The worst part about all of this, besides the lying and the waste of money, is that I didn't start writing again until I was doing coke. There was nothing. Each day was just another spent working, living, diving deeper into depression, sleeping more and more, feeling as if my life should have ended when I tried to kill myself (I couldn't even do that right). Sure, I thought about writing, but it felt pointless--and I knew that no one should read something I had already lost faith in before I had put pen to paper. Writing becomes a comfort when I can't trust anyone else.
I keep thinking about emailing my last writing professor, who told me I could talk to him if I ever needed someone to listen. Writing about my suicide attempt a year before left him a bit unsettled. He was actually great to talk to during office hours, as if he was just a friend or an uncle. I can't take advice from my own friends because people my age don't know shit, just like me.
So I find myself again staring down at the M.C. Escher book placed atop the stove and now covered in a thin dusting of powder. This is all I've ever wanted: to write, and get high, and write more. Sometimes I even pretend Jim Carroll's ghost is here, and he and I talk. I started doing it when I lived alone in Paris and would write late at night about him for college. It felt like I had a mentor, even if it was just my imagination.
Soon all the coke will be gone again and I'll be left empty and cold. We're out of weed too. There will be nothing left to take solace in. Maybe a shot of whiskey? It'll make the coke last longer.... It was a gift, so it doesn't matter if you spit it out.
Lucinda: You're a fantastic writer. I read your blog when you were a young punk still in high school about to go off to college.
ReplyDeleteYou are and were a brilliant writer. Your phrasing, your sentence structure, the flow of what you write, how you choose words are magical, hell, your diction is great.
Even when you were younger- you understood the sublime and the grotesque- something most people don't begin to understand or even develop a way to incorporate that into their writing until they're much older.
You're a great writer. You knew to talk about the contrasts between being a punk at heart and having to live up to another set of standards just to get by in the world.
Your stories from France were just as good.
You're a great writer, I just hate you have to have the problems all of us have with our vices. I am not anti-drug, if anything, I am pro-drug because I use. I love to get high, and as a free person, I live it and believe it that it is my right to put into my body and take my mind places where I choose to go.
You were a great writer when you were a kid chipping, you were a great writer when you were going sober for periods, and you're still a great writer.
The coke doesn't change that, for better or worse.
Thank you so much--your words really gave my confidence a boost. These past few months have thrown me a bit adrift, but I'm so glad to be writing again and that someone else has read it (and enjoys it!!). Hopefully the other shoe doesn't drop too soon, and I can keep it going because I've been really enjoying writing and I hope you continue reading! Drop a comment again soon! (You're the first on this blog, and I'm so glad that it was so positive--I always dread those crazy negative ones.)
ReplyDeleteBTW,
What's your d of choice?