Uncategorized – Page 2 – The Reprobate's Guide to Pancakes

Dispelling the Myths that Keeps Us Sick

There are not ‘good people’ and ‘bad people’. We are all changing, always. A few years ago I did mostly bad things, today I do mostly good things. Which one am I?

Some people can’t fathom another way of life. Many people, in fact. The sheer idea of living without substances is enough to make them run out and get high. If you can’t understand this way of thinking, you are blessed.

There is a common misconception that drug addicts enjoy being a addicted to drugs. The enjoyment for a drug abuser is a fleeting experience, when they are still using recreationally. Most ‘normal’ people put addicts in this very neatly defined category where they can be dismissed. They are defined as all that is evil, vile, reprehensible, beyond rehabilitation, unworthy of consideration, devoid of all value. But these are people. These are real flesh and blood people who are labeled similar to that of a serial killer or a supernatural manifestation of evil. I suppose that in most cases, people characterize addicts in this manner because they lack any type of personal experience with the subject and if that’s the case they should get educated or mind their own business.

I love watching documentary style television shows. In fact, those shows are just about the only reason I still have cable. Intervention, Nazi Fugitives, Live PD, Unsolved Mysteries, The First 48, etc., There are so many to choose from! I am glued to the human condition. I want to know what drives a person to become reckless, dangerous and destructive. I want to know the exact day their course was altered, the influence others had on their life, the thoughts and emotions that they felt powerless against, I want to know it all. I want to know what happens after the cameras stop rolling and public interest has waned. One thing always surprises me when I watch these shows. I find that I am far more interested in the culprit, the villain, than I am the victim. The portrait of a victim is the perfect depiction of innocence. It lacks depth. It lacks realism. In these stories, the victim is almost universally good and the offender, well he or she is Satan in the flesh. But in reality, nothing is that simple.

There are not ‘good people’ and ‘bad people’. We are all changing, always. A few years ago I did mostly bad things, today I do mostly good things. Which one am I? If I counted all of the good and bad deeds and charted them, which would win out? Do some deeds weigh more than others? Is there a way to calculate a person’s level of goodness? If so, what is the criteria and who decided it? Is there a bad thing I could do that would be so bad that it could never outweigh any future good? Is there a good thing I could do that would outweigh any future bad? There is no simple answer, so I think of the villain.

People act out their pain in a variety of ways. Drug addiction is just one manifestation of human suffering, and it is suffering. Your average junkie hates themselves. They hate being dependent upon a substance, they hate the way they have treated others. They feel unwelcome, unloved and incapable of changing the course of their life. In my years of addiction, I never once met a person who enjoyed stealing, lying, cheating, sticking needles in their arms, losing their children, watching their friends die, overdosing, going to prison, having no money, being homeless, losing their looks, or any of the other benefits of drug abuse. Given the choice, they’d all prefer to be a wall street banker (yikes!) to a street junkie. They just don’t see the choice, and this is the illusion of the disease.

It is incredibly difficult to convince an experienced addict that they could ever live without substances. Imagine someone telling you that you can live without arms and legs. It’s almost unfathomable. Yes, you know intellectually that people do it, but not you. You need your arms to drive and cook dinner. You need your legs to do yoga and walk the dog. All of your friends have arms and legs and you wouldn’t fit in. Your whole life would be turned upside down. If you didn’t have arms and legs, you would feel helpless and hopeless. That’s exactly what an addict hears at the mention of sobriety. They have lived so long being dependent upon substances that sobriety represents the removal of their most utilized tools. Without addiction, they don’t know who they are or how they will survive—-and they don’t trust you to know for them.

If you were an integral part of someone’s life when they fell into addiction and you didn’t stop it, why would they believe you could help them to come out of it? I’m not saying that you should or could have stopped it, I’m merely saying there is a lack of trust. For most addicts, the world is a messy place full of disappointment. They are looking for a simple answer to a very complex problem, but they, like most people, can’t see the forest for the trees. They are too busy focusing on any given day, any given screw up, any given immediate need that they can’t bother with tomorrow, much less a year from now. And similarly, most families and friends of these individuals are focusing on whatever crisis just happened, or if there is no crisis they are basking in the calm and hoping it is a sign of progress. Rarely is anyone developing a strategy to cure the disease, thus it becomes symptom management.

