Wicked Gravity

It's what I think I like to have, haha. No just kidding... okay, so it's 11:04 am... I've been awake for 14 minutes. Kind of. I wake up periodically during the morning, and once I've decided it's enough I wake up completely. Technically, I first woke up this morning at 6 am, since I left the black out curtains open and only the sheer one was left--if my room wasn't on the first floor (European) and so easy to see inside I would've left both curtains open.

It's now 11:24 and I have tea and chocolate rice crispies... yeah. The smell of weed is climbing from the concierge below me and through the cracks beneath my window. Smells pretty good. I wouldn't mind a hit. Perhaps. I'm very weird about weed, not much of a fan in general. I started snorting percocet at the same time my best friend (and in turn, me) started smoking weed, and I didn't get it. I just didn't understand why you would want to have such a shitty high. Didn't make any sense to me, still kind of doesn't. But, I still enjoy it occasionally, as long as I don't smoke too much because I have a tendency to get burnt out--which always feels to me like someone is just squeezing my skull until it's supposed to pop and that the world is way too much for me to even understand, and usually I just try and sleep it off. It reminds me of how it used to be when I would take vicodin all through out the week and then not do it on the weekends. I would just get super intense headaches, and at first I didn't connect the two.... because I was a retarded 16 year old.

Anyway, it's now 11:46 and I have to work on this paper showing Jim Carroll "my Paris." I've decided that I might as well take a little to get me in the right mindset. Haha, or something like that. Something incredibly false. I don't know, I'm doing the math... as per my usual neuroses. 3 codoliprane = 60 mg/30 = 2 pills of 5mg of hydro. Isn't that beautiful? I did place out of college math, guys, I'm obviously a true winner.

12:03... my friends just got back from Barcelona and Rome. And apparently, I'm going to go get sushi tonight. It's expensive, but I didn't buy any chicken at the grocery store because it was all expired already. I have 20 euros in cash... so... yeah. Fuck, I need to refill my navigo today, so that I don't have to wait online on Monday. A Navigo is like a metro pass, you buy a month or two weeks, and whatever zones in Paris/the banlieurs you travel through. I only have to buy two weeks because in two weeks I will be home! Home and free and probably asleep, since it will be around 6 am. Mike will hopefully be there, also hopefully asleep, he usually doesn't sleep very easily, besides when I'm around or when he's high. And we need to avoid that last part, haha...

Fuck, okay, I'm going to start this paper and not go back to sleep, which is what I did yesterday, but that was because I was upset. If I get upset, I can make myself go to sleep, and so that's what I do and pretend that it's not going on.

Check ya guys later!

- Lucy

ADDENDUM:

2:13 pm... my friend got back from Amsterdam yesterday and brought back weed. I love having friends who will trade drugs for hanging out.

Like a Rolling Stone

My boyfriend isn't talking to me at the moment. He is sleeping or resting... his excuse? "I was up late last night on acid." I'm sorry, but that's a shitty excuse. I don't get why he would think this is an acceptable reason to not be talking. I mean, I'm not saying that how you feel after doing acid is a totally social one, much more about sleeping and chilling, but I don't like being put on the back burner. I've been up since 7:40 am, biked around 10 km into the wind (you don't think that's important until you feel like you're being pushed backwards by the hand of Zephyr), and eaten an assortment of different foods. I'm sorry, but if I can be awake, then he should be. I know he doesn't mean anything by it, and it's not a personal thing, but it still pisses me off because I make myself available to him, even though he doesn't seem to give a shit. So... yeah, I guess I just have to remind myself this isn't directed at me, it's just how it is.

