The Good Girl

There was a time when I was the nerdy kid flipping through pages of my latest book. I would be sitting inside  laying my blanket on the vent of the air conditioner on a hot summer day eating Doritos and sipping on Mountain Dew. Summers in Ohio would get sweltering with the heat mixed in with the humidity. An occasional thunderstorm would roll in to water the grass, only to create a outdoor sauna in the morning. My hobbies included playing video games, drawing, and staying up all night to catch the latest R rated movie while my parents slumbered unaware in the next room.

I was the good girl. I didn't have teenage boys awkwardly fumbling between my legs or weed stashed in a hollowed out book in the closet. I wasn't oblivious to vices, I just wasn't interested in them. I had seen the sloppy way the people in my life moved and behaved after they ingested a substance. They smelled of desperation, the alcohol leaking out of their pores as they swatted mosquitoes next to tiki torches or fading barbecues. The conversations would always end in someone stumbling in the general direction of their homes while the teenagers silently swilled the remnants of their whiskey sours with puckered faces. Maybe someone puked that night. Maybe some one flashed the top of their panties as an invitation to sloppy fornication as the saxophone from Saturday Night Live blew the melody of an ending day.

I don't know how I ended up a heroin addict. Well, yes I do. I tried heroin. I guess that was the first step. But how did I get to that place. How do you go from watching a Star Trek Marathon in footie pajamas to finding a vein between two parked cars on a foggy San Francisco morning. The chilly wind forced goose bumps to spread across my pale flesh. All that matters now is this brown, some blue, and a flash of red in that syringe. If someone would have told me I would become a junkie, I would have never believed it. I was a good girl. Good girls don't become junkies. Until they do....

Comments

  1. meizinniaJuly 9, 2016 at 5:32 PM

    My daughter was a good girl. Now she is a junkie, currently not active. I cried a lot wondering what happened, how our lives has taken such a turn. Today, we are 2 strangers, my heart just cries and cries. All I pray for is that each she is breathing. I wonder for me, if the pain ever stops. Do you think she wonders too? she seems so ashamed of it all when clean but do not want to discuss? I pray there is hope for us. Thank you, Tracey.

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  2. nequeenb90July 10, 2016 at 1:42 PM

    I was also a good girl until I wasn't! I NEEDED excitement in my life and being bad was EXCITING until excitement turned into desperation and I went from EVERYONE WANTS YOU cause your a HOT MESS to a mess nobody wanted to clean up!
    So now I enjoy my "boring" mundane life. I'm spending my day eating chocolate chef mix, talking to my grown kids via skype, laughing at my oh so amazing 2 year old grand daughter and thanking god, buddah, the mother, or whomever for my boring life filled with love!
    Bless you Tracey and huge HUZZAH'S for "GOOD GIRLS"

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    Replies
    1. Marie RJuly 14, 2016 at 3:05 AM

      Good girl myself early on. That gave way to smart but bored in school- whatever homework wasn't finished during the lecture or in other classes the next day didn't get done. Tested well though. Never got in real trouble in school, but did find my way to and eating disorders. Had a couple close friends, different lunch group every yerr, otherwise solitary and reading books or the internet. Enjoyed expression through makeup and clothes, til some time in a rehab group I (and most others in it) didn't need, taking pills or drinking or LSD 2-3x per month doesn't constitute a drug problem. It was a cultist pyramid scheme for middle class and affluent adolescents, a scam that has moved around after scrutiny And still exists. Anyway, I was discouraged from looking different about 6-9 months in, and hung out exclusively with them outside of school, late, getting home late, graduated late. And the drug issues came many years later. I didn't buy into a number of things, but it did help my depression. I moved out to move on before they exploited my mother for more money to "repeat outpatient" after being told on for secretly getting high 3 times over 14 months, which was really kept quiet just a fear of my parents reaction. "Escaping rehab" to an apartment after graduating at 17, raves, selling psychedelics... later a year on meth, then years later heroin. It definitely doesn't take rebellion and bad behavior to get into drugs, not even a bad friend group. I was curious and sought them out, pretty much using alone at school to be away from parents during my few times monthly messing around. Easier after high school to locate. Oddly enough, my initial heroin experience was disappointing and didn't touch it again for years. Later an acquired taste. But it's said that you need negative in your life for it to do much for you, and didn't have that til way later.

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