Managing addiction is about as possible as teaching a two year old how to drink alcohol responsibly. No, that doesn’t even make sense, does it? As a society we try all types of management methods and none of them work. Sorry, drug counselors, I disagree with you on this one. Methadone, Suboxone and all of their friends in the management business, they are a waste of time, money and hope. You can’t treat a chemical dependency with a chemical dependency and I think this is one of the tenets of recovery that most professionals agree on, yet many don’t treat patients with this in mind. We as a society have agreed to manage a problem that often began with a prescription, with a prescription. How daft are we?

We have created a society where chemicals are the answer to everything that ails you. And if the chemical itself ails you, there’s a chemical for that as well. When patients turn to street pharmaceuticals, oh well suddenly there is a problem. The patient has become a criminal and society has washed their hands of them. Are you following how illogical this is?

It is hard to distinguish the victim from the villain. In this story the addict can be the villain, or their family can be the villain, or the pharmaceutical industry, or the medical community, or the legislators who have waged war on drugs but take money from the industries that are catalysts for drug abuse. Guess which of these is the most helpless to defend themselves? Guess which is suffering? Which is profiting? Whose face will you see in the jail blotter? And when you do, recall that there are no villains. Recall that there are only people, some in impossibly difficult circumstances, often beyond your greatest nightmares. Then get on your knees and pray.

Happy Birthday, Sack Draggers

Kumbaya until your vocal cords bleed and that belief will still be horse shit. The world is a competitive place where injustice exists, has always existed and will always exist.

I’m convinced that somewhere along the way, likely in college, most people traded in their brain for a bag of feelings. They all lined up one by one at some very depressing window and systematically relinquished the rights to their mental faculties over to a spiritually starved and shrill intellectual. From that point forward, each morning they have heaved this stinking sack of emotions over their backs, having been left with no other resources. For any given scenario, they must reach into this bag and whip out something completely irrelevant. They might as well fight fires with foam fingers, which is almost exactly how I envision it when a person addresses logic with feeling.

There are monsters in the world telling people that their feelings matter. Monsters! They disguise themselves as parents, professors and politicians, but they are monsters. Every one of them should be defanged. Forget what they told you. Your feelings don’t matter to anyone but you and moderately to those who love you. The rest of the world is exempt from making decisions based around your feelings, and how could they be expected to? In a world dominated by feelings, everyone must be ultimately self serving. How many feelings can you possibly bow to simultaneously? You can’t serve your own emotion and serve the emotions of others unless your emotional needs require that you find acceptance through subservience, which makes you a slave. I’m asking you to think for a minute, so put down your sack of grievances for now and borrow a brain.

Creepy Mom — And what about little Nemo’s feelings?

I place much blame at the feet of parents, who have largely taught their children that the world will love and accept them. This is the single easiest way to set your children up for failure. Kumbaya until your vocal cords bleed and that belief will still be horse shit. The world is a competitive place where injustice exists, has always existed and will always exist. Hard work doesn’t always equate to success, merit doesn’t always get recognized and truth is often obscured. Smart people fail, idiots overcome and there is no guarantee that people will like you. Yes, I am cynical and you should be taking notes. Cynicism is your friend. Cynicism keeps you from falling into a pit of feelings and choking to death on a ‘why me?’. Cynicism prompts you to work harder than you might ‘feel’ you should have to. Cynicism prepares you for failure and makes successes that much more rewarding. Cynicism keeps entitlement at bay.

Around my house, we like to say, “The only thing I’ve gotta do is stay white and die.” That’s also the only thing any of us are guaranteed; who we are and our inevitable demise—and I would add, a relationship with God, if we so desire. Entitlement is a myth that belongs in a book right next to Thetan beings. None of us are promised opportunity, prosperity or even the most basic of needs. We aren’t promised good health, nutritious food, safe housing, a loving family, financial security, nor should we expect that any of it be provided. That’s a harsh reality for many of you and if your gut just did a flip, I get it. The truth isn’t always beautiful. Sometimes it’s a downright travesty.

