The Story of M: Part 3

When I looked up into the pale blue of her eyes she seemed almost as shocked as I was. My hands trembled.

            “Do you feel that?” I asked, stupidly, I guess.

            She nodded, speechless, staring into my eyes. It was everything I could do not to lean over and just kiss her mouth, or hold her pressed against me. We were both just radiating out to each other and I could feel her all over me—like her skin was covering mine and I knew in that instant, I fucking knew, that I loved her. I couldn’t help it. She was like the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, or felt, or been in the goddamn presence of. We moved closer and closer together. There were tears burning my eyes.

            What the fuck was happening?

            I almost couldn’t take it—the intensity was cutting into the very center of me.

            I gasped and I felt her warmth and the pressure of her hand on me.

            And then, suddenly, she jerked away.

            Someone was calling her.

            “M, M, it’s time to go.”

            She looked shaken and then she turned to face me again and we both just started laughing and laughing so uncontrollably—like little children.

            There was really nothing I could do.

Just sort of instinctually I reached into my bag and handed her my book.

            “Look,” I said. “I wrote this. I mean, this is my life. You don’t have to read it or anything. But, uh, I feel like I have to give it to you.”

            And then I wrote my email address on the front page, only, I could barely make it legible, my hands were shaking so goddamn badly.

            “Hey,” I said. “Write me if you want. I’m Nic, by the way.”

            Her eyes shone, right?

            “I’m M.”

            She sprinted away, obscured by the crowd.

            I couldn’t even watch her leave.

When I took my seat on the airplane I fell instantly into this deep, almost delirious sleep. I dreamed of M. She was inside me. I was talking and talking with her, though I can’t remember what we said.

            M was with me the entire flight.

I had to hurry to make my connecting plane to Savannah, so I ran across the airport without seeing her again.

But she was with me.

I couldn’t shake her.

I tried to tell a few people about what happened, but they just made me feel crazy and I ended up laughing with them about my Jesus freak encounter. Anyway, it does sound crazy. I mean, I know that.

So it was really just two weeks later that I checked my email late at night and saw that M had written me.

She said she’d been thinking about me and she finished my book and she was back from Nicaragua and she wrote me all about her time there. Her writing was so effortless and whatever. It was like I could feel her with me through her words.

So I wrote her back.

That’s how it started—just writing back and forth like that.

I learned about her childhood, I learned about her life, you know, just day to day.

And the more I learned, the more I fell, ha, deeper and deeper. I swear to God I couldn’t fucking help it.

In terms of all the crazy religious stuff, well, somehow I managed to pretty much dismiss all that. I guess I’ve always been pretty good at compartmentalizing. Her religious babble was filed away in a place of total, uh, denial in me. My head just discounted it all somehow. I knew there was nothing to it and I wasn’t gonna hold that against her. The whole story was too perfect. I couldn’t abandon it over a few email references to Holy Ghost Power, or whatever.

            Anyway, it was only a few weeks later that she gave me her phone number. After all we’d been through, it seemed sort of stupid that I was so nervous to call her. Maybe part of me was terrified that our connection wouldn’t really exist if we were actually talking to each other.

Maybe part of me was terrified that it still would.

            But her voice came through to me like the sweetest, most calming, positive, alive, beautiful, hopeful thing I’d ever heard.

It sent me, you know?

            And then, on the phone, our voices echoing back and forth, I could suddenly feel her presence again there next to me. She giggled and breathed and I breathed and we breathed together. And we had this love going back and forth. And it made no sense. And I couldn’t explain it. And it scared the shit outta me. But it was. I mean, it was as real as anything.

            Or, at least, that’s how it felt.

            Now, of course, I couldn’t talk about this shit with anyone. I mean, everybody would’ve thought I was just crazy and, well, I fucking was.

            But the more I talked to M the more convinced I became that I needed to drive up to Northern California and see her.

I’d lie in bed and talk to M for hours. A lot of times we wouldn’t say anything at all, but she was with me and I felt this heat and fluttering inside and energy coursing through me.

“I need you to come be with me,” she’d half whisper. “I just want to lie down in your presence.”

It was like we were existing in this in-between place. Our souls had left our bodies and had met together somewhere in the middle. I got to be away from myself, from my life—from the boring, average, day to day whatever of living in sobriety—stable—with a stable fucking relationship and all that. I got to feel fucking alive again.

The Story of M: Part 2 (of 4, I think)

The girl standing over me had black hair that was cut sort of jagged around her face and then hung down long to her back. She was small, with sharp, angular features and eyes that shone so bright it was like I was fucking hypnotized by them.

“Hey,” she said, laughing, her voice coming out reckless like dancing.

“Hey,” I answered back—sort of startled or confused or something.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I just had to come talk to you.”

“Uhmm,” I said, sitting up a little more. “That’s okay.”

