Sumido

I've always been alone as a kid. When my brother was born, we moved into a bigger appartment and I got to have my own bedroom. While most of the kids get punished by being sent to their room, for me, the punishment was not being allowed to go back to my room! My father is very kind, very helpful but when he's drunk, he gets violent and he used to beat me and my mother. So I spent most of the time in my room, alone. I had posters, mainly of Guns n' Roses and those guys were like my only friends, my role models. I read everything I could find about them (no Internet at that time) and as most of them used heroin, I was curious about it. At 16, I ran away from home. I was terrified at home, afraid of my father...until one day, I took all the money I had and bought a one way bus ticket to Lisbon, Portugal. My parents found out about it (they found a copy of the ticket receipt) and called some familly members, asked them to pick me up at the bus station in Lisbon. I ran away to Lisbon because my first girlfriend lived there and I thought about living with her. I had it all planed: before I left, I leraned to play a lot of songs so that I could play in the streets, make some money to eat and I would sleep in the cemetery, thinking that no body would disturb me there as most of the people are scared of cemeteries at night. One day, my aunt had the idea of brining me to a psychologist. As I was living at her place, I couldn't say no, so I went. I was sure that she would try to get inside my head and rebel as I was, I wouldn't let her do that, so I lied and only told BS to the psychologist, so that didn't help me at all. I remember that day so well! My aunt went with me. When we were done, we went back home. On the way home, not very far from her place, I told´her that I needed to buy cigarettes. She went back home alone and I went to buy cigarettes. When I got out of the shop, at the end of the street, I saw my girlfriend, holding hands with a guy. I knew that guy. She had told me that they were best friends. I felt something was wrong, but I tried not to be jealous. I couldn't move, watching them waling towards me...and when they saw me, she quickly let go,his hand. They said hi and she started to try to explain that they're just friends, bla bla bla... I told her to go home, that I wanted to have a talk with the guy and I'd be right home. I didn't beat up the guy or anything. I just asked him if they were a couple, if he loved her... As he said yes, I said that I would go back to Luxembourg and that he should take care of her. I realised that long distance relationships don't work, or at least didn't work for her and tried to convince myself that she's young and it wasn't fair to make her wait for me, being alone the whole time...eventhought I did it on my side. I went back to her place. She came to me and all she was saying was "oh, give me a kiss, come on, just one kiss!" I don't know what she had in her mind, why she was obsessed by kissing me at that moment. But I wanted to talk and to leave. When she noticed that I wanted to break up and leave for good, she ran to the bathroom, took a razor blade and cut her wrist. That's typical for her! I wasn't shocked at all as it wasn't the first time that she did something like that just to have my attention. I took a towel, saw that the cut wasn't deep, it almost didn't bleed but I put the towel around her wrist and left. When I got at my aunt's place, she acted very strange. I didn't know what was going on but something was defently going on! She said something like "don't freak out now but you dad is here". I was so down by what had happened with my now ex-girlfriend that I didn't care about anything anymore. My father came upstairs, took me in his arms (that's something that I find strange, even to this day). The next day, we flew back to Luxembourg. My father said he would change but you know what? After only 2 weeks, he started again... just like nothing had ever happened.