Being aware of reality doesn’t mean you enjoy its implications. I wish that everyone could enjoy security and love in the fullest. I also wish I could play the banjo with my toes. I’d settle for my fingers and a lower BMI. Logical deduction is now equated with a lack of compassion, or worse, absolute bigotry. If you acknowledge that it isn’t possible for all people to enjoy the same opportunities, you are labeled a racist, bigot, elitist or whatever other dismissive term is trendy this week. It is a fact of nature and evidenced in history that there will always be people who have more than others. The type of people who will have more or less has made radical shifts over time. Up has become down and will become up once again. Mention that to a person with a sack of feelings and you will be addressed like a gold-foiled roasted baby smuggler. Denial will in no way alter reality, sack draggers.

When I was six, I thought I deserved to play softball games without ever attending a practice. Then I turned seven and I didn’t want to suck at softball anymore, so I went to practice. A lot of adults want to reap rewards they have no desire to earn and no one, not their professors, not their family, not their spouses, employers, police officers or politicians are making them turn seven. You can’t have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat! You can’t be good at softball if you don’t practice. You can’t demand healthcare if you don’t contribute. You can’t expect a promotion if you don’t earn it. You can’t effectively reach people if you behave irrationally. It shouldn’t even be necessary to state it, but that’s where we are as a society.

Personal responsibility is the key to success, to feeling less and achieving more. I alone am responsible for my own life and if I am fortunate enough to find help in my family, friends or government, I can accept it as a blessing. There isn’t a single thing lacking that I am owed. I require no endorsements, and neither do you.

Happy birthday, sack draggers. I now pronounce you seven.

Tomorrow, We Laugh, but Today…

If you accept the notion that white supremacists are rampant in our community based on a few in the news, you must also accept that there is a rising movement of politicians sending penis photos to young girls.

It has come to my attention that I’m a privileged white woman. Someone please tell this to my life because it is clearly confused. I could have sworn when I woke up this morning that I was poor, unemployed, living in an impoverished and largely minority neighborhood, have a felony background, a history of drug abuse, an 18 year old car, no means of getting a higher education and absolutely no trust funds, stocks, bonds or gold coins. Oh, I do have a good credit score! Damn, I’m privileged. I can buy milk and pay interest.

When liberals dislike something they’ve read, their first inclination is to levy a personal attack on the author. I would be ignorant to expect anything better, as this is perfectly in line with the left’s M.O. when approaching anything remotely colored outside of their comfort zone. Identity politics rule, emotionally charged demands must be submitted to, feelings suppress facts, and appearance reigns over substance. If I say something they find objectionable it can be dismissed because I’m clearly an out of touch asshole. A privileged, out of touch asshole, whether that’s true or not. They work to suppress any opinion that isn’t perfectly in line with their own and any tactics, no matter how repugnant, may be used to do so. After all, they are our gods and must destroy us for our benefit. This is the very definition of an abusive relationship.

I’ve never claimed that racism doesn’t exist, though people have a habit of reading towards their own preconceived notions. I know racism exists because I’ve experienced it. I’ve been white at DSS. I dare you to try it. I’ve had Mexican men stalk me through Walmart, black people call me derogatory names when I walked down the street, stepped from my car and when I walked into my own home. I’ve been called white bitch more times than I can count. I’ve been dismissed as privileged and wealthy, threatened, passed in line, shoved, ignored by customer service, blatantly refused by customers, given the eye roll of death and sexually harassed. And guess what? My experiences don’t negate yours. They can exist together without conflict. Injustice exists, but it doesn’t own us. These events represent a small portion of life. They do not reflect most people or experiences. Surely, I’ve just broken some rule by saying that. But I wasn’t born guilty and I’m no social eunuch. If my experiences don’t fit with the accepted narrative, the narrative is flawed.

I’ve also been targeted outside of my race by police based on where I live, the car I drove or the clothes I wore. I was pulled over, harassed and accused of having committed breaking and entering, felony eluding and possession of narcotics simply because I drove down a particular street! Do I doubt for one minute this happens to other people, other races? Of course not. Racism and profiling will exist as long as people exist. Is this even up for debate? That said, I do not for one minute accept that there is a substantial population who seeks to destroy based on race—-not today, not in this country. To conflate the existence of racism with a racially motivated movement is derelict and dangerous. If you accept the notion that white supremacists are rampant in our community based on a few in the news, you must also accept that there is a rising movement of politicians sending penis photos to young girls. How about millions of men readying to murder their wives? Or clowns? There are untold number of creepy stalker clowns secretly determined to take control of our country by way of machetes and the lure of a balloon animal. Or what about BLM and Antifa, both equally dangerous? Are they also sweeping our communities? I’m sorry if you think so, that’s a terrible way to live.

