PonderEthereal

There is a flavor to the air when it’s late like this. It’s silent out and every responsible upstanding person is in bed early enough to be useful tomorrow at work and school. And I’m going out to get a burger because I’m craving beef. Trance droning on and on. Barely any cars out on the road. I meet one at the four way and it’s an odd camaraderie type thing.. like “wtf are you doing out, dude. Aren’t you supposed to be in bed by now? Oh.. yeah.. I guess, me too. Catch ya later.” Or something.

The flavor comes… the late night, no one is out, sprinklers have been on, trance is droning flavor. It’s a grossness that eeks up over my shoulders and makes me want to wince. Even though I was cleaning up after teaching a witchcraft class - not wiping mascara from under my tired eyes. And even though I was going for a burger, not fervently studying every red light as if maybe I misinterpreted it. Even though the trance is from a radio station I listen to even during the day - not a softer gentler version of what was pounding through my body while doing very bad things. I still feel guilt. I feel like after my burger, I need to come home and take a shower because driving to get that burger was a very, very bad thing to be doing. Not because it was… but because I was driving at night when no one is out, when the air is still misty from the sprinklers and I was listening to trance. That’s it. That’s all it took to send me spiraling back to not-so-great moments.

Drugs didn’t fuck my head up.. or my body. They didn’t screw my life up. But they did leave me with guilt and regrets. Hell, I can’t drive to get a fucking burger without that feeling of ‘ick’ washing over me. It’s not the drugs themselves that were bad. It was how and why I used them and the impurity that went with using them the way I did. Every time I used them, they held up a big fucking magnifying glass to myself and my life and I never liked what I saw. I loathed it and spent 8 hours each time wallowing in it for the 1 hour of bliss that came somewhere in the middle. Searching for that bliss and on either side of it finding filth.

I don’t think that anyone I ever used with found what they were looking for at the end of the pills or tabs. I sometimes think I did when I go easy on myself because I understand who I am and what my shortcomings are and how ok and normal it is. But sometimes, even for me, the scariest, grittiest parts of me are hard to think about without those drugs to ease the way. Only now, I don’t use them anymore and the memories and the ability to see it is still there. It pulled a curtain back and I can’t ever close it again. Ignorance is bliss.

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t seen them. I think what separates me from most of my friends is that they spent the next few years trying to hide from what they saw and I tried to fly in the face of it. And sometimes I think I was successful. But sometimes when that ick rolls up over my shoulders when I’m sitting at a stop light in the middle of the night with trance droning in the background, I wonder.

I find other ways to accomplish the dimming effect. I eat junk to make me spacey and racy. I spend money when I don’t really NEED to for the rush. It’s just too raw and too scary to look behind me.. into the shadows, into the worst parts of me. Not really… because I’ll do it anyways. Even as I say that, I feel that 19 year old skinny, bony, girl-me puffing her chest out, glaring into the shadows and sayin’ “I aint skeered!” Like I said… I don’t know what ‘flight’ is. I wouldn’t know how to turn and run if it smacked me in the forehead. But it’s never easy.

She’s so damned afraid. Afraid of failing, afraid of being rejected. Afraid of being a bony, skinny nobody. Hah.. maybe that’s why I can’t seem to get back to that weight again. I can’t think about her without crying. I’ve done so much work between then and now on so many things… and now it comes back around full circle. There she is and I have to face her. I don’t remember anyone ever telling me that the worst demon I’d ever have to face is little ‘ole me. But damned if it isn’t. She’s a sunuvabitch.