Status: Not as active as I would like it to be. :[
Wall Flower
My Past, Told by Joe
I had just turned fourteen, and school was just about to start, when I met the real Diana Price and her boyfriend Lance Philips.
I was at the park with Kevin, a junior in the high school I was about to enter, and Nick, who was still in the junior high I just graduated from. While Kevin skateboarded and Nick watched, and occasionally tried to do skateboard himself, I hung around, trying to find something to do: There were a couple girls I knew from my junior high that were cute and I thought about cracking jokes with them and be impressive; I could do that or try to show Kevin up on skateboarding.
I was still deciding when Diana called for me. She was hanging out under a couple trees near the gate that separated the park and my old junior high with her boyfriend Lance and a few of Kevin’s old friends, some sophomores named Tyler, George and another who went by his nickname, Buddy.
I walked cautiously over to them. They were a big crowd, I was by myself. I did not know if they were going to attack me or joke with me.
“Hey, bro,” Lance said, and his voice was lazy. He also had dilated pupils; I could tell because his eyes were normally green, but then they were nearly all black. He also looked like he had gotten a tan. “I’ve seen you around; you were in Miss Richardson’s class with Diana; and we live near each other. Know that shit-hole house with the blue-grey roof and boarded windows on the corner a few doors down from you?” I nodded. “That’s me.”
Diana kept staring at me with black eyes (normally they were icy blue, very pretty, and fitted her sun kissed skin nicely) and a grin that held so much more than I realized.
“Don’t talk much,” Tyler asked, “do you?”
“We’ll fix that soon enough,” Diana purred. She looked really pretty in the baby blue blouse she was wearing.
“Sorry,” I sputtered. “Yeah. I know who you guys are, and I know that place. So . . . what’s up?”
“Us,” George, who had gotten a piercing on his brow, said, “Wanna join us? Lance said you’re a’ight.” His eyes were nearly all black as well.
“Damn funny, too,” Diana said as Lance put his arm around her and sat to her right. (There was a picnic table, and they were the only two sitting; the rest stood around.) She laughed softly, almost seductively (that was Diana for you), and said, “Don’t look so confused, Joe. We just wanna hang out.”
I smiled cautiously at her as she pulled a plastic baggy out of her shoulder bag and held them out to me. They were brownies. “Baked them myself.”
I pointed at the bag. “Are those - ?”
“Pot brownies, yeah,” she replied.
“Nah, I prefer cookies,” I joked. “More fun to make. And they don’t stick to the pan.” They rewarded my ego with laughter even though what I said wasn’t that funny. Must have been the pot.
“Oh, Joe,” Diana laughed. “Come on. You’ll learn to love brownies, too.”
I wasn’t hungry and I definitely wasn’t unaware of the consequences to come if I ate those brownies. Honestly, I wanted to be close to Diana, find a crowd to fit into, and be something . . . new. Diana only knew I was funny because she sat next to me in class, and I whispered my jokes to her. I was shyer then than I am now, and I hated it. Sure, I didn’t mind talking to others, but I could never do it like my brother, Kevin. He was a social butterfly and I envied that. I wanted my social butterfly to break out of the cocoon already; I wanted to be liked and known and someone everyone could talk to.
So I not only ate pot brownies with them, I smoked it. Diana, Lance, George, Tyler and Buddy were my pot buddies, and every few days we would meet at the park sometime after school (the high school was a short walk from our houses, and it was easy to convince my parents to let me go) to smoke and laugh at idiotic things. Most of the time I would smoke with all five of them, but sometimes it would just be me and Diana, and those times were my favorite.
Diana, like I said before, had icy blue eyes, and her hair color changed whenever she grew bored with the last color. Sometimes her pupils weren’t dilated, other times they were, and I never knew why, because when I smoked pot my pupils stayed the same. Diana later introduced me to what made her pupils dilate, and it had the same affect on me:
One day, over halfway into my freshman year, Diana and I were hanging out with Lance after school. (It was the three of us only ‘cause George and Tyler were expelled for stealing another kid’s crap – it literally was crap, just sunglasses and some clothes – and Buddy dropped out.) We were crashing at Lance’s house on a Friday night. While I smoked pot they pulled out a bag filled with off-white powder. Diana looked very hungrily at it. They called it meth, and after I used it for the first time that day I called it my rare treat. I only used it when Lance could get some, which was once in a blue moon, and I would only have enough for one snort over a period of two days, sometimes three, if I was “lucky.” Lance was greedy. There were times all three of us would go a couple weeks without it, and whenever I had it my pupils always dilated, like Diana’s, and like Lance’s. It was almost like a rite of passage for me.