It is vital that we look at these issues objectively. Often the perspectives provided to us by the media are wholly inaccurate or wildly over exaggerated. As I stated before, there are political players who use race to divide us. They organize and pay for protesters by contributing to third parties, use their bully pulpit to inflame underlying tensions and give a voice to extreme marginal groups to provoke an emotional response that is far greater than warranted. We are being manipulated so that those in power can remain in power. They need us to need them. They need us to feel victimized, marginalized and discarded so that they can be our saviors. Look at congress. They are the very last people I would ever want to save me. I wouldn’t trust them to boil macaroni, much less design my opinions.

Adolph Hitler’s name has been thrown around a lot in reference to the alt-right, President Trump, or frankly anything conservative. But if Hitler was a master of anything it was creating division between groups by placing blame at the feet of one, whilst inflaming the insecurities of another. While they hated each other, he ate desserts, took speed and killed millions of people. Who was the real danger? Our leaders and media use this same approach. When you were a child, did you play Mad Libs? You don’t like your ________. Well, _________ is to blame. You don’t like your life? Well, the Jews are to blame. You don’t like your community? White supremacists are to blame. You don’t like your campus? Antifa is to blame. You don’t like your police? BLM is to blame. You don’t like your job? Trump is to blame. Do you see how this works? While you fill in the blanks, the powerful line their pockets and set the stage for the next diversion. When you play the blame game, everyone loses but the one who designed it.

I shouldn’t have to justify my opinion. It’s my God given right to have one. I shouldn’t have to be a minority, know poverty intimately or live in a dangerous neighborhood to have a voice. Most of our leaders have experienced little of that, yet they get to decide policy every single day. If I was lily white, wealthy and had never stepped outside of my gated community, I should still be allowed to voice my opinion on any matter as I see fit without fear of retribution. Even if it was ignorant or cruel, it would still be my right. If people in our country really wanted to get to the truth, really wanted to learn about one another and where our values lie, they wouldn’t work so hard to suppress opinions. There are millions of people in this nation who have been shamed into silence by way of bullying. But me? I have nothing to lose. I have no social status, reputation or high profile job to protect. I can speak honestly, at least for today, and I will exercise that freedom so long as I have it. The climate has become so dangerous for the majority who lives outside of the accepted narrative that the only way to find the pulse is through an election. If you were surprised by the last election, look to silencing. Continue to suppress dialogue and you will continue to be surprised.

When I leave my home, I don’t feel that the world is conspiring against me. This isn’t because I’m white, this is because I do not live with the spirit of fear, but rather faith that for the most part, we are a loving and giving people, fashioned after our creator and capable of much good. I meet every person with the hope that they will return kindness and usually I am correct. My experiences with the left, racism and profiling are not representative of the whole. They don’t determine my choices, my judgement of others or the quality of my life. I keep the good, release the bad and look to myself when my life is lacking. I, above all others, bare responsibility for my life and there is no room for victimization. I am loved, as we all are, and no amount of media hype can ever convince me otherwise.

If you got all of the way through this piece, I commend your patience. Baking the perfect blog requires a variety of ingredients. I promise, my next post will have a dash less morose and a pound of melted bizarro.

Dogs Driving Buses: Negotiable

There’s not an award ceremony for the people who agree with society. Everyone would win! It isn’t earth shattering, it’s annoying.

Give me your opinion on murder. Give me your opinion on rape. Give me your opinion on letting toddlers drop acid. Give me your opinion on hiring dogs as school bus drivers. Give me your opinion on teaching a comatose person water aerobics. Give me your opinion on eating glass. Give me your opinion on urinating in your milk.

The definition of obvious is itself obvious to anyone above the age of four, as are most social justice ‘issues’. Just like I loathe suffering the deranged repeating the same bad joke to me once a week for eight years, I loathe people professing opinions about things that were long ago agreed upon by the vast majority of society. We get it! Bad things are bad, good things are good, Brooke Shields’ voice makes babies cry and dead people can’t sing in the choir. What a waste of time to repeat it!

