closer to fine

A year on Tumblr

So, today is the one year anniversary of the creation of Snowblind. My first post said this:

Little White Lines

Today is one of those days.

I’m going through $20.00 bags way too fast.  They go with me everywhere.

It’s Monday and I’m here at the office, waiting for the next time I can….

slip into the bathroom
pull out the tiny zippered plastic bags from my makeup bag
dump the crystalline powder on a small mirror
scrape it into little white lines with a razor
breathe in
and
wait for the little explosion in my brain.

I wake up and reach for it.  I do it before work, during work, after work.  I cut lines while I watch TV, while I clean the house, before I get into bed, during the night when I cannot sleep.

This is my little blog about what happens when you go snowblind.

Much has changed since then. It took me six months before I finally stopped using. There’s been tragedy, love, heartache, survival, happiness and tears this past year. I’ve had to go places I never wanted to go.  I’ve been lucky enough to go someplace I never thought I’d get to.

I’m grateful I found Tumblr and the friendships that I’ve developed over the past year.  I’m thankful isay found me. (Understatement of the year!) The people here add so much to my life.

Tumblr gives me a voice I’ve never had before.  It gives me the opportunity to tell my truth.  It has been invaluable to me. I wouldn’t trade it.

If you’ve been with me on this journey - thank you.  For everyone who has sent me email encouraging me or posted comments giving me hope - thank you.  I couldn’t have done it without all of you guys.  I appreciate it.  You’ve never judged me and that means so much.

I’m looking forward to another year on Tumblr and a new direction to travel. 
Come along with me.

This morning I woke up happy because I was thinking of you.

Just before 2:00 am, I woke up from a really bad dream.

I realized all the numb had worn off. The apathy was gone.

All this emotion came roaring in like a freight train.

And I’m supposed to function to like this?

I’m not ready. I’m not.

isay:

Did I tell you how much I love you Mrs Hatton?

You did. 
And it makes all the difference in the world.
We can make it. Hold on to me.

kissedbysadness:

” sometimes love wrestles you to the ground and sometimes it carries you through the most devastating storms. i think it is flawed and imperfect and entirely too powerful. sometimes love makes me angry. and trapped. sometimes it hurts. sometimes the hurt is good. sometimes it is the hero and sometimes the villain and sometimes it is only an innocent bystander. it is often unrequited and sometimes incomplete. there are times when it aches. times when the ache is so deep you can’t find it until you sit absolutely still in a dark room. i think love is beautifully irrational, and painfully tender, and sometimes when it catches you with your walls down…completely and perfectly liberating. ”

- unknown

Turn the Page

I hope a chapter is ending in my life.  I hope.

The last three-four years have been so complicated, much of it by my own choice, some of it anything but my choice, unwelcome and unwanted. There was the very tangled mess of my relationship with Colin, the cocaine, the meth, the pills, the violence, my throwing everything away.  My trying to get a little bit of it back. Perhaps the most damaging thing of all was the inclusion of Colin’s business partner Quinn into our lives.

Then Colin died last October, I started getting serious about quitting the drugs, I began reaching out, changed everything - where I lived, what I did for a living, who I hung out with, how I dealt with things - everything. Things began to turn around. I had hope.

I made a friend, who became my best friend, who became my lover, who became the one true love of my life. I finally knew what it was really like to have someone love me and accept me and support me.  He helped me save myself. I was happy. We were happy.

Then Quinn came back around.  Pushed his way back into my life and into the life of the one person who has ever really loved me. He set about to tear everything apart and he may have succeeded. He had me convinced that there was no place that was safe and that his control over me extended everywhere. Quinn was the highly decorated cop with a dirty side who had been Colin’s protection in the dope game. Quinn knew where all the bodies had been buried, so to speak, he’d put them there. He also made Colin look like a boy scout. Quinn had some leverage over me, made threats, hurt people close to me, hurt me, and still I thought I could placate him until he got bored.

The last several months have been both hell and heaven for me. And I’m here to tell you it is impossible to coexist in two worlds like that.  As much as you want the heaven to spill over, it is the hell that intrudes.

Today, Quinn was arrested on three felony charges. More charges may follow. I can’t tell you what it cost me to get to today. And even though the untouchable one can’t touch me anymore, he may have still cost me everything.

I’m still not quite out of hell yet.  But I see light dawning nonetheless.  I’ll spend Monday at the District Attorney’s office, a place I unfortunately became familiar with last August. I don’t like being under the Klieg lights especially when the things that have happened were always meant to be kept in the dark. But isn’t it those things we keep secret that steal the life from us in the end?

I don’t know if I can salvage that part of Heaven that I’ve known these last several months.  I don’t know if I can save the only relationship that has ever meant the whole world to me. I dont’ know. I know what I pray for though.

Today I’m numb. Today I’m almost apathetic. But I know it is the only way I’m making it.  In a couple of days or a week or so, the survival mechanism of apathy will wear off and I’m afraid of that day. And the days that will come after it for awhile. I don’t want to face those days alone but I’ll do what I have to do.

I’ve got a lot of healing to do. We’ve got a lot of healing to do. Together or apart. But now is the time to get started. I’ve got to close this chapter and leave Colin and Mathis and Quinn behind.  I’ve got to regather all those broken little pieces of myself and see how they fit back together.  It is the only way I’ll ever clear that space in my life for something new, something better, something true.

I hope that the one best thing in my life is still able to be saved. But if it isn’t, if we can’t put what we had back together, then I’ll make it anyhow. Because that’s what I do. I surivive. I start over.

So it’s time to turn the page.