In which I fight the meth monsters and travel to the land of canals and Cannabis

- In which I fight the meth monsters and travel to the land of canals and Cannabis
Current mood: nostalgic
Category: Life

At the age of 21 I was burnt out, partied out, depressed and semi-homeless after a couple years of self destruction.Something had to change .My life was so bleak that I thought there was no hope. Looking back its just ridiculous to think at the age of 21 I had no future. Thats what an addictive personality and a lust for a chemical rush will do to you.

A few random moments changed everything. One of those random life changers was a temporary nurse at work whose name I can't even remember. I was working as the 6pm-6am nurses aid in a geriatric psych unit at a job I truly loved and was good at. My charge nurse and friend Maude who was an incredible partner in the crazy world of the locked psych unit for two years had just left and I was suddenly being tormented by her replacement, a Nurse Ratchett wannabe. (she probably wasn't that bad..but thats how it felt at the time.)

I would work an exhausting 12hour shift with her then try to find a way back to the unheated tiny trailer I was staying in, which was located in a cow pasture on the property of my aunts boyfriend's invalid mother. Since my aunt was away in rehab I usually had to hitchhike home at 6 in the morning. It probably would have been more depressing if I stopped to think about it, but the only thing on my mind at all times was the never ending task of feeding my addiction and still hitchhiking back to work on time.
At about the time when I was realizing that I couldn't keep this up, I worked for about a week with a new nurse who was filling in for Nurse Ratchett. This girl was very cool. She was a plain looking, short Asian girl, close to my age, but she had a beautiful personality. Her Romanian husband who picked her up some times was too fucking die for supermodel hot, by the way.


We had a lot of time to talk during the night and I was fascinated with the trip she took to Europe during college. I had just read a book from the late 60's about two girls who hitchhiked around Europe from adventure to adventure and I was starting to get a hunger to do the same thing.


Something about her stories fanned the flames of my newfound European obsession and soon I was determined. That determination was what I needed to find the strength in me to fight crank and take my life back.
It could have been anything maybe, but with Europe as my goal I was finally able to say fuck you to the meth monster I had given control of my life too. There was no way I could afford to go if I was using and I wanted to stop. My best friend since high school, Jennifer, was adament that I come and live with her family and get clean. Living with Jenn and not being around the users and dealers I had surrounded myself with was key to my taking my life back.I thank the Goddess for Jenn's friendship and that nurse whose name I can't remember for igniting the fighter in me who had been lying in a fetal position for too damn long. It wasn't easy, but once I was determined it really wasn't that hard.

Unfortunately when your body doesn't have the chemical energy it had gotten used to it was harder than hell to stay awake all night at work. When I was high I was super aid. I did my regular duties as well as organized residents closets, charted their horoscopes, decorated for holidays, fought for their rights, etc. etc. Now suddenly I couldn't even stay awake. I was actually told " your just not doing the work you used to." After Nurse Ratchett caught me sleeping in an empty bed one to many times it was over for me at that job.
That was ok, because I was going to Europe! Now! In March I left my new nursing home job, bought a one way ticket to Amsterdam with the full intention of hitchhiking around Europe for a few years and got on a plane with less than $500 dollars in my pocket. Obviously my brain was still a little fried from the chemicals, because I look back now and think...what the fuck?
What happened after I got off the plane halfway across the world from everyone and everything I knew is for another blog. Now that the setup is out of the way I will tell that story real soon
.

