When you outlive an age predestined for your own death, there's some soul searching. I had maintained since the age of 15 that I would be dead by 18. But now I had just turned 18 and my life was a black hole of horror. Heather was the only friend I could turn to that would understand. Everyone else in my little social spheres were happy with their life. Most of them were on drugs, as all the non-users had given me the slip by now, but they were not hard drugs and they enjoyed living. I was sick of everything. I took $60 worth of heroin and snorted it in four lines. I was so fucked that I couldn't drive and had to walk to Heather's. I was ready to make the final move toward nihilism. I cared about nothing, truly, for the first time in a while. It was almost Buddhist in a way, I was free from all desire save one. Heather shot me up with a massive shot, seriously a full vial of stuff, so massive that she had doubts I could take it. I knew for a fact that I couldn't, especially not on top of what I'd already done.

The goal was to end my life in the only way that seemed reasonable at the time. Like suicide-by-cop, the idea was to make my death appear to not be a suicide. Lose my life without laying the guilt on anyone. Well, there was Heather. Sure, she'd feel guilty. I was past caring what Heather thought anymore, another facet of my nihilism. I overdosed and went into a coma in Heather's dirty, cockroach-infested basement room. The next day I came out of it. I had not died, I had just taken the most heroin of my life. Heather had moved me around the room to keep my blood circulating. She was wiped. And she was as angry as I ever saw her. She clocked the overdose for what it was, a suicide attempt. And with that knowledge lodged in her brain, hiding behind venom and disappointment, she cut me off. She said she would not sell me anymore H. I was finished. That was the end of my run with heroin.

I retreated from everything. I shut out the friends I had remaining and disappeared into my family room existence. I would sleep all day and be up all night, watching trashy movies and taping the Simpsons religiously, playing Doom on the SuperNintendo. I ate a lot of ice cream bars and my stomach was as bad as ever. Heather would call but I would hang up on her. I wanted no part in what she was offering: A life with her but without drugs. I wanted them both or none at all. I resented her for cutting me off. All she wanted, more than anything else, was to talk about what I was going through. I will always remember her in this light: That of concerned friend trying to save me from myself. Sure, it was loaded with hypocrisy, but it had a touching innocence to it. Things were looking bleak and my life was sadly damaged. Months passed in this way and I believed, rightly or wrongly, that I was truly finished with H now.

Planning suicide once again, as summer approached, my parents stepped in to save me. They sent me on a recuperative stay with my aunt and uncle in Texas for a week. It cleared my head to be out of the situation. It realigned whatever cosmic force was against me and I was able to find and hold a job after this. About this time, I decided that it was a priority to get H back into my life. I didn't hang up the next time Heather called. After a couple weeks of gazing into each other's eyes as the sun came up, she took a plunge and asked if I'd like to date her. This could only open the floodgates of H so of course I accepted. It was at this point in my life, dating someone for the first time ever, that I met the other woman that changed my life.

Greta was friends with my fellow employees at the movie theater I had stumbled back into. I thought little of her on our initial meeting, a faint attraction but nothing more. She gave me her phone number and I called her late one night. She got angry that I called so late and hung up on me. Her friend Lizzie was attracted to me and Greta was stepping aside so Lizzie could have her shot. Lizzie never had a shot, I wasn't attracted to her. I put it all aside and tried to focus on Heather. But the focus was on the drugs still. I was craving the H, especially when I saw her on the nod, which was most of the time I saw her. Torn between my two desires, to have a healthy and productive life that I enjoyed or to have a ravaged H existence that I was too fucked up to notice if I wasn't enjoying, I began spending afternoons working, nights with my new circle of non-using friends, and pre-dawn rendezvous with Heather at her drug den. But eventually I was spending the whole night with the other group and leaving little time for Heather. She began to resent me, probably realizing that I was cutting my losses in a lot of ways. Doing the old guy trick of becoming distant physically and emotionally so that the girl will be the one to end it.

She ended it by cheating on me. She cheated on me with many guys over a few weeks. We dated a mere month and a half but I found out she'd slept with at least six guys in that time. That averages to one per week. After all this time and effort, even forgiving my emotional distancing routine, it was like a dagger in the heart. The one person that I thought could never turn on me did just that. And the worst part was that I found it out second hand, from other users gleeful to stick it in my face. It wasn't just a private defeat, it was a public humiliation. Junkies who I'd never thought of as more than dripping money machines, useless losers that envied my sad little existence, these people now were the vanguard of cool and I was diminished in their eyes. That's what I held against Heather the most, her indiscretion. That my humiliation had to be exposed to all these other people.

There must be an abiding sickness in me because I'm simply unable to walk away from a painful situation in my life. After Hari ripped me off, I called him several times to try to get the facts of the matter straight in some kind of sick emotional re-organization. I had to know, did he always want to rip me off or was it a spur of the moment thing? Had I done anything to precipitate this betrayal? As with Hari, I found myself asking these questions of Heather. She clung to the statement "You were never here and it was killing me. I couldn't live without you so I did some stupid stuff to just feel alive and wanted again." It was a cop out answer so simple that it was probably true. As much as it tore my heart, I had to use it as a weapon. I had to make our whole continuing relationship from this point onward about the supply of H. The sex was done, the affection was done. The trust was gone. The H remained. I would boil it and shoot it, I would cut it and sniff it. I would proudly say, "At least I never got a tattoo of your name on my arm or anything." And she'd reply, "There have been so many needles in your arm by this point that the tattoo wouldn't take."

Next.