It's all in what you're not used to.

[bubblegumsleaze.livejournal.com]

As long as I can remember it's been me leaning on other people. It's been me depending on everyone else to make sure everything's ok. It's been me who needs, me who takes, me who loses the thread of what's real and falls off the edge of the world. Me who relys on everyone else to reel me back in, pull me back into the actual, tell me the voices arent real, the visions aren't there, that my brain isn't unanchored and spinning in my skull, ripping my eyes out and killing me. It's been me needing everyone else to talk me down. Keep me alive.
Nobody has ever come to me. Oh I have friends, but my friends tiptoe around me. I'm the original eggshell, one false move and I'm cracked, broken, spilling out, irretreivable. Nobody brings their problems to me....we can't add to my stress. Nobody seeks consolation from me, I have enough problems of my own. Nobody asks me to sit with them when their sick....I'm not well enough. Nobody depends on me to anchor them in reality....I'm already drifting.

None of those things that people think are true, of course. I'm not that fragile, not that self involved or overwhelmed, not that ill, not that crazy. But the past teaches harshly and those lessons are with you for life. None of my friends can unlearn those things the past taught them....and so for them I suppose those things are true.

But there's somebody new in my world, now. Somebody who was busy doing something else the day those lessons were handed out. Somebody who doesn't know what my past says my present must be.

She didn't know me then. She only knows me now. And while she knows, through the telling, what I've been through, she doesn't equate it with what I am...she knows me only as she knows me. Who I am now is the only me she's ever known.

She went out tonight with some friends...I hesitate to call them that but it's her word, not mine. She called me to apologize for not coming over....that's just crazy, to apologize for daring to live her life without me in it every second....and while she was out with them they decided on something new and exotic. She invited me to join them....but Lucid and peyote, and where did they GET that???? aren't anything I'm going to go near. I have a bad trip organically wired into my head, the last thing in the world I'm ever going to touch is something that would bring it on deliberately. It's kind of horrifying to me that anybody would seek that out, but then, they havent lived in my head.
And Lucid....I've had absinthe. I got dizzy, I got sick, I passed out, I woke up with a headache. Yeah good times. I'll pass.
So she went out and I didn't.

She's asleep in my bed right now. It's only 11:10 pm. That's midmorning in New Orleans. I don't think she'll stay asleep for long.
She called me a couple of hours ago, hysterical and crying, lost in some weird place her mind made up for her, swamped in all of those chemicals. Wasted on absinthe and on a trip I don't even want to imagine, she called me and said "Ryan, I don't know where I am."
It turned out she was only down the block and I walked down and got her. And I got an idea of what it must have been like for people with me. Because she didn't know where she was, nothing she was seeing was what I was seeing, nothing she was hearing was what I was hearing. And because that's never happened to her before she was scared.
And so for the last two hours I've been talking her down, talking her down, talking her down. Showing her real things, turning the lights up bright and taking away the shadows, turning the tv off and the radio off and the cell phones off....and making sure she knows I'm not gonna walk away and leave her. She kept saying "Ryan, help me." and then asking me if I was still here.
Nobody has ever asked me for help before. Nobody's ever counted on me to get them through....anything.
She told me everything that ran through her mind...and once she stopped herself and said "God, it's a good thing I trust you. Don't ever do drugs!"
Yeah, I get enough of that just through an accident of birth, I don't think she much has to worry about it.
She asked me if she could stay with me and she told me that she knew it was going to get worse, and that it was ok because no matter how weird it got, she knew she'd be safe here with me.
Nobody has EVER said anything like that to me before.
Nobody would have ever dared to think that before. Putting themselves in my hands? May as well stroll to the nearest state hospital and hand yourself over to the D ward.
But she didn't know that, and she didnt need to because she's right. She will be safe as long as she's here with me.
She told me, for a little while, what she was seeing and hearing....until it got too trippy and she couldn't really talk to me anymore. Until she truly no longer knew where she was or who she was or who I was or what was going on, lost completely in her grand peyote show. I didn't dare say anything much to her because god knew how it would be worked into whatever was going on in her head. She was still drinking, too, at the time, sucking Lucid straight out of the bottle. I wasn't worried about the psychedelics...trips end. I was worried about her knocking back 190 proof alcohol. Straight out of the bottle.
She wouldn't stop though....and I couldn't get the bottle away from her. The good thing about drinking that shit straight is that you don't get much chance to drink too much of it. A couple hits off that shit and you can't get the bottle into your hand, much less get it to your mouth without dropping it.
Right before she tripped off into space completely she said to me "This stuff's gonna make me sick as a dog, you know that right?"
Well, yeah. Most likely.
She said "I know you won't let me die or anything stupid like that though. You'll sit with me."
Well, yeah. Most likely.
She wasn't asking, either. She just knew.
So now she's asleep...till her head wakes her up again. Maybe it won't. I don't really know how these things work when you did it on purpose. I've never really heard of anyone passing out two hours into a massive trip, but then I don't know anyone who's sucked jet fuel out of a bottle before either.
What I know for sure is that she's counting on me to make sure she's ok.
And that she's absolutely safe in counting on me to do that.

She didn't look at me and see Ryan the freakshow. Ryan who has to be maintained. Ryan who has to be handled.
She just saw a friend she knew she could trust to help her out.

She's the first one who ever has.