I’m in the middle of a silent temper tantrum, by which I mean I’m not talking and have dedicated myself to staying miserable until I exhaust myself. I used to do this almost every day, but they’ve been pretty few and far between since the day that I consider my “emotional sobriety date.” So – of course – I’m angry and now I’m even angrier with myself for this than I am about the stupid incident that sparked this episode.
Here’s the other of my two 9×12″ learning to draw with charcoal sketches from January.
“Pulp.” 1/17/13. Charcoal. 9×12″.
In February 2012, I was kicked out of my second rehab in as many months. I found myself running around Delray Beach with the girl I had been kicked out with. I’m not going to try and diagnose her state back then but – if I did something that bothered her – she could flip a switch and go from being totally in love with me to telling me what an ugly, worthless, pathetic, despicable piece of shit I was. On one occasion in our first week out on our own, we were staying in some little shitbox motel. (If you’re familiar with Delray, I’m sure you know it). I don’t remember exactly what went wrong, but it had something to do with heroin or getting more heroin. And – in case I didn’t already hate myself enough (I did) – she was really piling on as much hatred and vitriol as she could manage, to ensure that there wasn’t so much as a shred of self-esteem left in me.
I went into the bathroom. I was crying. I looked at myself in the mirror and couldn’t fucking stand the sight. It made me angry that I was the person looking back at me. So I started punching myself in the face. I don’t remember how many times. Enough that, for a good while after, I looked like someone had kicked the shit out of me pretty well.
Which I’ve always been good at. I’ve always been good at beating myself up. But that was the one time when it was most literal.
I’ve had thoughts like these today. I have had these impulses today.
When I was eighteen years old, I played in a band with Chris Hembrough. I smashed the windows of his house one night in a drug and alcohol-fueled rage. By 2008 (about four years later) we were friends again, but the kind of friends who rarely – if ever – hung out. He called me and asked if I’d come see his band play. They asked me if I could help them out with a few things and one thing led to the next. I convinced them to change their name (originally Portman). I helped them put together a demo. I booked an East Coast/Midwest summer tour. I started Traffic Street Records to make their next release appear more legitimate.
We drew some boundaries after a bit of tumult. I continued to put out their records, but I didn’t want to have to do any other chores for them and they didn’t want to put up with my mental illness. Part of me thought that without my incredibly skilled hand on the wheel, the band would crumble to shit. Part of me was wrong. Rational Anthem has grown to become one of my absolute favorite bands. And thanks to some serious, long-term inpatient treatment, I’m no longer a mixed blessing or a liability for them. I’m just a friend and a fan.
We sat down for two hours the night before they left town for their sixth annual U.S. tour to talk about their (often our) misadventures along with the kind of personal stuff that wouldn’t normally come up if we were just hanging out as buddies.
That’s the introduction I wrote for my interview with Rational Anthem in the new issue of Razorcake. If you’re not a subscriber, you can get a copy right here. The interview’s really lengthy and came out really well. Thanks a ton to Todd Taylor for being an excellent editor, to Bambi Guthrie and Marc Gärtner for their photographs, and to Keith Rosson for doing a killer layout.
When I was way too young to see something like… [oh… I don’t know, let’s say…] a bunch of guys wearing pig masks gang-raping a girl – I saw a video of… a bunch of guys in pig masks gang-raping a girl.
It… made me really uncomfortable. I don’t think I looked at the screen for more than a couple seconds.
When I was even younger [insert stuff I don’t want to write about here].
And then later [insert other stuff I don’t want to write about here].
In February, I saw a halloween mask that put the images from that video back in my head. And then I painted this. It was the first thing I made after moving out of Tranquil Shores. It’s the first thing I ever made that I can say isn’t really “rehab art.”
“Pornographic Images For Children.” 2/21/13. Acrylic painting on canvas. 10×12″.
“Jail.” 3/5/13. Pen on property inventory sheet. 4×6″.
