April 29th 1998: Camouflage

Yesterday I received a letter in the mail. I don’t think I can remember the last time I received a personal letter in the mail. It was probably back when I had a crush on this girl who lived in Tokyo, this is pre-internet days so the only correspondence we had was by post. But that’s a story for a different time.

Back to the letter at hand, I first heard about it when my mom paged me saying that there was a letter for me. So, you see, there was quite a bit of build up to seeing this letter, I was honestly excited to read this thing. As I got home from the methadone clinic, there it was, this bright pink envelope adorned with an image of hello kitty and little red hearts around it. I could immediately tell this letter was from Janice, I was there with her when she shop lifted this sickeningly cute stationary from a stall over on Canton Road.

With Hello Kitty and her bright red stars and the overall innocence of the adorable stationary staring at me, I was expecting something positive from this letter, maybe an apology or something that along those lines, I mean it’s a fair assessment, no?

Little did I know that the innocence and sweet, loving nature of Hello Kitty was only camouflage for a letter that would, again, bring me so much pain.  The letter conveyed how she was sorry about the fight the other night but that she was firm in her resolution that we needed to take a ‘BIG BREAK.’ I know that we both agreed to take a break but it wasn’t until I read this letter that it actually clicked.

There it was, official, it was set in stone, there’s no taking it back now. It really upset me but honestly what do you expect? Almost everything in my life is upsetting these days. Especially in my state of pseudo-euphoria brought on by the methadone so I lay on my bed and half slept, half fell into the bed just thinking, could I really handle this break? Could I handle all of it? This big break, kicking dope, methadone, fucking high school, could I handle it?  It was all a big question mark at this point.

Honestly, I couldn’t stand to think about it for much longer, if this was how it was going to be than what else could I do about it, right? I knew I could cope but I still had a glimmer of hope. It’s weird, probably the only reason I still have feelings for her is because I no matter what happens, even through all the bullshit, I still imagine we will end up together. I know at this point I am probably dreaming but everyone needs hope, right?

I woke up from my artificial narco-state to the phone ringing at 11:30pm; it was Janice calling me from the payphone at the 7-11. She went down to call me, apparently her phone is still disconnected, because she didn’t want to take a break like she had said earlier. She was sitting at home and found that she really wanted to talk to me and yes, she missed me too.

It was the best talk we had had in a really long time though I found myself getting pissed off that the phone kept cutting out every five minutes because she was running out of change. But it was nice, it was really nice and even with the phone cutting out we were able to talk for a good hour or so.

Now, I ‘m glad everything is starting to get back to normal with us, still that letter really fucking pissed me off even though she did apologize for writing and but its just really confusing all her back peddling and not being able to make up her mind. Whatever, for right now I’m happy, that will have to be enough. A few days ago I felt like my life was in total ruin, I was strung out worse than I had ever been before and Janice and me were not talking anymore. Now I’m on methadone, I haven’t done any smack all day, Janice and I are better than ever. It seems like the pieces of my life are beginning to fall back into place. I just hope I can keep it up ‘cause I don’t know if I can live through all that again.