Quitting Heroin

You know how they say addiction happens to you without you knowing it? That you start off thinking all you need is just one little taste? And one becomes two, three….sixteen? And soon you can’t even breathe without thinking of your poison? And you have no idea why you even started doing it in the first place? You have reasons for anyone who asks but you honestly have no clue what you are doing because if you did you would stop?

It’s all true. Gather around, it’s story time.

The first time I did it, I didn’t want to. I didn’t even like it. No shame in admitting that is there? I was conforming to something I thought was in line with my free spirit. Modern day hippie who wanted to embrace the world and justify all its evils as misunderstood magic. The second time, I wanted to make sure that it was just as bad as the first time. It wasn’t. It was tolerable. The third time, third time is always the charm. I liked it. Goddammit I liked it.

Before I realized it, I was addicted to it. Making it the god I was supposed to worship on Sunday morning. I was leaving bits of my soul as I shared my body with people who had no idea what to do with those pieces of me. With people who diluted me, made me less of who I am destined to be, leaving the souls they accumulated over time in me.

Because I was so empty.

My body was some free dumping site and I could feel all that pain, all these different souls warring inside me. And the pieces of me that were scattered all over were calling me. Asking me to go get them. To go save them and bring them home but I was too busy tangled up in men’s legs and their sheets. Lying to myself. Disillusioned that their cum would act as glue for all that was broken inside me. Letting them have me while convincing myself I was spreading…preaching love and happiness to the world with the lips between my legs.

It took me a minute to realize my ‘gospel’ was not getting across. To realize I was not really spreading joy in the world, just increasing the hurt. See, pain had always been addicted to me. It could not stop using me because I made it feel loved.

This has to be part of the reason I did not quit this drug sooner. Pain loved me and I got high of its love. Whatever relationship pain and I had was ours to have, but when I realized it had made me its vessel, that I started affecting other people, I knew I needed to stop. No rehab though. I was diagnosed with lupus. That was all the rehab I needed. When a doctor looks at you and says he hopes you are religious because you need God, things come into perspective.

But I was not going to stop for just me.

Oh please. Do not roll your eyes and say that if you do not do something for yourself you will never stick to the decision. I don’t know who came up with that logic. That must have been a very cold selfish person. I did not stop for me. I stopped for everyone else.

These men I shared myself with, they were not mine. I couldn’t call any of them my anything. There were always other people. There was always a girl somewhere in her bed using her tongue to say a prayer for this man. This man that was at that point using his tongue to make me call out God’s name.

Did she know he had come to leave the parts of her she had given him last night inside me? Did she know it only took a couple of minutes for him to kill the her she had given him and abandon it with me? Was I worthy of being a grave site for her? Was I even going to bury her or would I be a morgue for her. Just pass her off to the next man to take to the next woman and the next and the next…? Why was I an agent of death pretending to be one of light? And what about the girl saving herself for her husband? Wanting to be pure for him? Does she know he will take pieces of me to corrupt her? Does she know my demons will keep her awake at night?

I realized my body was not going to save the world. So I took that job away from my heroin and gave it to my soul. Whatever was broken in these men, wasn’t getting fixed in me. Whatever was empty in me wasn’t getting filled by them.  I was tired of spending hours on end seated on my bathroom floor mourning for all my deaths.

I needed to be able to look my daughter in her eyes one day and tell her to wait. Not three dates, not three months, but to wait for the person whose being will become one with hers. To wait for the man that will touch her soul before he dares touch her body. I want to be able to tell her that I did it. I may have had a rough beginning but I smoothed it out and waited, and that it was the best decision I ever made.

I need her to know her ability to love doesn’t lay in the crease between her legs. That if humanity could not be saved by the flood of Noah, it will surely not be saved by the wetness inside her. I don’t want her to spend her forever waiting on men to save her or trying to save them.

She should not be in the business of feeling alive from things that are taking life away from her. I don’t want her to ever know the pain of carrying unclaimed souls with her all her life.

Her forever isn’t worth that shit. My forever definitely wasn’t worth that shit.

© Jean Kanini
Quitting Heroin

Twitter: @jkniin
Facebook: Jean F. Kanini
Blog: Heels, heart and heroin.