August 1, 2012. I landed in Miami and rented a car. The cops in Overtown had been seriously on my case. I couldn’t go into the neighborhood without getting hassled (or worse). On one occasion, after putting a gun to my head, pulling me out of the car, and throwing me onto the pavement, they had actually made me pull down my pants (right there, on the street) and hold my butt open so that they could look inside my asshole for drugs. Again – this wasn’t back at the station – this was on a public street. That was before my car had been stolen. Having to enter the neighborhood on foot had made matters worse. I don’t “blend in” in Overtown. But I had a rental car now, so I was willing to take my chances.
I copped successfully and once I was sure that I wasn’t being followed (which had been the case several times prior) I pulled into a Wendy’s parking lot to shoot up. Normally, I’d insist that we wait until we were safely back in our shitbox apartment, but I was alone now and I wasn’t putting this shot off any longer. It had already been far too long.
The plan was to collect my things from the apartment (assuming they were still there – and that my key still worked), drive to Sarasota, collect some more of my things, and drive to New York, where I would live. I didn’t have any idea where specifically in the city I’d even go once I pulled into town, but I guess I thought I’d figure it out at some point in my eighteen hour drive up the east coast. I was going to get a job in a law firm as a paralegal, take the bar exam, and get a job in a law firm as a lawyer. And I was going to stop shooting heroin. This shit in Florida – this was just a “last round” sort of thing. I believed this. Sincerely.
The next 17 days were a blur. I could probably piece a lot of it together if I sat down and “timelined” it all out, but it’s not all incredibly relevant to this particular part of the story. What is relevant is that at some point in those 17 days, I got into a car accident.
I was driving to my drug dealer’s house, but I was already high on heroin and xanax. I made one stop on the way, at Liggett, to buy more needles. When I came out, two guys were standing by my car (the car I had borrowed from the Owens). “What do you have in the bag?” they asked me. What the fuck is this… I wondered… “It’s my prescription,” I lied, “my antidepressants.” “You’re fucked up,” they told me. “You ran up onto the sidewalk three times and almost hit us twice. What’re you on?” I had no idea that I had driven up on the sidewalk (or almost hit another car). I told them that I had been texting and that I was sorry. They said they couldn’t let me drive. They offered me a drive to wherever I needed to go. I put on my best sober and in control act and somehow, eventually, convinced them that everything was cool.
About five minutes later, I crashed into another car. Luckily, nobody was in it. That’s probably because it was parked – not on the street, but a good deal off of the street in a driveway. The people came out of their house. I apologized profusely and recycled my lie – saying that I had been texting. They wanted to call the police, which I assured them wasn’t necessary. “I’m really sorry, but I can’t wait around that long. I have a doctor’s appointment to go to and I’m moving out of state tomorrow. If I miss it, I won’t be able to get my prescriptions filled before I leave.” (I was planning on leaving, but not the following day – and there was no doctor’s appointment). I gave them my information. Well, not so much the information, but the actual documents. To convince them that I could be trusted, I gave them my driver’s license and the vehicle registration and insurance card from the glovebox (it wasn’t my car, it had been loaned to me after I returned the rental). And I had them call my phone right then so they could see it ring in my hand, verifying that it was legitimate. I assured them they didn’t need to call police and hit the road. I said I’d come back for my license and other papers later.
The calls started coming in. They called the police, who wanted me to come back. I pretended I couldn’t because I was at my appointment, but when the vehicle’s owner called me (having also been contacted by the police) he told me that if I didn’t go back, there’d be a warrant issued for my arrest. But that if I did go back, I’d just get a citation. By this point, I had already injected even more heroin, but I convinced myself that I could pass for straight, stashed my lockbox full of drugs and paraphernalia, and drove the smashed up car back to the house where I had hit the car.
I pulled off the act successfully. No one suspected (or at least accused) me of being under the influence of anything) and I just got some tickets… and a summons to appear in court. For “leaving the scene of an accident without giving information.” Which was obviously a totally bullshit charge considering the tremendous extent to which I had given my information BUTit was a fuck of a lot better than being arrested for DUI and possession of heroin.