My face is sun-burned... I have a black eye. Well, a bit of a black eye. It's not a very badass story, it's not much of a story at all, really. I couldn't get my eye makeup off because I didn't have any makeup remover, and so I attacked my face with a towel. Now the area under my right eye is swollen and raw. La Rochelle and Ile de Ré was beautiful. The water was cold, as the Atlantic always seems to be (being from NJ, and having felt it also in Ireland). The towers and buildings had stood since the 1400s and 1600s, raising up above the blue water like sand castles. It was picturesque. Quaint. The people were a lot friendlier, although the drunk assholes on the street were just like Paris. I think it's a French thing to be loud and obnoxious for no reason. My friends and I were all having a good time on the metro until about 40 guys came on to our car. They were all French, but of African descent, and were obviously out enjoying their Saturday night. Suddenly, one guy started to grab this girl by the waist, putting his hands all over her; she--luckily--was not gonna take it. She pushed him off and grabbed her friend and got off the train. Another guy then begins to yell at the gropey one, and we watch as a fight begins to ensue in between the area where my friends are all sitting. I'm watching this, trying to keep my face completely immune to the scene, while secretly horrified and terrified. At the next stop, half of them ran out (along with the gropey guy), and I imagined this was when the gropey guy was gonna be beat up, so hopefully he got what he deserved. I just hate the shear lack of respect for women here, it seems to be all Frenchmen. It seems like they feel entitled to some kind of sexual response from all women. I don't get it. Probably never will. It pisses me off though. It makes me wanna show them the error of their ways. It's one of the major reasons I dislike France.

One of the perks of going away was time away from work, so I read one of my new favorite books: Forced Entries by Jim Carroll. Technically, I was reading it for school, but it was amazing. I love it. I love Jim Carroll. To me, he is the mind of New York. As I read, I listened to the Velvet Underground, the band that truly is magic if you listen to it as you walk down the streets. You feel their high, and slowly your feet are lifted off the ground and wherever you're walking, is perfect, you're perfect, and you can feel the pulse of chance down every street and avenue. I want to get back to the City. I've realized why I don't like Paris. For me, New York is a place of possibilities. Every time I end up walking around, something occurs, and my friends and I are off on an adventure. As we trek from borough to borough, drunk, or high, or simply confused we meet the characters that now make up our late stories. The strange nomads and pansexual EMTs, the smack heads and squatters (usually, one in the same), and at the same time we meet our own opportunities for a breath of a new life. Suddenly, we're climbing over subway turnstiles and stumbling home, walking the dark streets of Brooklyn or Staten Island or occasionally Manhattan, home. When we arrive, we recount, and lay down, and fall into the lap of the City that will create us anew in the morning, ready for that day. I'm ready to be back home and feel the beat of life beneath my sneakers.

I'll check you later,

- Lucy

I'm not down!

Apparently people are reading this right now, and I'm posting because my afternoon class was cancelled and I need to make up for my lack of writing lately.

Life is crazy as the semester is winding down. It's the sam

e old same old, lots of papers and tests, and shit I don't wanna do. I should be making straight A-/As this semester, so hopefully that'll get me into the Dean's Circle (it's an organization for people who have a certain GPA, we get to go on a trip and stuff, but only a few people are selected for it)... At the moment, I'm working on a paper about Jim Carroll, one of my favorite poets/singers/authors. We have to pick a famous (and

dead) person to show "our" Paris, too. They're always making us right bullshit about Paris and our experience here and blah blah blah. It's as if they imagine that if we all write about Paris, maybe we too could be a modern Ernest Hemingway or something. This only inflates the heads of all of the boys here who already think they are him.

Mike's alright. He was going to meetings, but some girl said she would give him two bags of H if he could get her a needle. So... yeah, what'd you think he did?

Devinez! Devinez!

If you guessed shot two bags of smack on Sunday, well, you'd be correct! Good job!

What I think is funny is that when he does things like sign off immediately, or a few other tell tale actions, that I don't realize what's going on. When he did that, or talks about watching his friends do drugs, well, no shit he's doing them too. Boys are dumb...

At the moment, I'm not doing drugs. Although, he's now offered to get us H for when I get back, which is kind of putting me in a weird place.