SkyDiving part I

Skydiving part I
Current mood: accomplished

SkyDiving part I

For at least the past decade I've insisted that one day I want to go skydiving. I want to jump out of a plane and feel what it's like to fly. But thats just one of those things you say but don't really mean, like "If I had one wish I would wish for world peace," or "I don't really watch TV, unless you count PBS." It sounds good, and it makes me look like a better, more exciting person, but I had no intention of ever really doing it. So when my sister called last week and invited me to go skydiving for her 20th birthday I said yes before I had a chance to think about what I was agreeing to. I had claimed a desire to do this for so long I had even fooled myself. By the time I remembered how deathly afraid I was of heights it was too late. The reservations had been made and I even had the day off of work. If I had put that short of notice requesting a day off for any sane activity it would have been denied, but this time I got lucky. Yeah, lucky me alright.
The week leading up to our group suicide attempt found me sick to my stomach with anxiety anytime I imagined jumping out of a perfectly good plane. Part of me was excited, but thats also the part of me that thought taking a one way trip to Amsterdam solo was a good idea when I was 21. That is the aspect of my personality that thought it was reasonable to put tabs of acid in my eyeball so I would get better visuals when i was 18. As a stereotypical Gemini, I am quite familiar with my impulsive evil twin (he goes affectionately by the name of Billy Joe by the way...long story) and the trouble he seeks out. As much as part of me wanted to call it off, I knew it was too late. I knew it, Billy Joe knew it and any other alters I have living in my shattered psyche knew it. I had already told everybody what I was going to be doing and I would rather end up splattered on the ground than chicken out now.
I couldn't sleep the night before due to of a mix of anticipation and dread. As zero hour approached and Billy Joe (my evil twin) still hadn't taken over, my practical side opted to take a mental vacation as well. This left me in a sort of zombie/autopilot state that was under strict orders not to think about anything airplane, way up in the sky related. I could talk about it, but I knew that once I started picturing myself on a plane about to jump the flood gates of anxiety would be open and it would make a freaky bad acid trip look like a picnic.
About noon , on Friday the 13th actually, we had started the trip to Eugene where the cheap game of life and death would begin. My mom, the birthday girl, a kooky but nice friend of my moms and I stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant . My sister Mandy was a little too excited. She is like one of those freaks of nature that are born without pain nerves and end up burning their hands off on the stove. In her case she was born without a healthy dose of fear which can be just as dangerous. I wasn't about to put much food in my stomach that was more than likely going to end up flying back in the face of the poor sucker doing the tandem jump with me later, so I opted for a sensible lunch of strawberry margaritas. My mood was elevated some by the sight of my sister in a big birthday sombrero blowing out her candle, hopefully wishing for a absence of blood and guts today.


I gulped down my drink and stepped outside for a smoke. Now was the perfect time to get the fuck out of Dodge. I could hitchhike back to Portland and come up with a brilliant excuse along the way. I could say I was kidnapped by Gypsies. I hadn't used that one in a while. Do gypsies still kidnap people and are there many roving gangs of them in the (where were we?) Independence Oregon area? Probably not, but there were plenty of crack heads around. Nobody would dare to question me if I had been sold into white sex slavery by some desperate meth monkeys. I would just need to lay low for a few months until I eventually resurfaced on a Dateline NBC special. It might even get me on Oprah.
I waited to long coming up with that plausible story and lost my chance of escape. Fuck. Soon we were back on the road. We still had to pick up my sisters former roommate, the awesomely radical Becca and our brother Scott who apparently hadn't been able to come up with a fast excuse to not possibly die either. To be honest, after listening to enough of my Mom and her pal Sarah discussing the latest findings in Woman's Day Magazine jumping out of a plane was starting to sound pretty sweet.
"Did you know Tide doesn't break down fabric?"
"Oh yes, its gentle on fabric."
"You know I didn't know that."
"Oh yes, its gentle on fabric."
"It says here if you want to invigorate your day, the thing to do is put one of your husbands sweaty t-shirts up to your face and inhale. Hmmm...I wonder what thats all about."
"1 out of 5 adults talk to their Mom everyday. I wish I had kids that did that."
"I'm not predjudace, not at all, but those ones that come to this country and don't try to speak English just piss me off!"

Oh my God, please just let me jump out of a plane. That conversation was driving me crazy. Luckily we soon had Scott and Becca with us to counteract the weird patience killing mom talk. Not that we would have to listen to it long, because before we knew it the truck was pulling up to the place I thought of as "The fucking crazy skydiving dive."
....
(Becca makes a blow up doll face and my brother Scott pretends he is as fearless as our crazy sister.)

To be continued...hopefully when I get all the awesome pics and video we took yesterday so I can add them to this story.)