With pot I was more talkative and had no limits on my words; but with meth, I learned I was more outgoing than Kevin.
My parents never knew that I was a pot and meth addict, never even suspected me. I still went to church with them, but I never listened. I didn’t want to be told I couldn’t smoke pot or snort meth anymore. I hated God mostly because Diana did, but my family never suspected any of it. But, when my freshman year ended, Kevin was very suspicious. Always had been. He heard rumors at school, and he knew who I hung out with.
)(-)(-)(
I hated thinking this while he was telling his story, but I could not help but correct his grammar in my head: He heard rumors at school and (no comma needed before) he knew with whom I spent my time or, as he said, hung out.
)(-)(-)(
His old friends - Tyler, George and Buddy - were old because he didn’t wanna hang around “a bunch of druggies.” He wasn’t ignorant of my behavior.
During the summer between my sophomore and junior year, I hung out with Lance and Diana every day, smoking pot and snorting meth. I remember how addicted I was becoming, and no matter how many times my parents told me to pray whenever I was feeling down, I never did. I thought, No God can tell me what to do. I’m going to keep snorting meth because I’m better with it. Who needs a God when with meth I’m God myself – hell, even higher than the Man upstairs? The concept of a relationship with him was something close to eating my own crap in my twisted, meth-filled mind.
During that same summer, my life changed, but it was not for the better. I was hanging out at Lance’s house one day, just me, him, and Diana. The two were still together then, and it made my heart ache and made me want to snort more meth.
Lance announced he had to “take a piss” after snorting a couple lines of meth and taking a quick smoke of it. I had no idea what demons he had, but he sure was screwed up, that kid.
He left Diana and me alone when he went to the bathroom, and I don’t remember her looking prettier. Maybe it was because of the massive amounts of pot and meth I was taking, but she looked stunning. Without drugs, she was pretty; and with drugs, she made me sweat because she was so beautiful. Her hair was reddish brown then, and when I was high, it looked ruby. I liked it better than her other hair colors.
When Lance left, she quickly came over and touched my face, sat on my lap, and told me she loved me, not Lance.
“I’ve always loved you,” I told her, now overwhelmingly high off meth and her beauty. When she kissed me, I was on the borderline of overdosing.
We were getting really far when we heard a loud thump coming from down the hall where Lance’s bathroom was. Something was banging against the door repeatedly. When Diana and I went over to investigate, Lance was convulsing and his eyes were white because they rolled back into his head. He was literally overdosing.
I called the police while Diana stashed the meth. Lance was taken to the hospital. When the police questioned us, we said we had no idea Lance was even using meth; we never looked the police right in the eye. It was hard trying to hide the meth from them when our dilated eyes told everything. When I went home, successfully fooling the police and my parents, Kevin still knew better. We were bitter towards each other then.
I used meth less after that incident, but Diana kept using it. She was depressed about what happened to Lance, and she used meth and me as antidepressants. I obviously didn’t mind, and if I ever did, I used meth as an antidepressant too. Unsurprisingly, we dated after Lance was announced dead, and were dating for a couple months until we . . . took our relationship to the next level and began doing things married couples do.
Our relationship together consisted of constant kisses, pot, meth, and premarital . . . stuff. I’m not proud of it at all. I lost something to Diana I will never get back, and though I regret it now, I didn’t then, because I loved her and thought God was a . . . not so nice word.
The day we broke up was close to the end of my junior year. I was trying to use meth less and less, desperately trying to get her to follow along. She definitely shouldn’t have been using meth during that . . . period, in her . . . “condition.” Definitely not, but she was so addicted and so mentally screwed up (her dad killed her mom when she was little, almost killed her. She became bipolar depressant) she felt she needed it, no matter who it hurt.
