I dabbled in H while trying to get into Greta's pants. Lizzie had given up and I was making progress finally. She let me finger her in one of the theaters after we'd closed one night, that was her first sexual experience. I was glowing that night. I was used to being used as a weapon in sex. Aside from Heather, who had used me as a prostitute and a lover at varying times, I had managed to score two one night stands in the three years since I'd lost my virginity. Both of them had misled me. I thought they were really cool girls, though we'd only met a handful of times. It was back during the Gee Coffee days, when I had no friends save my brother and Heather. Heather was in prison or on house arrest most of that time, Jeff stuck with me out of necessity. These two girls had been at the club and we met and exchanged numbers, a rare event to this day. It may seem from reading this that I'm constantly swarmed by desiring females waving their uterus in my face and pressing discreetly folded napkins to me, but that would be a great fallacy. The fact is that I've slept with every girl except three or four that has shown an interest in me and, even at the age of 25, you can count that number on two hands. As it turns out, both of these girls, while attracted to me, were mostly interested in my ability to inflict damage on their exes. I was used as a tool to exact revenge and I felt horrible after I discovered the truth. Greta seemed to be a way to change all this. To not be a prostitute, to not be a weapon, to actually be with someone that cares about me.

Sure, Heather cared, in the same way that a show dog's owner loves it's pet. Because I was basically a pet to her. She had given me the ammunition to cut her down horribly and she indulged my desire for H to ward off attacks on her character. I guess when your pet can tell you what a horrible person you are, it still hurts really bad. This began my final runs with H. I was so thrilled with my progress with Greta, learning new things of her every night that we spent together in the suburban wasteland of the midwest, as well as with my job, which was the best I'd ever had; that I took advantage of the position Heather had put me in. I demanded H in a steady supply. This lasted for exactly one week before Jenny, a lovely girl that I badly wanted to be with, took me aside at work and told me that the drug use had to stop. She saved my life because Heather overdosed that night. She survived and I resolved to stay off the H at the urging of all my friends.

Greta and I began to get so close. I felt that I could say anything to her. I rue the ordeal now, but at the time it seemed amazing because I'd never met and fallen in love with someone before. I didn't know that love at first sight is just refined lust. I felt that lust for Greta but had no concept of her as a person. We started dating, initially, so that I could have sex with her. That was my entire intent in the beginning. I had been used and fucked around, I wanted to do the same to someone else. I wanted to exorcize my demons. And if this seems like an awful thing to do, have you read the rest of my account here? Months piled up and Greta and I got closer, though I felt a wall between us. I was carrying the baggage of the past on my shoulders. Greta was, by turns, accomodating and hostile about arrangements. I broke up with her continually, most memorably on the day after my 19th birthday. What was memorable was that I waited until after my birthday to break up with her so I'd still get a present from her. Was I horrible? Absolutely. You learn by example.

My relationship with Greta revolved around sex and friendship more than love. I was too scared to actually get involved again so I exploited her attraction to me. I also tried to protect her from my horrible self by repeating over and over that I'm a bad person and she'd get hurt. I did not make idle threats. I knew that I was exploiting her, I knew that I was a bad person, yet I continued to do it. I was hooked on sex that actual attraction and respect was behind. Surely Heather was attracted to me, but she had no respect for me. This is why she often bought my love. As with all things relating to Heather in my life, I kept our break up to myself for the most part. I told people the basics (Oh yes, my dealer. We had sex for drugs a lot then we started dating. She cheated on me because I work too much, how about that?) but kept my feelings bottled inside me. I did the worst thing possible, telling my feelings only to Heather. This wall between Greta and I was assembled by Heather and I'm sure Greta always hated Heather on principle. Heather became my surrogate comfort. Where I was unable to connect with Greta for fear of being hurt again, I poured myself into Heather as an alternative to it all. We had a close bond already from all that we'd been through and, as I said earlier, I have a natural disposition to lurk around the scene of my disasters. It was at this time that Jane was kicked out of her parents' house and began living with Heather. I treated Jane as one of the priveleged insiders and was not afraid to spill my guts in front of her when talking with Heather. In some ways, she was even better because it gave me an outlet to talk about what Heather had done to me without having the listener get defensive. This happened with both Heather and Greta. With Heather, it was a self-protection thing. She feared that me revealing my true feelings, which were depressingly bitter, meant that I was ready to take flight, the courage to speak these thoughts acting as a mechanism to spur the proposed act. As for Greta, she just said, "I'm NOT Heather." Oh how I remember hearing Greta say she'd never hurt me.

