Ain’t it fun when you know that you’re gonna die young

I think the investigation required to respond adequately to this comment from Regina is worthy of a post all its own, rather than trying to answer in my comments section.

Interesting…that which has caused you so much (the most?) pain is that which has transformed you… If not for Sprog, and if not for the sacrifice of (parenting) Sprog, would you still be a junkie?

I must admit that for a long time I maintained that I would never have been a junkie at all if not for Sprog’s placement. I never considered myself an addict until a scant few weeks before his birth when I tried to quit and discovered I could not. Maybe I had been an addict a long time and just never realized it because I had never tried to stop before, or maybe it was because my usage increased during my girlfriend’s pregnancy. I had never injected anything before that, ever. The very thought of mutilating myself with needles, loading my veins with filthy crap, was abhorrent to me. Someone asked me once what possessed me to start using needles, and I really had no concrete, reasonable answer. “Desperation”, I guess.

If we were (or I was) responsible for parenting Sprog, I would like to think that I would have cleaned up an awful lot quicker. Whether or not I truly would have, I cannot say. It has taken more than six years to get to where I am today, and while most of that time was spent using, most of it was also spent wishing I did not have to. In fact, I spent most of the time trying (but not really trying) to quit. I would go on a run for days or weeks, just getting loaded and damn the consequences (“fuck it all and fucking no regrets” being my catch-cry). Then I would run out of money and my conscience would start to prick me so I would make a half-assed attempt at quitting, fail miserably and go into maintenance mode – using just enough to keep me from dissolving into a sobbing mess and telling everyone who tried to intervene to get the fuck off my back because I was a functional addict. Honestly, functional addict? Sheesh. /facepalm

If Sprog had never existed, would I still be a junkie? Would I ever have been one? I honestly do not know. I hazard to say that if I had become a junkie, I still would be one today. I cannot think of a good enough reason not to be.

I guess it is alot to put on a kid. The notion that their fate determined their father’s fate too. So in practice I try very hard not to equate where I am at and where I have been with Sprog-related incidents. He is not responsible for me using. He is not responsible for me quitting. I would hate for him to ever think that anything he did would have repercussions that huge on me. These were not his choices, they were mine.

My writing skills are woefully inadequate, so I cannot possibly explain the complex nuances surrounding this issue. I would be lying if I said that things that happen in my life regarding Sprog do not affect me. They do. Every time I see a new picture of him, hear his voice on the phone, see his name in his own baby handwriting at the foot of a letter, even hear his name uttered by a complete stranger talking to her own boy, every time it is like the air is gone from the room and time stands still as I wait for it to hit. FROM HELL’S HEART, I STAB AT THEE! Like a head-on collision, those crystal moments where you can see individual pieces of broken vehicle hanging in the air like a scene from The Matrix and you think if the moment lasts long enough you can get out and glue all the pieces back together and everything will be OK. But then there is the jarring jolt and you realize you are too badly hurt to face the light so you shut your eyes and reach inside for the familiar and the safe. It may sound hideously wrong for a syringe full of filthy crap to be familiar and safe, but in my hands it feels like salvation and in my veins it feels like peace.

So yeah, do not wish me peace either.