We got into a really big fight. She threw things at me, but I didn’t fight back because I loved her and I was too worried what this would do to her . . . “condition.” I wanted her to calm down and stop trashing my parent’s house. (We were alone.) She said she hated for me doing this to her . . . that she was done with me . . . and her eyes were so wild, dilated, filled with hatred for me and for . . . someone else. I like to think it was because she was so high off of drugs, but I know I’m lying to myself.
Kevin walked in when I grabbed her, tried to hold her, and she beat my chest with her fist. He saw the meth, the pot, what we used to smoke them, and told us to get rid of it. She tried to hurt Kevin, but, like me, he was more concerned about her “condition” than protecting himself. She should not have been putting herself through all this stress. She ended up in the hospital that night, and Kevin and I talked to my parents. About everything: the drugs, the sex (which they kinda already knew about), the secret life I was living behind their backs. They were furious, hurt, but compassionate.
That’s when I started talking to youth pastors at my family’s church, joined the choir, and met my first true friend: Garret. I envied him and his ability to commit to God with all his heart, still have some crap going on in his life, and stay happy. I wanted that happiness; I wanted that thing that made him different, and when I became his friend I met God. God used Garret, your sister, my parents, my youth pastors, and my brothers to help me quit all my addictions: Weed, Methamphetamine and Diana.
Now to answer a question you’ve probably had had for a long time: Diana is the one who calls me now, and we argue about the past. A lot. She’s so helpless now and still addicted. Last time I saw her she did not look the same. Aged. That is what meth does to you once it digs its claws so deep into you it becomes who you are. Luckily I was not that far gone. And when I can’t help her stop it and find God, or at least a treatment center, I feel helpless, so much that it hurts my soul.
I have been meth-free for about . . . three years now, and I found my real self through God. I’ve almost never felt better. Like you, I still struggle. I was in the meth scene, I know how easy it is to get it, and I’m lucky I have God and my family to keep me accountable. Garret calls every now and again to make sure I’m okay. Joanne, too. Now, I have you to trust and to keep reminding my sorry butt that I have God to always help me and guide me.
I was at the park with Kevin, a junior in the high school I was about to enter, and Nick, who was still in the junior high I just graduated from. While Kevin skateboarded and Nick watched, and occasionally tried to do skateboard himself, I hung around, trying to find something to do: There were a couple girls I knew from my junior high that were cute and I thought about cracking jokes with them and be impressive; I could do that or try to show Kevin up on skateboarding.
I was still deciding when Diana called for me. She was hanging out under a couple trees near the gate that separated the park and my old junior high with her boyfriend Lance and a few of Kevin’s old friends, some sophomores named Tyler, George and another who went by his nickname, Buddy.
I walked cautiously over to them. They were a big crowd, I was by myself. I did not know if they were going to attack me or joke with me.
“Hey, bro,” Lance said, and his voice was lazy. He also had dilated pupils; I could tell because his eyes were normally green, but then they were nearly all black. He also looked like he had gotten a tan. “I’ve seen you around; you were in Miss Richardson’s class with Diana; and we live near each other. Know that shit-hole house with the blue-grey roof and boarded windows on the corner a few doors down from you?” I nodded. “That’s me.”
Diana kept staring at me with black eyes (normally they were icy blue, very pretty, and fitted her sun kissed skin nicely) and a grin that held so much more than I realized.
“Don’t talk much,” Tyler asked, “do you?”
“We’ll fix that soon enough,” Diana purred. She looked really pretty in the baby blue blouse she was wearing.
“Sorry,” I sputtered. “Yeah. I know who you guys are, and I know that place. So . . . what’s up?”
“Us,” George, who had gotten a piercing on his brow, said, “Wanna join us? Lance said you’re a’ight.” His eyes were nearly all black as well.
“Damn funny, too,” Diana said as Lance put his arm around her and sat to her right. (There was a picnic table, and they were the only two sitting; the rest stood around.) She laughed softly, almost seductively (that was Diana for you), and said, “Don’t look so confused, Joe. We just wanna hang out.”
I smiled cautiously at her as she pulled a plastic baggy out of her shoulder bag and held them out to me. They were brownies. “Baked them myself.”
I pointed at the bag. “Are those - ?”