So I turned to Heather and Jane for comfort. Eager to pull my weight, I urged both of them to get off H. I knew Heather was a lost cause since she had an endless supply set up to provide for her. In some ways, Heather was not a junkie because she very very rarely ever went without. Junkies measure the power of their addiction by the severity and frequency of the withdrawal. To a lot of users, you're not a junkie if you never go through withdrawal. Pretty much the only time Heather went through the dreaded five days was when she was carted off to jail. Jane though, there was hope there. She was putting together a portfolio to send to art colleges. Her style was nothing special, just unoriginal anime-style sketches (a style I've always felt isn't far above stick figures in practice), but she had motivation. She seemed serious about doing something with her life. With Heather passing out nightly from her heroic intake level, Jane and I would often talk until dawn. I grew to love Jane like a sister. I was also attracted to her but I try not to let that enter into my memory as I feel it tarnishes a special intimacy that we had. I talked to Jane long and hard about my battle with addiction, how I coped with coming off it so many times, and the healing power of love.

Of course it was just a matter of time before I was back on the H. I had been fired from the theater, my favorite job ever, for throwing an unsanctioned Halloween party that drew over 300 people. The theater was scheduled to go out of business two weeks after I was fired and it made no surprise rebound, it simply closed after one last fantastic night. Jobless but beginning to feel love, I began taking H again on a whim. It was not a strong craving I had to fight, it was not a life that I was used to now. It was just something that I could do and so did. I resolved, bargaining as all addicts do, that it was no big deal if I just snorted it. Needles are bad and so forth, not a habit if I'm not using needles. At Lizzie's, which had become our hang out spot, on the first day of Spring Break in 1998, I showed up high and Greta walked into Lizzie's room to see me doing lines off a table. She angrily sat me down in the living room and scribbled furiously in her notebook. I knew my buzz was about to be killed but I couldn't fight it anymore. I just lay back and waited for Greta's note to me, ready to determine a response based on it's contents. If she said we were finished, that was fine. I would go back to Heather's and cook up a shot. If she said she would stick it out, fine. I would just go back to Heather's at some point to get more H to snort. But something was telling me this last option wasn't really an option, probably the force with which she was writing in her notebook. She finally handed it to me and it didn't make sense in my junkie mindset. There were references to dead babies and other assorted bric a brac. The gist of it was that she wasn't going to sit and watch me do this anymore, that I must make a choice. This gave rise to probably my greatest act ever. We argued for a couple minutes and then I grabbed her hand and dragged her outside. We walked across the street to a sewer drainage area and I lifted out the bottle of H, which had cost me $60, and threw it right into the sewer. "There," I said. "Are you happy?" She hugged me, near tears. It was to be the last time I was ever addicted to H.

After a short withdrawal in which I cruelly held this magnificent moment against Greta, I realized that I was glad to be off H with a partner in my corner for once. It makes me wonder if the only reason I hadn't stayed clean before was because no one was there to pull me back from the brink, physically or in absent condemnation of such an action. Greta was the gamble I took and I'm alive because of it.