At 17, I ran away again. My father came home, drunk and he was very aggressive, more than usual. By then, I already had long hair and my father hated it, said long hair was for girls and for fags... So that day, he wanted to cut my hair. He took a knife and because he was drunk and I was trying to free myself, he cut me a little bit on my neck and throat. He also punched me in the face to keep me quiet. Somehow I was able to free myself and I ran away from home. Police found me on the streets at night. I told them what happened and by the way I looked (blood over my face and t-shirt, my throat cut...) they believed me. They had to find some place for me as I was still 17. But there were no place available at that moment, so the only place where they could put me was some kind of prison for minors. They don't call it a prison, but the conditions are the same. They told me it was only for the night. The next day, a guy came to visit me and explained me that it wasn't easy to find a place for me so quick, so I would have to stay there probably until next monday. On monday, I got a call saying that maybe, I would have to stay there one more week or two. Finally, I got out when I was 18! While I was there, I was treated just like the other kids. Rapists, a kid who had set a gas station on fire, some racist gang members... But nothing ever happened to me. After a while, I became "friends" with a highly respected kid and so, I became part of their gang. I remember, at some point, I thought to myself "what's the worst that could happen to me? Do some sh!t, get caught and being sent here? I'm already here, so why not have some fun?". I knew that some guys took acid to make the time go by faster. Some of them, like me eventually, went to work outside and came back in the evening. So I didn't care about anything anymore. No more Mr nice guy, as goes that song... I tried LSD for the first time there. Besides smoking pot, it was my first experience with drugs and I loved it! I hated to be me, I hated to be there, locked in and LSD helped a lot!
When I got out, I met a girl and moved into an appartment with her. We've been together for almost 9 years. Lately, I was part of a rock band. At that time, I was working and with the gigs that we played almost every weekend, as we got paid, I made some money. At work, I met a girl who did heroin and of course, me being me, I had to try it. In my head, I wanted to be just like my old "friends", the posters on the wall of my bedroom. She sold me some and I loved it. I mean, really loved it! I'm very shy, I have that thing called social anxiety but with heroin, I felt comfortable, I felt "normal" among normal people. In the beginning, I promised myself I would only do it on weekends. I remember so well, some friends telling me I would end up addicted to it, but I always told them "you know me, I'm not stupid, not like those dumb junkies who didn't control themselves, took too much heroin and got addicted!" I used to buy 1 dose for the weekend. Then, I thought "hey, the weekend has 2 days, so let's buy 2 doses". Then, if there was a holiday in a week, that would be an excuse to buy one more dose...until I used every day! By then, I only snorted it. In the beginning, I used to smoke it but at work, it was so much easier to snort it.
Eventually, I got kicked out of the band. I never used when we played a gig, but I missed more and more rehearsals. After I got kicked out of the band, as I didn't have as much money as I used to when I played gigs, I started to inject heroin. When you shoot up, you don't need as much as when you snort it. But when I began to shoot up, things got even more out of control... After a while, all I wanted was to get high. My girlfriend tried everything to get me out of the house, just going for a walk or going to the movies...but no. So she started to go out with her friends, met a guy and left me for him. I don't blame her. I don't know if I would have been able to live with someone like me, either... She moved out and as the rent was too much for me alone, I moved into a smaller appartment. There, I was alone, so I did even more heroin! I started to not going to work, calling them, saying I had the flu or something... Eventually, I got fired from work. At that point of my life, I had lost it all: lost my band, lost my girlfriend, crashed my car and as I didn't have the money to get it fixed, I lost it, too. I lost my job, had no friends....so I thought that it would be the right moment to go to rehab.
I did, stayed there 6 months and I learned a lot about myself but also about people and life in general. When I got out, I couldn't find a place to stay. Everyone asked me where I worked and as I didn't have a job, nobody would let me an appartment. So I lived on the streets during 9 months! During that time, I was surrounded by junkies (I slept in a "shelter" meant for addicts) and so I relapsed. But after relapsing, I realised that heroin didn't do it anymore. I knew too much about myself, about my problems and where they came from and I knew that heroin would only be a short time relief. but after I relapsed, I was disappointed. It was way too short relief, if a relief at all and I think that I really needed to do it one more time to KNOW that I was done with it. Finally, I found a room. As soon as I moved in, as I was no longer among other addicts, I quit. I'm still on methadone but no more heroin. It's been quite easy not to use anymore since I am far away from that drug world. I've been clean for a while now (well, still on methadone), sometimes, I remember the times on the street and start craving it, but I try to get busy and those thoughts end up going away.
So that's my story. Sorry about the part with the girlfriend who cheated on me and my runaway to Lisbon, but I think that if you know about that, you can understand me, know me a little better.