The hunger

When I was eleven years old I read Anne Rice book “Lestat.” I remember being so transfixed with the longing of hunger that I wanted to grow up and be a vampire. I remember when I was fifteen years old sitting at the bus stop late at night hoping a vampire would find me, turn me and I would live forever. I guess there was something in me that need to feed on others. I felt for a long time I was starving but didn’t know for what. I never became a vampire. I did become an addict for pure destruction.

I never understood why it was a curse to live forever. I thought it was selfishly romantic. I guess it would be a curse to always be hungry and never full. It would be a curse to feel out of control with emptiness. It looked pretty from the outside, Vampires always were good-looking but they were vicious animals preying on the unsuspecting. It was not only to live forever but to kill forever even that which you think you might love.

I avoided alcohol until I was 22 years old. I was always afraid of it. I saw what it did to my family. I can’t remember a family gathering where somebody didn’t get drunk and act a fool. I avoided drugs. I knew too many drug addicts growing up. My mother is still a crack addict. My aunt was a heroin addict. I’ve seen crack addiction destroy good people. I thought I knew better. I thought if I avoided cheap crack I would be okay. I thought if I avoided paper bag malt liquor I would be okay. I thought if it came in a designer glass I would be okay.

My first cocktail, harmless. It was a whiskey sour. A sweet gay drink that seemed harmless as pink feathers blown by a child whisper. I still remember vividly the first sip, how it laid down so warm on my tongue like a sunset in Jamaica. I remember how it slithered down my throat, tickling and landing with a burn in my stomach. It was so instant, that inebriated orgasm, what I thought was an insignificant small death. Suddenly all the lights in the club got brighter. The more I sipped, the more I needed. It felt like happiness. That which was the wasteland became spring again. That which I felt was my cold heart became the fire of hell.

I remember the first time I did Meth. I met some guy at a hotel. He said it would make me feel free. He wanted to do some freaky things and felt I was too unattractively inhibited. I remember taking the pipe, inhaled the dancing ghost. He was right. I felt brilliant.

I was bitten. A supernatural beast seduced me in the night and took the blood from my veins. I was no longer human. I had become an addict. First sip, first smoke, I was an addict. Yet, I was an addict before I was an addict. I had been looking for that hunger my entire life and I found it in a liquor bottle and a meth pipe. I found it in demonic spirits and seductive poltergeists.
Like a vampire I quickly realized that I could never be full. Enough was never going to be enough. I was cursed with a hunger that was completely consuming like a black hole. Yes, in the beginning it was all laughs and giggles, dancing on table, driving fast in red cars, sleeping with so many men, and then I looked in the mirror and realized I was starving. My body was quickly wasting away. I had lost all my humanity. I was only the addiction. I was that which can not be spoken but only feared, outlawed, jailed. I only lived to feed it. I no longer cared about family, friends or a job. I no longer cared about myself.

I guess it began with the pain. It was the bullets of the past that knocked holes through my window letting in frigid rain and wind. I guess I needed something to repair or take me away from the damage.

Truth, what most addicts don’t want to speak about is that pain so we share our conquests and failures in dark rooms praying for the Jesus we so easily killed in ourselves.
The pain, the beginning, somebody got hurt, somebody refused to heal, or didn’t know how to heal. The pain, it’s the only word I can use or should I call it the haunting. It’s the past that refuse to die, how the soul overcompensates and I just wanted to feel good, maybe be loved.

The demons told me they loved me. They made me feel good. I just wanted the attention of false promises. I knew it was a lie but the truth hurt more, so l laid with my abuser thinking one day a fist would be a soft kiss.

The pain, self medication, it’s like pouring blood on a knife to stab again, thinking maybe if I get the knife bloody it get tired but the knife always want more blood.

The pain, I was an addict before I knew I was an addict, was starving before I knew I was starving, to feed on the misery that beget the misery.

The conundrum are those who get to live forever in their head, get high and forget the mirror, maybe that’s why vampire can’t se their own reflection, or why addict can’t se their own reflections living in a world they now longer reflect.

The great story about being a Vampire, even if you got seduced by the dark side you can still be human. What’s great about God, there is always a choice. I didn’t create it, it created me, but I accepted it, thinking it might love me, now I know it doesn’t love me, so I reject it. God will not save me, because that’s my choice. I turned my back on god so I can do it again.
I believe God doesn’t rescue. Jesus died on the cross. God let him die. God will let you overdose. God will let you kill yourself.

I know it’s a choice. I didn’t create it, but I accepted it. I can’t cure it but I can control it. I take the responsibility. I’m not powerless. Every temptation I know is a chance for me to be a better person.