“Pot brownies, yeah,” she replied.
“Nah, I prefer cookies,” I joked. “More fun to make. And they don’t stick to the pan.” They rewarded my ego with laughter even though what I said wasn’t that funny. Must have been the pot.
“Oh, Joe,” Diana laughed. “Come on. You’ll learn to love brownies, too.”
I wasn’t hungry and I definitely wasn’t unaware of the consequences to come if I ate those brownies. Honestly, I wanted to be close to Diana, find a crowd to fit into, and be something . . . new. Diana only knew I was funny because she sat next to me in class, and I whispered my jokes to her. I was shyer then than I am now, and I hated it. Sure, I didn’t mind talking to others, but I could never do it like my brother, Kevin. He was a social butterfly and I envied that. I wanted my social butterfly to break out of the cocoon already; I wanted to be liked and known and someone everyone could talk to.
So I not only ate pot brownies with them, I smoked it. Diana, Lance, George, Tyler and Buddy were my pot buddies, and every few days we would meet at the park sometime after school (the high school was a short walk from our houses, and it was easy to convince my parents to let me go) to smoke and laugh at idiotic things. Most of the time I would smoke with all five of them, but sometimes it would just be me and Diana, and those times were my favorite.
Diana, like I said before, had icy blue eyes, and her hair color changed whenever she grew bored with the last color. Sometimes her pupils weren’t dilated, other times they were, and I never knew why, because when I smoked pot my pupils stayed the same. Diana later introduced me to what made her pupils dilate, and it had the same affect on me:
One day, over halfway into my freshman year, Diana and I were hanging out with Lance after school. (It was the three of us only ‘cause George and Tyler were expelled for stealing another kid’s crap – it literally was crap, just sunglasses and some clothes – and Buddy dropped out.) We were crashing at Lance’s house on a Friday night. While I smoked pot they pulled out a bag filled with off-white powder. Diana looked very hungrily at it. They called it meth, and after I used it for the first time that day I called it my rare treat. I only used it when Lance could get some, which was once in a blue moon, and I would only have enough for one snort over a period of two days, sometimes three, if I was “lucky.” Lance was greedy. There were times all three of us would go a couple weeks without it, and whenever I had it my pupils always dilated, like Diana’s, and like Lance’s. It was almost like a rite of passage for me.
With pot I was more talkative and had no limits on my words; but with meth, I learned I was more outgoing than Kevin.
My parents never knew that I was a pot and meth addict, never even suspected me. I still went to church with them, but I never listened. I didn’t want to be told I couldn’t smoke pot or snort meth anymore. I hated God mostly because Diana did, but my family never suspected any of it. But, when my freshman year ended, Kevin was very suspicious. Always had been. He heard rumors at school, and he knew who I hung out with.
)(-)(-)(
I hated thinking this while he was telling his story, but I could not help but correct his grammar in my head: He heard rumors at school and (no comma needed before) he knew with whom I spent my time or, as he said, hung out.
)(-)(-)(
His old friends - Tyler, George and Buddy - were old because he didn’t wanna hang around “a bunch of druggies.” He wasn’t ignorant of my behavior.
During the summer between my sophomore and junior year, I hung out with Lance and Diana every day, smoking pot and snorting meth. I remember how addicted I was becoming, and no matter how many times my parents told me to pray whenever I was feeling down, I never did. I thought, No God can tell me what to do. I’m going to keep snorting meth because I’m better with it. Who needs a God when with meth I’m God myself – hell, even higher than the Man upstairs? The concept of a relationship with him was something close to eating my own crap in my twisted, meth-filled mind.
During that same summer, my life changed, but it was not for the better. I was hanging out at Lance’s house one day, just me, him, and Diana. The two were still together then, and it made my heart ache and made me want to snort more meth.
Lance announced he had to “take a piss” after snorting a couple lines of meth and taking a quick smoke of it. I had no idea what demons he had, but he sure was screwed up, that kid.
He left Diana and me alone when he went to the bathroom, and I don’t remember her looking prettier. Maybe it was because of the massive amounts of pot and meth I was taking, but she looked stunning. Without drugs, she was pretty; and with drugs, she made me sweat because she was so beautiful. Her hair was reddish brown then, and when I was high, it looked ruby. I liked it better than her other hair colors.