What happened to everyone? Jane went clean on my advice and assurances that I would be there for her no matter what. It couldn't have been easy, living in that house with those drug deals happening in front of your eyes all day. I was just about ready to bring her into my circle of friends in a last ditch effort to save her from Heather's clutches. But Heather beat me just as she always had. I'll make no protest about it, she wore the pants in the relationship. She decided when we'd have sex, how much I could have, what I was to do with my free time, how much I'd pay, when I'd be over, and when I could walk away. She was angry that I had walked away with Greta on my arm and, I believe, may have pressured Jane to use again just to keep her in line. Regardless, I went over one day, preparing to bring Jane into my world so that she could be free of Heather's attractive tyranny, and discovered Jane completely wasted. Now I had promised her, as she cried in my arms, that I knew how hard it was to get off H and I was there for her no matter what happened. And I meant that. Emboldened by Greta's obvious love and faith in me, I believed there was nothing I couldn't accomplish and, by extension, that my friends couldn't accomplish. Jane was going to beat this drug and I was going to help her. But then Heather worked on her and broke her down, a despicable act by someone I've grown to hate with the passage of time. That final time I saw her, Jane said she still loved me. I shouted, "Fuck you" or something along those lines. Those were the last words I ever spoke to Jane.

Jane died on October 3, 1998, from a heroin overdose. This was a devestating blow to me and all it did was reinforce the growing feelings I had for Greta. I tried to be strong and bury the pain, but once you go to a friend's funeral, you've pretty much done the lot. Heather was facing an involuntary manslaughter charge over Jane's death and escaped to Florida before moving onward to parts unknown. As near as I can figure, Heather is out of my life forever. Just as Jane is. As shitty as it is, I said goodbye to Heather and "Fuck you" to Jane. These ghosts still haunt me.

I don't know if there is a moral in this tale. I don't know if there is some moment that draws closure on the whole situation. I know that Heather blew through all her drug money and had to live on the kindness of an extended family of contacts across the US. I know that she got on Methadone in Arizona and it made her teeth fall out. I know that Jane is still buried there in Kansas and her father refused to go to the funeral because of how she died. I know that I grew up too early and had faced the hardest heartbreaks of my life by the age of 22. Heather died of kidney failure in Arizona in April of 2006. I was unable to attend to her funeral and never told her goodbye.

So while I watch those that have played such a role in my life disappear and get on with their lives, I remain stuck in some sort of junkie limbo. That's the price I have to pay. I require drugs, Zyprexa and Klonopin, to be healthy. I live with my parents just as I did then. My liver is damaged from the ungodly shit that the H was often cut with but I somehow avoided HIV or hepatitis c. My teeth are rotting out of my head from the heroin use. I'm beside myself with looking for a meaning to it all. And maybe there is no meaning. Because I learned more from walking away than I ever learned while shooting. I learned that H is not a destination but a journey, the last part being the most amazing, like some flowers that are most beautiful not at their peak but towards their death. I found that H can be battled and defeated. I had other people to support me and that made me able to stay off it for good. I learned that your friends are all you have in the end, and that H is a mechanism to end friendships.

I have no trouble staying off the H now. I still live in the midwest, though miles from the Kansas City suburbs that shaped me into whatever freakshow I've become. I've learned that you can't place the blame on the H, on the people that hurt you, on betrayals that scarred you. I've learned that I would trade every day of happiness for the rest of my life to see Jane for one more day. These ghosts don't keep me up at night but they're never far over the perimeter. I've built a new wall around myself, with the H on the outside. It's not clawing to get in. These ghosts keep me company.

I learned that you can love someone and still fail them.

I learned that you can't put your life into a spoon and shoot it. Because, always, what you're shooting in the end is yourself. You're boiling the worst aspects of yourself and putting that into your body. And that just makes you some kind of weird cannibal. H is like anything else in this life: If you love it enough, it'll kill you. If you hate it, it will haunt you. And if you walk away, it'll be one step behind you. I have not done heroin in over 9 years now but I will always be a recovering addict. No matter how hard I fight it, it will go on to define my life. Seven years of clean veins and I still feel like an addict. I still fiend for the H when things get rough in my life. It's hard to know that to many people, I'm just a former addict. That there could be less to me than just the things I did as a teenager. But I am irrevocably changed by what I went through. Harrowing has a dual meaning. It means to inflict great damage or suffering. But it also means to plow soil in the hopes of growing something new.