nine years ago, i fled California like I’d left a dead body in a ditch and was waiting for it to be discovered.  Maybe I had.  Maybe that dead body was me.  Man. I was so unhappy.  I had been a fairly focused teenager.  I mean, I thought I knew what  I wanted my life to look like.  Career.  Well, that was it.  I never wanted to be married or have children.  I did always take for granted that I would have love.  I never believed I’d be alone.

My first true love was in high school and he sold acid, pot, and later, crystal and coke.  He did the latter so he could afford to come visit me at college, even after I was no longer in love with him.  I smoked and popped pills, but I didn’t do the nose drugs until we were in love. and we were in love.  The only way you can be when you’ve never been hurt before and have found a kindred spirit.

When we’d been together a year, we started on the heavier stuff, and those were long, loving nights all spun out and days recovering together.  So much love and caring.

For some reason, long after I stopped loving him, I still romanticized that drug love and would attract it.  I’d meet men and boys and we’d be obsessed with each other and it would turn out they were drug dealers with, you know, addiction issues.  We’d share this intense intimacy, because we’d spend all this time, spun out, talking, talking, talking, knowing, understanding, feeling, fucking, loving.  it wasn’t all artifice.  it was camaraderie. Because there’s something to feeling like you’re a waste and someone’s taking care of you.  Or that you’re a waste and you can take care of someone.

I had my drug issues, but I was always functioning, and I always knew I’d never let it get the better of me.  I mean, quite frankly, it’s what keeps me from staying home and masturbating all day.  I did a lot of drugs because I was unhappy and i was influenced by an environment that knew me as that party girl.  It was an identity I relished and couldn’t give up.  It’s probably remnants of that why i still sometimes drink more than should.

I always liked being the girl who handle her party and still function and even, do very well.

Tonight, I talked to the last lover I had in SF before i moved out here.  We haven’t spoken since that first year I moved.  We met a month before I left. It turned out besides our intense attraction, we both liked the same drug.  We were both on our way to going off the rails.  I barely remember much about it, except snippets of us in hotel rooms.  I remember us feeling really close.  And he was fucking hot.  But I remember all that accelerated intimacy.we talked tonight for almost 2 hours.  we didn’t remember

much about each other except that we had very warm feelings about each other (and that we had a lot of sex).  it was a combination of all the drugs and the fact that i was going to leave.    and at the end of the day, we were nice people.  you can not know someone very well, but if you’ve fucked them or done drugs with them, you know them.  you know something deep about them.  drugs, altered states and sex condense time.

we were kind to one another, even though we weren’t in love with each other.  we were sad and lost.

we’ve both been clean for years, and i’m actually not even drinking right now.  we’re both living the lives we want to be living.  we still have nothing in common and maybe we don’t want the same things, but we know who each other is.*

*and provided there isn’t some bizarre recent expectation that exists in fantasy or illusion, we’ll probably always appreciate each other because we know who each other is.