She dropped down next to me on the ground and crossed her legs and rocked back and forth, giggling a little. She offered me a cashew.

I didn’t take it.

I offered her some of my fruit drink thing.

She took a sip of it and laughed and said she didn’t really like it.

“So what’d you wanna talk to me about?” I asked.

Her eyes stayed focused on mine and I swear I was totally powerless to do anything but just stare fucking back.

“I don’t know,” she told me. “I felt like I had to. You’re a great communicator. You have this power in you that is like nothing I’ve ever seen. You’re going to do great things with your life. You’re going to help so many people.”

Now it was my turn to laugh.

I mean, she was sounding pretty fucking crazy.

I told her so.

“Look, I mean, you’re crazy. You don’t even know me.”

She smiled big at that.

“Right? It’s totally crazy. But I just feel this like energy coming out of you. Are you an artist? A writer?”

I swallowed something down in my throat.

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, I guess I am.”

And so, disarmed somehow, I told her about my book and what’d been going on with me. It was like the words were just coming out before I could stop them. I know that’s a cliché or whatever, but really, I mean, that’s the way it was. I ain’t makin’ this shit up.

Then she went on to tell me that she was leaving on this sort of mission, or whatever, to Nicaragua with a bunch of kids from her school—a ministry program out of Northern California. They were going to pray over people there and shrink tumors and restore eye sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf and all that faith healing craziness. She was gonna bring God to them. She told me all this casually—like it was just assumed, or whatever.

And then she asked, you know, real simple like, if she could pray over me.

I laughed.

It was all so totally ridiculous.

I mean, I figured, what the hell?

It couldn’t hurt.

Plus she was beautiful, like I said.

“Sure,” I told her.

Now, look, I’ve read stuff about the power of suggestion and mind control and whatever. After being involved in a very sort of extremist sect of the Twelve Step program when I was younger, I’d become fascinated with the way desperate people were picked up by these groups, exploited and manipulated, then tricked into having so called religious experiences where they feel something they imagine to be God.

But there is no God, so none of that could possibly be true.

Dostoevsky writes that man can find meaning wherever he looks for it. We can make any situation into whatever it is we desire it to be.

Still, you know, the thing is, with that girl, I didn’t want the situation to be anything.

At least, I didn’t think I did.

So the girl prayed over me.

I didn’t close my eyes. I just stared sort of out of focus at the ugly, frayed carpeting.

She put her hand on my shoulder and began to speak out loud—asking God to be with us—to show us his heart for us.

And then, like instantly, in that moment, this crazy rush of energy came like a fucking electrical storm running through me. My breathing came on me in great gasps and I felt like the two of us were sort of floating there—her and me—me and her. It was like the world had faded out only leaving her, this girl, ripped wide open, transparent, with light and energy and the most beautiful, shimmering voice speaking out of her core to me. I felt love and awe for her like I’d never experienced in my whole life.

When I looked up into the pale blue of her eyes she seemed almost as shocked as I was. My hands trembled.

“Do you feel that?” I asked, stupidly, I guess.

The Story of M: Part 1

My therapist tells me I’m addicted to chaos.

Among other things.

So let me tell you about M.

I’d known M for less than a month and already she’d crawled up underneath my skin and nested tightly in a ball in the center of my stomach.

It went down like this—listen:

I’d written this memoir about being a drug addict and it was the last day of my book tour, or, actually, my book tour was over and I was flying back to Savannah from San Francisco. I’d spent the night with my dad and his family out in Point Reyes. It was strange, you know, ‘cause part of me felt like I would never be able to even set foot inside that house again—let alone spend the night, wake up in the morning and wander into the kitchen to make coffee. Among the things my drug addiction took from me was my relationship with my dad and step-mom and little brother and sister. I stole from them, broke into their house, lashed out at them crazy and irrational and terrifying.

I was eleven when my little brother, Jasper, was born. Daisy is two years younger than he is. All I ever wanted was to be an example for them of someone who was open and accepting and real. I wanted to inspire them and make them feel safe and help them to love and be true to themselves.

But I failed. I robbed them of an innocent childhood. I terrorized them and took their mommy and daddy away. I brought them fear and confusion and chaos.

Now that I was sober, well, it’d been a slow process of trying to build back my relationship with them. I waited over a year before I even spoke to them on the phone. I wanted to be sure.

But two and a half years later, I found myself spending the night in my sister’s tiny, tiny bed. Her drawings and paintings and collection of images torn from magazines were tapped up on the wall above me. At the foot of the bed was a chest of drawers pilled high with little sculptures and stones and dried flowers and hand sewn dolls Daisy’d made herself.

I walked out onto the heated concrete floor of the living room, the sun already stretching out fingers of light through the slated windows and doors.