I cut a deal wherein I had to pay some fines, take a driver improvement course, and do some community service hours. By the time I went to my courtdate, I was already in rehab again, but they didn’t need to know about that. But here’s the one bit of information that I’m actually trying to get at: I (unknowingly) failed to satisfy one of the criterion in some way, so when I got out of Tranquil Shores (seven months after all of this even happened) I found out that there was a warrant for my arrest. Unless I wanted this shit hanging over my head, I’d have to go down to the jail and turn myself in.
It was a bummer but I kept an incredibly positive, upbeat attitude throughout. Even when I found myself handcuffed to a wall in a hallway, for hours, waiting for them to even begin the process of booking me. (Translation: I could have been sitting in the lobby, I could have just been outside – but I guess that’s not how that shit works).
I even stayed positive when – having asked for permission to draw (and been granted it) – another officer came and took my pen away. (And this was at the phase of the game where incoming arrestees are all filling out paperwork so we’re not talking about a “no pens allowed” policy). Which isn’t to say that any of this is a tremendously huge deal or “totally unfair.” But it is the sort of thing that “the old me” would have found to be a TERRIBLE INJUSTICE and lost his shit over. I didn’t do that though. I smiled and thought about how I was grateful to be in a position where I wasn’t caught off-guard – where I was able to arrange for my bail to be paid ahead of time – and grateful that, so long as I stayed on the path I was now on, this would be the last time I’d have to deal with this kind of shit. This would be the last time I’d have to sit handcuffed to a wall.
So this is my self-portrait from the last day I was arrested.
—–
Post-script: Obviously, I never made it to New York. I checked into rehab on August 17th. Also – fun epilogue: From the scene of the accident, I went to trade in the (now totaled) car for a motorcycle… which I also managed to crash (just thirty minutes after being issued the tickets and the summons!) – impressed??
The original drawing is no longer available, but if you ask Bill Pinkel (one of my favorite artists) really nicely, maybe he’ll let you take it out of the frame and see what I had with me / got marked down on my property inventory sheet. Either way, it is available as a 4×6″ print – numbered, signed, and sealed.
“Little Vomit-Colored Hearts.” 2/12/13. Acrylics, pen, and collage (cardboard, resin sand, and crushed up Peptol-Bismol) on a strange wooden frame. 12″ (diameter) round.
The text in the center says: “It’s my hope that someday I’ll be able to draw a cartoon Heather that’s maybe 5% as adorable as the real thing.” The large (vomit-colored) text says, “Lovesick.” The rest:
If I had to guess, I’d say you might not be the biggest Valentine’s day celebrant to walk the earth. Which is cool. But any excuse I can grab hold of to tell you I think you’re great with some extra-effort-little gesture… I’m into. Can I be unabashedly romantic/sappy for a minute? You make me wanna puke up little vomit-colored hearts. (What’d I tell you? Romantic). I’m a heroin addict – you see past it. I’m weird as shit – you’re into it. You think you’re (relatively) boring – you’re not. You’re just (relatively) sane (maybe). Which is awesome. You make me wanna be as good as I can be. You make me wanna live the best life possible. (I already wanted those things, but you make me want ‘em even more). And still have plenty of ridiculous adventures. But with you by my side. I wanna get in all kindsa trouble (and fuck up all kindsa shit) with you. (I mean that in the best way possible). I wanna get in good kindsa trouble. I don’t know about all these words. When I think about you and when I’m with you, sometimes I feel insecure. Until you speak. And then I feel the opposite. I feel safe and okay. (Still pretty new for me). You’re the warmest, most supportive, encouraging, loving, inspiring, high-school-mean-girl-Christian-bully that I’ve ever met. You’re so fucking sharp and beautiful and honest and [fuck!] You’re stylish and funny and perfectly imperfect and strong and independent. and everything good on this wacky fucking planet. You’re a dream I don’t want to wake up from. Happy (two day’s early) Valentine’s day, Heather.
