Junkie

My fingers shake.
Pull back the plunger and poke around until I find purchase.
Watch the blood fill the syringe as time comes to a stop.
This is it.
My reason for waking up in the morning and wading through the pools of shit my life has accumulated.
The purpose for my sad excuse of an existence.
There is nothing else like this feeling.
Anticipation oozing from my pores as I slowly push down the plunger.
You cannot hurt me right now.
Nothing can touch me.
Life is beautiful the second I pull the needle from my arm and watch the little blood drops come to the surface.
Count down from ten and it hits me like a freight train at six.
I can't describe it to you.
There is nothing like it in the world.
I will never be able to feel this whole again.
I won't ever find this feeling except at the top of a short-tip 30 gauge insulin syringe.
The rush is a high unlike any other.
It's the sole reason for main lining toxic chemicals into your body.
It starts at the base of your skull and spreads like a wildfire through every nerve in your body.
Try and imagine the best orgasm of your life and multiply it by a thousand and you won't even come close to the way heroin fucks you.
Heroin isn't what you think it is.
Addiction doesn't sit on the surface of your flesh like a neon sign indicating that yes this one is a fuck up.
It lies under your tongue and swims through your blood stream.
Not all addicts live under the 32nd street bridge, most are actually able to pretend they can actually function.
Functionality becomes entirely dependent on your drug of choice of course but this doesn't happen for a while.
At first it's just chasing a feeling.
You just want that nodding off barely alive slow breathing itchy warmth that spreads beneath your skin and touches the parts of you that you thought shriveled up and died a long time ago.
When she wraps her arms around you it feels like you've finally come alive again.
You will realize that this feeling is more important than anything else in your life.
In the beginning this was an innocent need to feel something but soon becomes a need to escape your reality.
I used to be able to say no; I had principles.
But as I wandered deeper into my addiction and explored the high I forgot that this was initially a search for something real.
Now it's just a way for me to disappear.
I cannot get away from it.
To leave my room sober feels impossible.
Doing anything while not under the influence of mind altering substances is ludicrous.
I live in the bottom of a dirty spoon.
Waiting for the next time I get that rush.
None of the consequences could ever convince you this feeling isn't worth it.
Hopeless empty shells wander in and out of the halls of hospitals and treatment centers and anonymous rooms looking for a reason to stop.
Help me they want to scream but they lost their voice in the small metallic tip of their rigs.
Because while you're high you feel like you're touching heaven but as soon as you come down you experience the fires of hell.
Shaking sweating hot and cold pleading with any deity that will listen to clean you up or put you out of your goddamn misery.
Every time you stick it in your skin you hope that this time you will nod off and won't find your consciousness again.
When people would liken the act of shooting up to putting a loaded gun to their head you didn't understand.
You weren't trying to die this isn't suicide it's the opposite, you'd cry.
I want to live!!
But you don't realize that you've been walking half dead the moment you tasted the bitter vinegar sting of the needle.
And now all you wish for is death.
You can't find anything in your life worth anything more than that white brown powder.
So what's the point?
Why keep going?
If everything you're ever going to amount to can fit into 50ccs then why bother?
People don't even see you anymore.
You look in the mirror and find the embodiment of your addiction; you're face has long since decayed.
You aren't anything anymore.
A washed up pathetic little junkie.
I'm nothing but a junkie.