My Twitter and Facebook feeds are littered with this junk. This week, at least half of my social media acquaintances are going to let met know how bad racism is, as if that were actually up for debate. What do they want? There’s not an award ceremony for the people who agree with society. Everyone would win! It isn’t earth shattering, it’s annoying. There aren’t millions of people who want a race war. It just doesn’t exist, no matter how bad you wish for it and clearly some do.

When you state the obvious, you have automatically reduced your audience to your adversary. You have the answer, they are ignorant and you deserve the biggest piece of chicken at dinner. You’ve made the assumption that there is a need for your wisdom, which there isn’t. Your audience thinks just like you do and we are having salad for dinner anyway.

The media plays up the existence of extreme factions for ratings and by God, I would hope everyone would understand that by now, but I ask for too much. Political players amplify these same factions, in some cases even funding them, to promote their own agendas, win voters, maintain division within the community and with it control of the population. Often they completely manufacture division and hope their targets in the community will fall in line behind it. Your outrage is purchased and controlled and professing it makes you unoriginal, redundant and unnecessary to anyone but your puppeteers.

When you feel it is necessary to state what should be plainly obvious, take note that you’ve been put on the defensive by merely existing. Don’t entertain such nonsense. You aren’t guilty until posted compassionate. When you engage in this kind of apologetic appeasement for something which you took no part in, you are complicit in a culture of blame and shame. That’s bullying, not to mention presumptuous and condescending.

Tell me why cats love tea parties, tell me why children should grow on trees. Tell me extruder guns confound you or all of the reasons why Tom Cruise isn’t an alien. Tell me you hate my writing, disagree with my opinions or why you refuse to look up the words you don’t know. Tell me the water is poisoned, the TV is spying on you and your stuffed rabbit knows where the bodies are buried. I love it all. Just don’t preach to me about what isn’t in disagreement!

Tell me you can form an opinion with depth and deliberation by forming an opinion with depth and deliberation and if we disagree, so be it because now you know, there’s no chicken at stake anyway.

Swimming Without Shores

I don’t watch movies. They bore me. I rarely watch TV. It irritates me. I can’t be scared anymore. I don’t get butterflies in my stomach or feel ignorantly hopeful about anything. I make no assumptions that my time on Earth will be OK. I’m never surprised when things go poorly. I assume the worst of strangers, the best of no one and consider all of my words will be used against me. I clean when I’m anxious, cry when I’m out of ideas and when I’m both, I sit very quietly and allow it to crush me from all sides. I pray and then pray that I will know what to pray, the perfect sequence to unlock the will of God. Friends are few and at a distance, family is inside but not beyond my guard tower. Everyone is subject to removal. They call this Fear.

I read books. They fuel me. I write stories. They cleanse me. I am amazed by the power of my own mind and the places it takes me. I am electrified by the formation of a thought I’ve never had before and giddy when it flows effortlessly like warm butter. I am always surprised when people prove me wrong. I forgive the worst of strangers, expect the best of no one but myself and consider that if I am willing to say it, I better be willing to stand by it. I sleep when I’m content, share with everyone when I’m creative and the two make a magical pairing. I forget God in the midst of my mess and kick myself for relying on my own understanding. The friends who remain love me more than I deserve, family, beyond all cause, and only because they choose. Everyone is necessary. They call this Love.

I had more ‘friends’ in addiction than I do today. Indiscriminate, I had a home in my sick heart for all. Today, I live in world, I’ve found, that very few may enter. It’s healthy, it’s lonely and it’s what I must do to survive.

There’s a kind of shock that comes when you wake up from a nightmare. When you wake up and realize that, beyond all belief, the nightmare was real, the shock settles in for good and becomes a part of your arsenal. Christ tells me to fight this fear with faith, experience tells me to respect it by instinct. The two war daily within me. I am forgiving and condemning. I am love and hate. I am surrendered, I am my own God. I am patient, I am incensed. I am given over to emotion and a controlled demolition. Every day I put my feet on the floor, fail, cry and take a step.