So reads the text at the top of this piece. Following that are some “nervous afterthoughts,
which I wrote over the course of the next hour or so, and then bracketed and labeled as such.
Wanna be my girlfriend? Like – for realsies?
Actually, scratch that.
You already are.
Like it or not!
{You make me feel like a kid again. Not much of a stretch, but – you know…).
Thanks for taking a chance on a kid in rehab.
I adore you.
New relationships in early recovery are not recommended. And if you’re inpatient in rehab (I think it goes without saying that) they’re not allowed at all. For me especially – they’re a bad idea. Keeping the proper distance between girls and me had been a task my various rehab counselors and I had been dealing with for more than a year. This last January, I was still living at Tranquil Shores, but I was no longer technically an inpatient. I operated according to a different set of rules. I could leave property for up to two hours at a time, provided I got approval from my counselor first and got all the paperwork signed and into the hands of the residential property staff.
There was this girl (Heather!) that I had added on Facebook at some point, thinking that she was someone else. Sometime later, after her name popped up a few times, I actually checked her page and realized she wasn’t who I thought. She was pretty and we had mutual friends in Sarasota; I thought it was strange that I didn’t know her (or at least have some idea of who she was), but [whatever]. Now – in January – I saw a post of hers: “When I do good at work, I like to reward myself by breaking out with ‘THIS GIRL IS ONE FIREEE.’ Customers love me.” I had no idea what that lyric was from, but I thought that was pretty fucking cute. I responded with “In theory, if I had an internet crush on you – how would you feel about that?” The next day, she commented on something I posted, I responded, and we started emailing back and forth. Within a couple days, we were spending hours exchanging messages. I liked her a lot and I realized really quickly that there was something different this time. The last few girls that I had dated, I was constantly asking myself whether or not I really liked them… I was always having to convince myself that it was genuine for [this reason] or [that reason]. I didn’t have to convince myself of anything this time. I was unqualifiedly into this girl. I somehow coaxed her into agreeing to come up to visit me (in rehab). And I got her phone number and started calling her instead of writing her because that seemed like the healthy, brave thing to do.
Funny aside: The three Rational Anthem kids were amongst our mutual friends. After Heather and I had been writing each other for all of a day or so, I called each of them and said something like: “I’m going to ask you about someone but – before I give you the name – I need to warn you to speak carefully because this is the girl I’m going to marry. What can you tell me about Heather Pierce?” Admittedly, those calls were partially motivated by something authentic and partially by my own enjoyment of how perpetually lovesick I seemed to make myself. As miserable as it made me at times, I thought there was something cute or funny about it.
So she was interested in coming to see me but that didn’t mean that my counselor was actually going to approve it. And I was fairly certain that even if she allowed this girl to come see me, there was no way she’d actually let me leave the courtyard/property with her. But she did. She and the rest of the treatment staff decided that in lightofeverything, the best approach was to allow it and monitor it through my sessions. Talk to me about it, counsel me, and just make sure that I didn’t somehow lose my shit as a consequence. It was one thing to keep me off heroin, but to keep me off girls was pretty much impossible. Better to let me get involved now, while they could help me along the way, then wait until I was out on my own and not under their care and guidance twenty-two to twenty-four hours a day.
There’s so much more that I could say, but I’ve got another piece that I can use to tell more of this story. Her first visit was January 29th. I made and gave this to her on February 12th, the night of our fourth “date.”
“Girls Are Not Pokemon.” 3/26/13. Colored pencil and pen. 6×8″.
