones I seemed to fall in line with regularly.

But still, at times I truly wish these vanguards of the healthy lifestyle could perceptually experience those years of my own life, if only so they oculd understand that (while there were those who definitely fell into this category) I was not motivated in my decision-making process by the Degrassi High tenets of peer pressure or a desire to cultivate a particular image, not was I precisely motivated by the much-touted Teenaged Angst (patented Dr. Phil solution) or even by alleged "clinical" depression. Of course, I knew even then that the use or overuse of drugs and other questionable activites did nothing to make one introspective or deep or important in any way whatever; like I said before, this is nothing to wear as a medal.

But yet, irrevocably, there was some nameless motivation that drew me to vice; pushed me to pursue a quest toward complete numbness as quickly and completely as possible. I can't tell you what to call it; to this day I still don't quite know how to explain the functions of my head in those days. I wish I could, because of course - and everyone saw this coming - every so often those old desires slide precariously through whatever semblance of normality I've managed to construct in the years following: tickle on inside of stomach wall, burning along forearm skin, great big hole opening in my head into which all my insides migrate, and suddenly there isn't anything to see past the headlights anymore. I have this distinct feeling that poison - and I mean real poison, like nightshade - would feel like this. Sitting in my spinal cord somewhere, waiting to be woken up like a five-year acid flashback.

And the absolute worst part of the whole damn thing is that I will never be able to share that part of me with anyone who might be able to figure it out, and even with those who wouldn't. It's watertight and unaccessible; a younger me might have called it Pandora's Box, but now it's just an unwanted inheritance from a tighter time. And I've managed to convince myself that it's just nerveless scar tissue anyway; at least I guess so. Upon writing this, I can't even tell you where it came from.