Mini Autobiography

Okay, this is really weird, telling my story to a bunch of strangers. But maybe that’s the only way for me to tell my story. I mean maybe none of you give a shit, and that’s totally fine, but it’s pretty cool if you do take the time to read someone else’s story. I appreciate that.

So let me start waaaay from the beginning. I was born with my eyes wide open, I notice everything. Too early? Too bad. Wanna know something else I was born with besides an innate sense of observation? I was also given the gift, or curse depending on how you view it, of empathy. When I was a kid, I believed that even inanimate objects had feelings. I remember I was worried one time that a jelly donut, which I had no real desire to eat, would feel neglected if I threw it away, so in fear of hurting the jelly donut’s feelings, I ate it. And afterwards, I had an overwhelming feeling of guilt because I came to realize that maybe it didn’t want to be eaten, and that I may have just murdered an innocent donut. So, let’s suffice to say, that I am overly empathetic and that trait has carried over from my childhood and magnified. You know, we always want what we can’t have. I want apathy, and my empathy won’t ever let me experience apathy, unless I’m on drugs. So, that leads me to another facet of my personality, I am extremely self-indulgent. I try not to be, I mean at least none of my indulgences affect the people I care about since they don’t know about any of them. So, let me tell you how my self-indulgence started. At age 5 my grandpa died of cancer, just as I was getting really close to him. In 5th grade, my cousin was shot and killed in the Iraq war. Traumatic,  but that same year, a month later, my dog died. That sounds less dramatic than my cousin being shot, but at age 10, it seemed just as bad. Now, freshman year I had the privilege of watching my grandmother, whom I considered a second mother, die. But, that same year my best friend attempted suicide, she lived, thankfully and I spent the rest of that year on the phone with her, trying to talk her out of slitting her wrists. Now she is alive, and happier. Yay! But, she also won’t speak to me. So, whatever. I’ve moved on. This is just sounding like one big sob story isn’t it? Well, hold on, I get even more whiny.

Sophomore year, I drank a lot of whatever I could find around the house. Whatever, that’s nothing compared to what I ended up doing.  That same year, I tried marijuana for the first, and surprisingly, last time. It was fine, but since most people don’t really feel the effects the first time they do it, I got bored and moved on to cough syrup which I had easier and cheaper access to. So I did that until one day, around Christmas time in 2011, I found a couple full bottles of Oxycodone in the upstairs closet left over from my dad’s knee surgeries. Needless to say, I went through those in less than a year. In March 2012 I got pneumonia on my 16th birthday after a minor overdose which apparently lowered my immune system severely. I never saw a doctor or went to the hospital for this overdose, so when I went to my doctor for the pneumonia, he gave a hydrocodone cough medicine, and a lot of it. So, once I got better, I vowed to stay sober, that lasted 2 weeks. Lame, I know. On Easter, I relapsed, if you can even call it that after only two weeks of sobriety. A couple weeks after Easter, I was all out of Oxy, so I wound up abusing the hydrocodone for as long as I could make it last. Once that was gone, I went back to regular cough syrup, it was boring so I tried crushing up caffeine pills and they did something at least, but I liked opium better. I tried inhalants for a bit, but that got old quick. So I began abusing other forms of opiates, predominantly, heroin.

So, now the beginning of junior year, a syringe, lighter, spoon, tourniquet, my dealer, and of course, heroin are my only friends. I was rude, cynical, and sleepy. Wait, I’m still rude, cynical and sleepy, yet sober. But we’ll get to the sobriety in a minute. You know how they say you have to hit rock bottom before you really get sober? Yeah I’d love to say that I made a conscious choice to get sober, but let’s be honest, my dealer went into the military and I woke up one morning, in withdrawal of course, and said to myself, do you really want to spend the rest of your life praying to a God that you don’t even believe in for a lifetime supply of heroin? Naturally I answered no. So, the lack of a dealer in a nine square mile town, and desperation lead me to be the sober hermit you see today. I am graduating tomorrow, well today technically since it’s past 12 am. I’m moving to the city, and I am still in withdrawal even though I’ll have been sober for seven months a week from today. I’m proud of myself, but at the same time, I know that apathy is easier than empathy, and a little part of me will always crave that.