I’ve been to three different rehabs and – at each – I got involved with a girl. Though it only (directly) got me kicked out of treatment once, it was never not a serious problem. If I include life outside of rehab, in times when I was trying to stay clean, I’ve relapsed with six different girls (and, each time, while upset about something that happened with me and the girl). That number doesn’t include times I’ve relapsed without [the] girl but while upset about something with her. Heroin is dangerous for me, but girls are probably more dangerous. I first started trying to get clean in November 2010 and – in all the time since – there have been plenty of occasions when I’ve been in dangerous situations where drugs were available through someone I was with (and/or someone was actually using around me). When that person’s been male, I’ve never once caved and gotten high, but when it’s been a girl that I’m even slightly interested in (i.e. most girls), I’ve found myself with a needle in my arm just about every time.
At Tranquil Shores, this was one of the issues that we spent the most time on. In my fifth month as an inpatient, Alexis, the girl with whom I was the most mixed up, moved out. She was signed up to come in three times a week for outpatient treatment but, two weeks later, stopped showing up. We were talking regularly by phone even after she left, but it wasn’t long before I lost touch with her too. She fell off – back into drugs – and lives behind bars now. I could have easily been right there with her when it all went down.
So now there were exactly zero girls in my age range at Tranquil Shores but I had others in the area that I had met at AA or NA meetings that I was constantly texting and meeting up with. (And I was doing that long before I lost touch with Alexis). Nothing serious happened between (any of) us, but I came pretty close to making some bad decisions on more than a few occasions. And that I even came close is insane. How many times did I need to put my life at risk just ‘cause I liked the way some girl smiled at me? But I couldn’t help it. It was the definition of compulsive behavior. I felt like I needed it.
A year prior, at the Wellness Resource Center, after getting caught with a girl (somewhere that we shouldn’t have been, doing something we shouldn’t have been doing), I was sitting in my room, contemplating the trouble I was about to be in. I didn’t want to get kicked out because I knew that I wasn’t “better” yet. I knew I’d get fucked up again and fuck everything up. I remember sitting there and thinking, “I don’t care if they never let me anywhere near her again. I don’t care if they basically lock me in my room. So long as I know that she’s also locked up in her room, sitting there pining for me, still in love with me, that’s all I need. I don’t ever need to see her again.”
I think that’s all it’s really about for me. I just want someone to love me or – more specifically – to be in love with me. I needed for someone to think that I was the most important person in their world. The best person. Their favorite. Once I’d get that, it never really changed anything. I never actually felt any better or less insecure. It seemed so at times, in short little moments, but if that had really been the case, then I wouldn’t have been constantly pursuing multiple girls, even when I already had one “on the hook.” [That term sounds shitty but it conveys the idea I’m trying to get across. Also, it is shitty].
Sitting in group in December 2012, I did some math. I had six girls that I was trying to juggle to varying degrees. While I’d like to write it all of as inauthentic codependent bullshit – to be honest – with half of them I wasn’t even sure [and I’m still not]. I thought there might be (at least some spark of) authentic love. Yet I was still leading on the three girls with whom I knew it was just bullshit.
What was I really after? What was the point? A thought occurred to me; it was really silly but it was also totally dead on, which just made it that much funnier…
Girls are not pokemon – I do not “gotta catch ’em all…”
—–
If you know me personally you might be looking at the date on this cartoon and thinking, “What the fuck? You were already dating Heather by then – that’s fucked up.” [I decided to turn the idea into a cartoon back when I thought of it, but it wasn’t ’til two or three months later that I actually drew it].
Originally, I set out to write this entry about a different piece but I kind of had to throw all of this stuff about my codependent traits and behaviors out there as background info first. I’ll get to the other one tomorrow. [Update: That one’s online now too].
Anyway, I really love this cartoon. I love how superficially cute / innocuous it is but how the truth to it is kind of dark, sad, and pathetic. So often, I’ve let myself to sink to the greatest depths of hell because of something a girl said (or didn’t say) to me. I’ve dwelled in shit and misery for days, on account of facial expressions that I’d later discover I had completely misread. I’ve let my emotions, as triggered by girls, run and ruin my life.
But I’m getting better, you guys! For serious this time!
—–
The original drawing already sold but hit me up to buy a 6×8″ print.
For more on my relationships at this point in my life, check out “Autobiography.”
