I woke in a cold sweat tonight, shaking from this dream, it’s the same one I’ve had for years now. Good God, has it been that long?? So much time has passed, so much has changed in my life, so much gained, so much lost, but still the visions come to me, clear as you would imagine fine crystal to be. Not that cheap Wal-Mart special, I’m talking high quality here, as if it were happening before my eyes. Here and now.
I awake to masked and distant figures hovering over me, everything is out of focus but as the images come together, as the figures fall into place, they’re looking at me inquisitively, as if some novelty item. I see them poking and prodding but I can’t feel a thing. I see movement in their lips and from the nature of their faces I know it’s about me but I can’t hear anything, sound hasn’t kicked in yet.
As my senses of sight, sound and touch slowly start to come back to me; I look beyond the figures, deep into the sterile white of the ceiling. I’m as confused as I have ever been in my life as to where I am and just what the hell am I doing here? I consider myself a man but I am not afraid to say when I’m scared and right now, right here I’m scared.
And as my sense of fear overrides my uncertainty and I regain the senses that I once took so for granted, I attempt movement, and that, right there, is when my fear really takes over. I CAN’T MOVE. My motor skills, they’re fine, but the whole world just came crashing down in an ungodly sobering reality. I’m tied up. All my limbs are attached to bedposts and I; I’m in the hospital. I attempt to flail my whole body, just trying to defy these restraints. Hoping, wishing, praying that this just isn’t true, that I can move, but nothing. The only thing that comes out is a violent thrashing of my head‚ I think I’m screaming but I can’t hear it‚ I think I’m crying.
The whole world is still blurry to me, sight and sound are arriving in fragments, I hear words like “death” and “critical,” I know there was something mentioned of “adrenaline.” Broken images are filtering through of doctors and orderlies, all very vague and distant. I’m losing consciousness again I can feel it; I’m starting not to care anymore not about the restraints, not about the creepy, contorted faces of doctors. I feel myself slipping, slowly slipping away and I’ve accepted the fact that I’ve brought this all upon myself. I’ve accepted that when you shoot heroin as a profession you will land yourself in this sort of predicament. Hell, this is not the first time I’ve been here, and I know now that this is not going to be my last. I brought all this upon myself and I don’t care anymore, I just really don’t care.
All the images are starting to unravel again, the sound is getting very choppy, the way it does in a movie theater when the sound goes out, it all distorts in a cacophony of loud and soft, then finally nothing. I’m losing consciousness again, or can this be something more, is this the acceptance that comes with the end? Is this the complete and utter feeling of contentment that comes with death?
I think I’m still screaming, I think I’m still crying, my head is still thrashing, but this has all become a matter of instinct, I’m not even thinking about it anymore. I’m fighting to keep myself from fading in and out of consciousness and in my disjointed vision I see an image that brings my reeling to a screeching halt. My sister is watching. Behind a cadre of nurses, my little sister is watching me, my little sister. My flailing, my screaming, they all stop as I lock eyes with her. She’s staring right at me; she’s been staring at me the whole time. Her eyes, my God, her eyes are tinged with such an incredible sadness. I’ve never seen her cry before, not really, nothing beyond a scraped knee. She’s crying. I want to howl out to her, “Don’t look at me, don’t fucking look at me” but nothing comes out. I try again, with everything that’s left in me, I want to let out a banshee’s wail, “Don’t fucking look at me.” Again, nothing‚ her eyes are deadlocked with mine, and as much as I wish I could just gouge out my own eyes so that I can’t see her, I can’t fucking look away.
I’m choking back the tears now, everything has become ultimately clear, I am blatantly conscious and God, I wish I wasn’t. Please kill me, strike me down, I’ve never asked for anything as much as I am asking for this my Lord, Please Kill Me! But, to no avail. My prayers go unanswered and I’m stuck here in this, for lack of a better word, shame. I do not want my sister to see me like this; I want my clothes back on. I strain to look at my arms and the almost freeway of needle marks, these craters of disgrace. I want to run to a corner, a cave and bandage them up, not coming out till they are fully healed just so she wouldn’t have to witness them. DON’T FUCKING LOOK AT ME!
They stuck a catheter in my urethra next. Now, don’t get me wrong, no matter how much I’ve racked my brain, there is not a thing I could possibly imagine more excruciatingly painful than a large, cold, sharp object being inserted into the tip of my penis. But I would take it any and every day in comparison to the pain in having to look into my sister’s eyes for one more second. I would take it any day compared to this disgrace I have harbored everyday since that early Sunday morning.
I cried out in agony as I felt millimeter by millimeter of that long, cold, metal needle knit its way up inside my most private of areas. I screamed and erupted in spasms of torment as violation slowly moved northwards from an area that, in my wildest of dreams, I would never imagine being penetrated. In my jerky outbursts, something went wrong. Despite their best efforts to hold me down, to stop my movement, something screwed up and a geyser of blood sprung up from my nether regions. The blood didn’t seem to stop, it flowed like a fountain and I felt it gathering at the small of my back then begin to travel northbound till pools collected at the nape of my neck.
I was finally granted my wish, my sister looked away, she couldn’t take it anymore, the blood, the cries, she just couldn’t take it. But the damage had been done. I believe it when they say that the doorway to people’s soul are in the eyes, bright with hope and happiness or dim with sadness. And the sadness I witnessed was enough to last me more lifetimes than it could possibly take to repent for all the damage I’ve done.
I don’t remember much else, or at least, I don’t care to remember much else. The visions of that cold March morning have stuck with me ever since. And that, to me is more than I care to ever remember. There was more, I know there was a lot more, but I’ve hidden the rest of that in a cell so far beyond my grasp and have thrown away the key.
But I tried, believe you me; I tried to atone for my sins of that morning and almost every morning thereafter. That night I cried myself to sleep, swearing myself off the dope for good. And like most dirt-ditch prayers, it lasted a little longer than a week. And the burden I carried from that morning lasted me the next fifteen years. Fifteen years, where so full of shame, I drew it up into a syringe a shot it back into myself. My only possible solution to cope with that and my incalculable number of what I view to be sins. Sins, which I have and will continue to sanctify until the day, when my wish is granted, I die.