On one hand I think: Wow, this would be awesome... I really wanna do it.

On the other I think: Fuck, terrible idea. This will only screw me up.

I don't know, I can't tell if the two bags he was talking about were the ones he has, or ones he plans on buying. I'm not gonna say anything about it to him, even if he brings it up. I refuse to let him know what I'm thinking about shit like that, mostly because: A) if you're doing drugs with a boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse/life-partner, you definitely don't want to be the one who does not have the connections because that makes you vulnerable... and B) he supposedly wants to be clean, so I don't want me giving him the OK to go ahead and get more drugs. I'm not saying that I control his actions, but it could be the push he needs to go buy more shit, and I'd like to keep myself out of that position. Haha, I know that the A reason is pretty far down the line, but I like to be

logical, and that definitely could be a reality. The other problem with Mike and I doing drugs is that he completely discounts my experience. This is coming from the same guy who couldn't fix himself the first time at fucking 19, I was doing that at 16 by myself. He can barely handle seeing blood. I may not have sunk as low as him, but just because I have been better able to keep myself out of the places he's ended up doesn't mean that my experience is completely void. I just hate being treated like I'm some kind of unexperienced child, and he's some kind of sage-like figure. Fuck that shit.

I haven't slept for the past two nights, and I have almost no homework, so I'm thinking that today I could just fucking kick back, take some shit, and not do shit for the rest of the day. Besides doing laundry, which needs to be taken care of today... or I'm gonna, well, begin to smell... not really. I just will have to wear my less desireable clothes, haha. Not that I'm some kind of pinnacle of fashion, fuck, everyone here thinks they're soo fancy. It's kind of nauseating. I really wanna vomit on a lot of them. Especially some of the Europeans, who think that they are just so above all the Americans, it's really ridiculous--as if France was some kind of pinnacle of good living, let's look at one of the most racist, anti-semetic, and judgmental countries I've ever been to. It's honestly offensive. It also has some of the scariest men ever, I have never feared men, not pulling my drunk friend off of Avenue B at 12 at night, not walking down Jersey St. on Staten Island at 3 am, it was never like this, where every man I see I am afraid is either gonna yell at me, or throw water on me (as one did), or simply give me creepy stares.

I want to get back to NYC! Summer in the city, that's all I want. = )

Well, I'm gonna go do more nothing,

I'll check ya later,

- Lucy

P.S. the first photo is of Mike and I... he will try and say that he's not extremely mushy... but he is (I consider that photo, exhibit A). And the second one is actually of me back home at Dunkin Donuts!!! I miss it so much...

Seeing as how I haven't posed in forever... I thought I might.

I'm at school at the moment. I've got a raging cold (which obviously is just adding to my mood, seeing as how I have to be awake everyday at 7:30 to get to French class on time) I'm trying to finish shit up, while also having enough patience to walk out of the school and buy food.

Weird day, I don't know.

Mike is here, we've now been dating for 7 months... which is kinda insane, but awesome. Things can be really rough, because he has a bad temper, and I say a lot of stupid shit that inflames it, but beyond a few small arguments the first week we're good.

We're going to Amsterdam on Thursday night until Saturday night, so that should be interesting. It's just me and him, which freaks me out, but I feel alright with because I'm trying to trust him. Yeah... I'll report after that, at the moment I don't have much to say and really dont' like blogging at school.

Catch y'all on the flipside!
- Lucy

Sucking at blogging...

There is much happening and little happening all at the same time... after finals are done I will make a lovely blog about the month of November and what a good little girl I'm being here in Paris.

= P

Love you guys!