“Success rates” for slit wrists and knives to the heart are surprisingly low. I didn’t want to go to a hospital…
Forty-eight hours before “No Accident” and the moment when I started to finally “get better,” I was in my room – researching suicide methods that didn’t require anything that couldn’t be found in my apartment at Tranquil Shores. I was going to kill myself because a girl was mad at me. A girl that I wasn’t even sure that I liked.
Earlier that afternoon, we did an exercise in group. We had to pull a couple items out of a basket and relate to them. I declined to say anything aloud, but when it was time for art therapy group, I started writing.
The fortune was absurd, the paper it was printed on was dirty and crumpled. Together, they were useless. This pencil is not useless. It has incredible potential. It is an instrument of a higher purpose. In the right hands. It is comforting. I like holding it in my hand. With paper, it can save me from almost anything. And it is forgiving. It has an eraser. If I make a mistake, it allows for correction. Or at least undoing. The mistakes I make with it are rarely entirely forgotten. I don’t know how to apply this to my life. Is it by chance that the trauma I addressed [in group] this morning, that I was supposed to see is not happening anymore (but which I claimed could and would (and sort of was) still taking place) – is it by chance that just hours later it pretty much is [happening again]? Or did I choose that memory because it had already begun? Yes, that’s it. It’s just more clear now. Because I realize I’m no longer willing to be honest which means I can’t get better. I can’t be helped. So there’s no reason for me to be here. Except that to hope that things will change once more. I no longer believe that I’m a drug addict. Sort of. I know I can’t use drugs (or that it’s not worth the risk in any case). But I’m not going to pick up. Fuck that. I’m over it. It’s not appealing anymore. But I’m miserable. Like I realized on my first weekend here, people are unhappy for countless reasons other than drugs. Me? I have no legitimate reason to be unhappy. It’s all in my head and it’s illogical. Is that recognition enough to get help in getting well without disclosing my irrational stressors? Celexa is an SSRI. Cymbalta is an SNRI. Which means that it does the same thing as Celexa, plus more. Adding Celexa to my prescription [regimen] adds little to nothing. And it will be another 3½ to 5½ weeks before we even know if it’s having any effect. I need something different and I need something faster. I am chemically imbalanced. I need chemical balance. Abilify might work. It’s too expensive. It’s less expensive than inpatient treatment. Maybe I’d be better off with Abilify and outpatient treatment. Here or elsewhere. At this point I’m not afraid to leave.
I don’t like art anymore. I don’t like treatment anymore. I don’t think I’m ready to get better anymore.
“Clarity.” 12/10/12. Pencil. 12×18″.
This piece is called “Clarity” because that’s how I actually felt in this moment. I thought I had nailed it. I was deluded enough to think that my primary issue was chemical, thoroughly confused as to whether or not I needed any kind of mental health therapy or substance abuse treatment, yet I was somehow lucid enough to know that those feelings (and my written rant) were totally insane. The title is “Clarity” because I thought it was hilarious. I wasn’t laughing, but I knew it was funny. Even then.
Later that night, I made a half-hearted attempt to kill myself by asphyxiation. (Success rates are in the seventy to eighty percent range).
————————-
When I handed over the Traffic Street inventory to Kiss of Death, Glenn gave me a few new KoD releases. One was The Slow Death’s first LP. I listened to that record a lot while I was at Tranquil Shores. My name is on the thanks list even though I didn’t have any hand in its release. (Though I had been a big fan and supporter of The Slow Death and helped them out in other ways, so it wasn’t totally shocking). Still, I wasn’t expecting it and it was a really nice surprise. I had become so far removed from the world that I had lived and breathed for so long… Little things like that helped me feel connected in those days. It meant a lot to me. It seems appropriate that my first experience back in that world was the little tour with Rational Anthem this month, up to the fest that Jesse (of The Slow Death) organized. Here’s a song from that first LP that came to mind while I was writing this entry. And here’s a second song from their brand new record.