Tonight I saw an acquaintance in line at the grocer. I don’t know which I bowed to in that moment, Christ, fear or both in concession. He was/is in very poor condition with tremendously swollen legs and cracked soles and no, I don’t know the exact cause. Were I to give an educated guess, I would say a heart infection brought on by drug abuse. I may be off base. Either way, I turned and left without speaking to him, leaving him to walk home on his injury. I don’t feel bad and I would hope that my relationship with God is so that I would know unequivocally if I had erred. I am a brother in Christ but also a mother in Christ and thus I feel a responsibility to stay far removed from people in these situations. This is the tightrope I walk between love and safety.

I will pray for him and truthfully, there I am most powerful. I don’t know how to function well between these two places without erring. It may be impossible. I am only sure that it isn’t my job to save, only to obey. I’ll leave the saving to Christ, he’s far better at it than I.

1 John 3:1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

When Gifts are Gutters

I’ve never been very good at isolating what I want in life. I know what I want in food, in friends and fun, but the big picture is an obscure galaxy of possibilities. I have always had the sense that I exist somewhere outside of my body, somewhere outside the laws of physics. My true self is always just a little beyond my reach. When I was young, I would lay very still in my bed and suddenly I could feel the separation between my spirit and my body; two independent entities working together. My spirit felt trapped within the burdensome confines of my body. If you’ve ever cooked pasta al dente, that was how I perceived the experience. My spirit was hard, structured and tangible like the core of a noodle and my body was soft, vulnerable and incasing, like the exterior of the noodle. There was a definite separation between the two, though they were formed to fit one another. It feels strange to describe it today, but I can still visualize and remember the feeling to it’s most intricate detail. I would try to force my spirit free of my body with no success. I have always been trapped in this foreign prison.

It’s not that I hate my body. I just don’t identify with it. I am lithe, agile and ever expanding, soaring in all directions, dimensions and caving inward just as quickly. I am electric, reaching out into every space and engaging. Every thought, feeling, idea or desire is within my reach. Every pain is mine and yours and shared and there are no barriers between. My body, however, is a sloth. It separates me from all other things, defines my space and attributes, eliminates possibilities and engages only in within the limits of some laws I can’t understand. It tells me no, slows me down, forces pauses and structure and consumes too much of my time with it’s demands for nurturing.

When I was young I thought everyone felt this way. I think we all assume the rest of the world thinks as we do. I was wrong. My friends liked it here on Earth. They had Whitney Houston, dance recitals, Keds and fudge pops. They thought about things they could feel and touch and never felt the kick of their spirit as it slammed against their kidneys. So, where does a ten year old go when they have no one to identify with? My friends were too simple, adults too preoccupied.

I went from wanting to be a doctor to wanting to know why I was here. Many nights I prayed that Jesus would appear before my bed and just tell me what to do. Simple request. I’m glad he didn’t though, because telling a ten year old they will become a heroin addict probably won’t lend to their journey. And why even try? I was heading there all on my own.

I dove into books on history, poetry, philosophy, religion, mystical practices, psychology and anything that might explain what the hell I was supposed to be doing. I should have had my Master’s Degree by the age of twelve. I knew I had a job but no one was telling me what it was. I scrawled quotes into the undercarriage of my bunkbed, wrote poems, songs and stories. And when that wasn’t enough I fell into a depression.

The summer that I turned twelve, I fell into a deep hole. I can recall laying on our couch and crying into the cushions. I knew. Somehow I just knew my life was about to change forever and there was nothing I could do about it. I knew that my time as a child was over. I knew that there would be pain, long-suffering and consequences. I knew I wouldn’t run in the woods or steal gum from the soda shop. I knew I wouldn’t get a pass. I knew that I wouldn’t dance to The Bodyguard or play king of the hill. I knew it was coming and it came like a freight train, mowing down the life I had known. It was a terrible summer and I’ve never been the same person since.

Most of society has such a weak perception of drug addiction. All you have to do is read the ignorant comments on a news article to find out that most people are small-minded and inexperienced on the subject. They want them all thrown in jail, they think they are all horrible people, they call them scum, low-lifes or wish they would die. Those are easy conclusions to come to from their cozy suburban homes. The truth is, junkies are more complex, more feeling, more intuitive, sensitive and intelligent than your average newspaper subscriber.

