I used to follow routine, waking up every single day needing twenty dollars for dope. My life flashing before my eyes every time a wakeup.

I start this story writing about this particular day. This day is just like everyday like I just mentioned but maybe I want to leave an impression in your brain. I do have a past, but I�m not going to write about my past. I�m going to write about this day that�s like all others. Before I go on I will tell you that today was my first day taking Methadone. I have been clean for two days now. Now on this day I wake up to the madness on the streets, the same streets I live on, either on a piece of cardboard or maybe a sleeping bag, sometimes a flop motel or maybe I have been up all night on speed. I am a junkie, and smoke crack, bang speed. This is who I was then, but then again this is who I am now. Two days clean, I cannot kid myself. Now I am also a thief. I steal from the same store everyday to support my habit. I do have a conscience. I don�t like living this way and I am clean now trying not to steal and live some kind of new existence but I�m not to sure what that is yet. But this story is about today, the same monotonous day. I wake up and know where I am, rub my eyes in a sort of disbelief at the same time knowing that my life will be better someday. I don�t know how or what it will take. I just have been a failure for so long the only thing left is to be optimistic. I need to brush my teeth, I can smell my breath, my underarms smell and I�m damp from sweat. I may get a shower today or at least a sink bath. I try to stay clean as much as possible. I like to read and to write, I try to convince myself I still have a life, but I have to face the fact that I do have my vices and they are slowly killing me. There is a certain insanity that comes from living like this. You want so hard for things to be different but everything that leads up to that change seems to unbearable. An insurmountable mountain and why not just live the same way, getting high feeling good for now... Everything for now, cause the next day doesn�t matter. I now live on instinct. I walk around the same neighborhoods looking into the same stores wondering where I should steal from today based on how I feel or how desperate I am. I see the same people going to work and going home, sometimes wondering how they live their life and trying to figure out how they do it without heroin and other drugs. What makes them so different? How did I get this way. I wake up and feel sick. Sick of life, sick of my friends, now I love my friends but I know they could turn on me at any second. My friends are in the same situation, we are all scurrying around trying to get out, fix and sometimes we do things we wouldn�t normally do to get them. I live a lie; I am an actor always aware of my surroundings and knowing just how to act or what to say at any given situation. I�ve become very good at this. I live in deceptions. I love myself, I hate myself, I�m depressed, I�m conceded, I just don�t know who I am any more. I try to tell myself I can quit, I tell myself everyday. It�s no super mystifying experience. It dulls the pain, makes me not think about my present sate, all my problems, all the heartache. It likes me more than I like it. Now I read that somewhere and sometimes I stray away from the story, Like Everything has been said, everything has been written. This is not just my story this is the same story of all my friends and I will try to incorporate them into it as well.

We hang out with each other and take a little of each other�s personalities and make them our own. We have the same scars; have the same crosses to carry. We don�t know where we are going or we just don�t care. I have been clean for two days. I don�t know if I will be clean tomorrow, life is so full of uncertainties, but I always knew like many of us that we want something different something more. We just don�t know how to accomplish it or are too lazy to deal with it. I can�t wallow in self-pity. It is a bottomless well and once you fall into it you fall forever. I think too much everyday, the same day, will things get better, I sell my cloths, or shoes whatever I have stolen to get my money for my drugs. I don�t even think about what I�m doing anymore, I really am living on instinct. Because this is how I live and survive. Everyday is a nightmare then you go to sleep and wake up to it again and again. I am a good person even under the circumstances. I have always shared my drugs, my cloths or food, anything to make friends. You see, I�m lonely... We are all lonely. I make lists in my mind who my friends are and this list changes from day to day. I have heard people say that �Nikon just styles everyone out because he doesn�t have any friends.� Is this true? I don�t believe so. I do have real friends. I mean I think I do, shit I�m not sure anymore. I�m not sure about anything, why won�t this day just end! My friends and I talk on what I would like to call speak talk. Now speak talk is what you actually say. There is another level I call think talk. This is what we think before we speak, but sometimes we don�t speak in think talk. It may come out differently. What if we all talked in think talk. The world would be a different place. I would get a slap in the face. I walk around with the perception of who I am, I use and use and use and what have I accomplished, damn it�s the same day. Now I do love to read and to write. Sometimes when I put words on paper they do not come out like I intended. Sometimes someone might get the wrong idea. Take what you can I am just trying to explain how my life has been while using drugs. It has been the same day. A purgatory somewhere between heaven and hell, but always on the fringe of society. A Delinquent to society with so many fears, always unsure about myself. Having anxiety to walk by some group of people that may think are too cool for me who are tragically hip and look down upon someone like myself. I tell you I am so lost and all I can do is just think and think, sometimes forgetting about personal relationships, never quite knowing where I�m going to sleep, whether it is on a piece of cardboard, or in a sleeping bag or a flop motel if I have the money from stealing. I was starting to talk to myself becoming my one best friend. Caring too much what people cared about me, always trying to act dignified, always acting, every movement, every word, trying so hard not to talk in �think talk.� God forbid I would tell it like it is or let someone know what I really felt about them. Trying so hard to be benevolent and to have tolerance and to use common sense but it�s not always that easy under my breath I would say would that I would not repeat, Because I don�t like getting slapped in the face. I lived on impulses so precarious in my depression on the verge of fear trying to cook up my heroin before anyone saw who I really was. And not being so sure myself but now willing to rink finding out for myself, on the run, but you can never run fast enough. What a crazy day right. Living like this for so long you wonder if you can ever change. Everyday I walk by the chess tables. I but cigarettes for a quarter, I see the same drug dealers pushing; the same bums the same streets. My life has become a five block radius.

So I am two days clean. It doesn�t mean much. I still am hopeless. I don�t want to steal anymore because I am tired of going to jail. I can�t panhandle because no one gives me money and I am afraid to ask anyone for help. I don�t want to go back to living that way. I need a job and a home but don�t quite know how to go about it. I don�t want to leave my friends no matter how messed up our situation is. There must be some balance I haven�t found yet. How do all these people do it without drugs? . How did I manage it before. I can�t think about the past. That�s what will never change. I can only try and get through this day, go to sleep and hope to wake up to tomorrow.