I made coffee and drank it quickly. It was time to go. I had a flight to catch. My publishing company arranged to have a Lincoln town car pick me up and the driver was waiting outside.

Daisy came softly up the stairs followed by my dad. Her eyes swallowed me up, absorbing everything and missing nothing. I gave her a hug and she hugged me back.

“It was really good to see you,” I told her.

She let out a little noise like a laugh and nodded up and down.

She hugged me again.

My dad told me goodbye and the sun was still warm and bright as I carried my bag out to the car.

Driving through the winding, twisted roads leading to San Francisco and the airport, there was this stillness inside me that made me want to cry.

The past month I’d been to ten different cities with my dad—who’d written his own memoir about having a meth addict son—reading from our books and talking to people about addiction and recovery. We’d been on the Today Show, Oprah, Terry Gross, and tons of other radio and TV programs. It had all been so fast and blurred out I could barely take in what was happening. But, that morning, driving in the car, I knew it was over. I was going back to Savannah—back to my quiet, simple life. There was a tightness in my stomach—a creeping sickness up my throat.

The airport was crowded, of course, and I checked in my bag and went through security. My girlfriend’s mom had gotten me these really amazing, comfortable slippers for Christmas and I’d started wearing them everywhere. I had a shoulder bag with my computer in it and a copy of my book that I’d been reading from on the road.

I wandered along the dirty looking, faded patterned carpet until I came to my gate. The plane to Atlanta, my connecting city, wasn’t boarding for another twenty minutes or so. I went over to the magazine store and bought some flavored fruit drink thing, then I wandered right up next to the big, impossibly thick windows and lay down there on the ground, feeling the sun all around me and inside. I closed my eyes and felt tired, tired, tired.

I’m not sure how long I was lying there like that, but, suddenly, I opened my eyes and saw this girl standing over me.

I sat up a little.

#1

Hey, so I’m starting this blog thing. Basically I’ve just been encouraged by a bunch of different people in my life to keep sharing my experiences in recovery with everybody ‘cause I’ve been a fucking mess recently and I guess that’s supposed to be helpful, or something. I don’t know. I guess it is helpful. I wrote this book, TWEAK, right? About my struggles with drug addiction—specifically IV crystal meth and, uh, coke and heroin and crack and all sorts of pills and ecstasy and hallucinogens and pot and alcohol and I guess just about everything.

So far I’ve gotten a ton of really positive fucking responses. It seems like there is something about sharing your insides with the world that gives other people strength and hope and helps them not to feel so alone.

Something like that.

Anyway, this blog, I guess, is supposed to be a continuation of that process and that’s definitely my goal with it. I’m committed to being totally honest with ya’ll—in so much as I can be honest with myself. I guess I’ll try to just make this like a journal and hope that there’s something useful and interesting in that.

The problem is, I’m fucking crazy. I’m not saying that lightly, either. I mean, I really am fucking crazy as hell. In the time period since my book ended—which was with me getting into that final treatment center in Arizona—I’ve continued to make a total catastrophic disaster of my life. I’ve continued to hurt everyone who cares about me. I’ve continued not to face the truth about myself and my addiction and my mental illness and whatever. I’ve continued to run away from pain and hard work.

I’m a fucking selfish cunt.

I hate myself and I want to die.

At least, sometimes.

Right now, you know, today, I’m at a point where if I don’t face my shit I’m gonna be fucking 30 years old before I know it and still repeating these same fucked up behaviors and still completely rotting away inside.

So this is my moment. This is my moment to look inside and tell the truth and start dealing with all this shit in me I’ve been denying since I was little.

Let me tell you where I’m at now. I guess that’s a good place to start.

Oh, but before I do, I should mention that a lot of what I think I know to be true today will probably be different tomorrow. It’ll definitely be different in a month from now. I mean, a month ago I almost ran off to go be with this girl and join a religious cult in Redding. Then I thought I’d get back together with my ex-girlfriend. Then I moved in with my mom who just left her husband. Then I moved back in with my current girlfriend. Somewhere in that time I relapsed. I mean, just on pills and medical marijuana, but still.

Anyway, I got myself into treatment and now I’m back and working with a therapist and psychiatrist and doing an outpatient group. Yesterday I thought I needed to leave my girlfriend. Today I’m not sure. So do you get what I’m saying? I’m fucking sick as fuck.

And, well, I hope I’m finally at a place where I can start working to move forward and heal and find some kinda peace within myself.

As of now that seems pretty far off.

Okay, okay, let me try to explain everything.

I’m starting with today.

Oh, fucker, one more thing, I’m just gonna use letters for everyones’ names ‘cause that’s easy and requires no creativity at all.

Okay, sorry.

I live with my girlfriend, Y, right?

The truth is, I don’t really know if I’m in love with her.

That’s a fucked up place to be.