When Lance left, she quickly came over and touched my face, sat on my lap, and told me she loved me, not Lance.
“I’ve always loved you,” I told her, now overwhelmingly high off meth and her beauty. When she kissed me, I was on the borderline of overdosing.
We were getting really far when we heard a loud thump coming from down the hall where Lance’s bathroom was. Something was banging against the door repeatedly. When Diana and I went over to investigate, Lance was convulsing and his eyes were white because they rolled back into his head. He was literally overdosing.
I called the police while Diana stashed the meth. Lance was taken to the hospital. When the police questioned us, we said we had no idea Lance was even using meth; we never looked the police right in the eye. It was hard trying to hide the meth from them when our dilated eyes told everything. When I went home, successfully fooling the police and my parents, Kevin still knew better. We were bitter towards each other then.
I used meth less after that incident, but Diana kept using it. She was depressed about what happened to Lance, and she used meth and me as antidepressants. I obviously didn’t mind, and if I ever did, I used meth as an antidepressant too. Unsurprisingly, we dated after Lance was announced dead, and were dating for a couple months until we . . . took our relationship to the next level and began doing things married couples do.
Our relationship together consisted of constant kisses, pot, meth, and premarital . . . stuff. I’m not proud of it at all. I lost something to Diana I will never get back, and though I regret it now, I didn’t then, because I loved her and thought God was a . . . not so nice word.
The day we broke up was close to the end of my junior year. I was trying to use meth less and less, desperately trying to get her to follow along. She definitely shouldn’t have been using meth during that . . . period, in her . . . “condition.” Definitely not, but she was so addicted and so mentally screwed up (her dad killed her mom when she was little, almost killed her. She became bipolar depressant) she felt she needed it, no matter who it hurt.
We got into a really big fight. She threw things at me, but I didn’t fight back because I loved her and I was too worried what this would do to her . . . “condition.” I wanted her to calm down and stop trashing my parent’s house. (We were alone.) She said she hated for me doing this to her . . . that she was done with me . . . and her eyes were so wild, dilated, filled with hatred for me and for . . . someone else. I like to think it was because she was so high off of drugs, but I know I’m lying to myself.
Kevin walked in when I grabbed her, tried to hold her, and she beat my chest with her fist. He saw the meth, the pot, what we used to smoke them, and told us to get rid of it. She tried to hurt Kevin, but, like me, he was more concerned about her “condition” than protecting himself. She should not have been putting herself through all this stress. She ended up in the hospital that night, and Kevin and I talked to my parents. About everything: the drugs, the sex (which they kinda already knew about), the secret life I was living behind their backs. They were furious, hurt, but compassionate.
That’s when I started talking to youth pastors at my family’s church, joined the choir, and met my first true friend: Garret. I envied him and his ability to commit to God with all his heart, still have some crap going on in his life, and stay happy. I wanted that happiness; I wanted that thing that made him different, and when I became his friend I met God. God used Garret, your sister, my parents, my youth pastors, and my brothers to help me quit all my addictions: Weed, Methamphetamine and Diana.
Now to answer a question you’ve probably had had for a long time: Diana is the one who calls me now, and we argue about the past. A lot. She’s so helpless now and still addicted. Last time I saw her she did not look the same. Aged. That is what meth does to you once it digs its claws so deep into you it becomes who you are. Luckily I was not that far gone. And when I can’t help her stop it and find God, or at least a treatment center, I feel helpless, so much that it hurts my soul.
I have been meth-free for about . . . three years now, and I found my real self through God. I’ve almost never felt better. Like you, I still struggle. I was in the meth scene, I know how easy it is to get it, and I’m lucky I have God and my family to keep me accountable. Garret calls every now and again to make sure I’m okay. Joanne, too. Now, I have you to trust and to keep reminding my sorry butt that I have God to always help me and guide me.
♠ ♠ ♠
>.< Crazy, riiiight? Now you guys are satisfied. But do not forget, there's soooo much more to Loraine and Joe's story! My worry is that you guys will be like, oh, we've heard Joe's story now, we're done. This is not the climax/resolution! I still have more! :DLove ya guys.
Love,
Bree :)