My Other Addiction
Authors Note : One of
the big things in my autobiography is me retelling my most vivid experiences
while on drugs. However I had another
addiction that didn’t quite fit into my book because it was a very short time
in my life and had no affect on the overall story.
I was feeling like a victim to my drug and alcohol addictions and my inability to get my life straight. I was 18 when I started cutting myself.
It was a few days after my birthday, my father had bought me a car it was a red Audi and for its initial drive we were going for a drive together. I thought we were finally going to have an adult relationship together now that I was legally an adult and this was the start of it. I was wrong.
He told me to drive into a parking lot where he started touching me. I was pissed that he still had this strange control over me. After an hour of that he told me to drive home and the whole way he talked about how he would have sex with me when we got back house. I then realized how easy it would be for me to drive off the road and kill us both, I wanted to do it but once again he still had that control. I think he could read my mind because he had his hand gripped around my arm while I was driving. Halfway back home he decided he couldn’t wait.
I am 100% percent sure my father raped me starting when I was 13 but, I have blocked most of them out. I have no cognitive memory of it, but I am sure of it because I remember the pain afterwards. I remember a concerned nurse who after she made allegations was fired the next day.
Anyway, later that day after he went to work I took a baseball bat and smashed the rearview window of the car. I have no idea why I guess I was feeling defiant and angsty like any teenager. I then realized when he saw the car he would probably beat the crap out of me and my mother and my sister. All of those feelings got to me and I knew I couldn’t control what happened next so I took a piece of the broken window and cut myself. And like the window breaking, I have no clue why I did it.
It was like all the stress drained out of me along with the blood and the smell of my own blood was good to me. I was actually smiling; it felt amazing to have control over something.
From then on Whenever I got stressed or when my father was in my life or something I would always turn back to cutting.
Out of all of the things I did this one scared the hell out of my mother the most. It was the only time since I hadn’t been a child that she disciplined me over something. She would just check my wrists everyday and if she saw a fresh cut she would yell and search me until she found the blade and then she would throw it out. At that time I was picking the blade out of Schicks. As much as I laughed at my mom as she yelled nonsense at me (she was high half the time) and ignored her I hated being bothered so, for I while I did stop doing it.
A few months after I had dropped out of college and was living at home my little brother Ben who was 8 at the time came to me and started crying and wouldn’t stop or tell me what was wrong even though I knew my father had been for a visit earlier that day.
I was going through a slight withdrawal at the time because I couldn’t afford my own drugs and I was in this terrible mood and I pushed him away from me. He hit the table and started out right screaming. I was mad at myself because I felt like I was being like my mother and ignoring what was probably a traumatic time for him. Instead of dealing with it I took out the pocketknife that I carried around with me and cut both of my wrists. This was the first time I had used a blade that big and I was slightly out of practice. I mention this because it was the most euphoric I had ever felt from cutting. In reality I losing a lot of blood and was passing out but at the time it just felt good.
I got very lucky that day that Liz was visiting town that week because she found me passed out, covered in blood and stopped the blood loss. Liz was getting her Physcicians Assistant training at the time. Even to this day Miss Marlow refuses to forgive me for that, among other things.
I stopped cutting myself a year later when my wife and my mother (at the time the 2 most demanding women in my life) forced me to stop. It was a really bad ordeal.
And like some miracle from God, it wasn’t hard to quit. I took the razor I had been using for the longest time (it was one of the old fashioned stainless steel ones ) and had it melted and turned into a ring that I actually wore for a while like a promise to myself.
I could have killed myself if I hadn’t stopped and I am thankful I had people in my life who were willing to help me because if they hadn’t who knows if I would even be here.