I didn’t stumble upon drug addiction. I went there naturally. I was born into a world that didn’t respect feelings, spirituality, existentialism or originality. I was told I should fit into a specific set of socially admirable criteria and if I didn’t, I was a failure. I was told to like crap music, care about clothes more than people, want money more than freedom, regurgitate facts and be the best fleshy little robot I could be. And when I couldn’t do that, drugs got me there. Drugs allowed me to stop thinking and start operating on a low-level. Drugs eliminated my desire to know God, to know my path or to reach beyond my body and grasp the things that can’t be seen. The first time I snorted an oxycontin, I heard angel’s sing through the sound of my own vomiting. I thought I had found an exit from my pain, but instead I had entered hell on a straw.

There is a part of every junkie that was snuffed out with their first hit and usually it was the best part of them. Usually, it was the part of them God created especially to bring joy, love and beauty to this world.

Today, I’ve come to an agreement with my body. Sobriety doesn’t relieve every struggle. We aren’t exactly friends, but I make it work for me. I let it exist in the world I’ve chosen to create, like an annoying guest that I’m willing to tolerate for a time, because I know one day it will die and with it, my prison. And at night, I fly.

In Every Stock Photo Lies a Killer

If you play the air drums professionally, talk to office equipment or ask for hot dog money from the mayor, we’ve already begun a friendship.

Look at this ridiculous stock photo. The photographer never thought “This will be the photo that makes National Geographic!” No, he thought, “This new iPhone is amazing! I can zoom so far I see my career!” I like it though, because somewhere far below the range of the shot there is a hidden culture of creatures, diverse and distinct, devouring each other, fighting for space, food and survival. Our world is just like this. We wear pants and keep our elbows below the table but behind all of the pretense, we are no different. If you have ever spent time in a Walmart parking lot, you’ve witnessed this reality.

Ocean Stock Photo

I used to believe that some people had it all figured out. They wore watches with fancy little numbers and dials, changed their oil on the recommended date, avoided nitrates and instilled a love for the classic writers in the hearts of orphans. Only someone on dope could believe such nonsense. All it took was a few weeks of sobriety for me to realize that everyone is fucked up in their own unique way. Some people smell bad and that way is never going to land on my list of acceptable oddities. Others hide their issues behind iron gates and decorative corbels —equally offensive. Some of us play our sickness out in a parking lot or jail cell. Pick your poison, you’re spilled milk like the rest of us and I love you for it.

I’ve always preferred those who offer up their demons like business cards. If you play the air drums professionally, talk to office equipment or ask for hot dog money from the mayor, we’ve already begun a friendship. If you say you’ve just been released from the mental institution and you are selling hand-carved soap to support your dope habit, I’ll happily give your eulogy. Most people in society look down on these folks, but they are far more respectable than your garden variety politician or housewife. You don’t have to worry whether they will betray you. Of course they will! And doesn’t it feel good to know where you stand?

Three of the best weeks of my life were spent in a psychiatric facility. During that time, I met a respectable housewife who suddenly believed she was talking to God. I also met a respectable furniture craftsman who thought he WAS God. They had been placed in the ER together, divided only by a curtain and their families were lucky enough to hear them talk to one another, God and his child. Both had experienced some sort of mental breakdown which resulted in unmatched comedy. After they both exited their delirium, we found out they worked across the street from each other but had never met! I felt like the luckiest witness on the planet. What kind of good dope junkie must I have been to have stepped into this mess? I will never forget them and the hope they gave me. Anyone can be bat-shit crazy—-anyone. There was hope for me yet.

I feel sure that both of them went back to their suburban lives without testimony to others. They returned to their dinner parties, business meetings, manicured lawns and never spoke a word of it, not even to their most liberal friends. Maybe they saw someone slipping, maybe they saw an acquaintance with that look, the look that begs for help but holds the mouth hostage, but the impulse for honesty was buried deep. They are you and I and everyone in-between. But I know, and now you do too.

None of us are exempt. I’m a mother of two with a felony drug conviction and a vault of stories that would make most men cringe. I’m not dumb, I’m human, we all are, and for that I am forever thankful. Without mistakes, this life would be bland, boring and utterly devoid of killer stock photos.