- Lucy... = )

Stupidity Tries

France is one of those countries that has over the counter codeine bullshit. I call it bullshit because you gotta take at least 30 mg of codeine to equal 5 mg of hydrocodone. That's a fucking load of powder you gotta cram down your throat (I can't put it up my nose, it insights immediate retching and a deep nasal burn--one of these days I'm gonna puke for no good reason, other than I can't keep shit out of my nose). But, I mean, why not give it a whirl right? Buy a box of 16, so take like 5 or so, each time, and the high isn't really bad. I took a nice nap the other week, snug under my blanket and feeling okay. So, I don't know, it's alright set up. It's cheap as fuck. I mean, really really dirt cheap. And it's completely legal.

The first time I went in, I was really nervous. Like, I was almost shaking. I don't know, shit like this, makes me nervous, I know nothing bad should happen, but I can't help it. I walk into the pharmacy--I must have looked nervous--and I stuttered out the name in my terrible French accent. The woman says: "Hold on, she speaks English." Her coworker walks to the counter and I begin to tell her. She repeats the name and grabs it, and then says to me, obviously trying to shake me: "This is a pain killer." In my mind, I thought, "no shit? Really? Because I wouldn't specifically ask for it if I didn't know what it was." But, in my nervous American voice I said: "umm, I know." She sells it to me, but not before saying as I walk out: "No more sick today." And I just laughed. I guess she thought I was a sick junky or something, I don't know, nerves fucking kill me, and apparently they manifest themselves oddly to other people. Je ne sais pas, c'est étrange.

Anyway, I'm gonna lie down, because my stomach is all fucked up. It's been weird since I puked from too much liquor on halloween. I fucking hate alcohol.

I'll catch ya guys later!

Love,

- Lucy! = )

The shit dreams are made out of.

All I can say is: off to the pharmacy tomorrow...

3 Days and it's getting better.

I don't know why, but lack of sleep and smoking hash really did me in on Sunday. I just felt really shitty mentally. BUT today's a good day. I don't know, yesterday and today were fine. Really, not bad at all. I sent Mike a copy of that thing that I posted on Sunday, I'm wondering what he'll think. He makes me nervous when I say things such as that, way more pressure than when I'm showing it to people who have never had drug problems. I'm worried about what he thinks about it and about me and, I don't know, I don't wanna get like a lecture or anything.

Well, it is time for dinner and then homework. I'll talk to you later!

Bon journée!

- Luce! = )

Back to square 1.

I smoked some hash, so I haven't decided if it means me breaking my sobriety or not. I'd like to say 35 days! But... I don't think I can. I don't think I believe it. So, I'll start over again. Today is day 1. Anyway, here's this thing I wrote, I'm really digging it, I think it definitely captures how I'm feeling at this point in my life:

It's that over-powering tug of war that you play in your mind. One side of you is dragging you by the arm, as you're kicking your feet trying to stop them from taking you away, and your heels are dragging, but you can't seem to stand back up, so you're just kind of flailing there. And the other side of you is trying not to get kicked, and just wants to grab a hold of your feet, but it's forced to dodge the blows you're about to give it. Hands darting in and out, around your soaking wet sneakers, unable to grasp them.

The snow is cold, and it seeps into your pants, slowly the black asphalt is sloughed away, where you've been struggling. The sky is really dark, pitch black. A few clouds are there, but the moon can't seem to be seen and it's so cold. That smell of crisp winter keeps hitting you in the face, smacking the inside of your nose. But the struggle continues.

And when I stare down into the face of temptation, where the decision has to be made, that part that's dragging me away always seem to win. No matter how much I flail and flop about and try hard to stand back up, I'm being taken off my feet at every move. My friend becomes my enemy, and they hold in their hands the key to my destruction. I stare at it. I feel that dirty feeling. It's creeping back again. Over my shoulder, into my hair, through my ears, and swathing my brain in warm cotton. I stare at it. It's not my first choice.

And my other friend is pulling my arm for me stand up, to get going, to back away from it. But I can't. It's filling my eyes. My brain is locked in. I've got that junky tunnel-vision. Nothing is going to stop me from this. All other logical senses are shut off, as the brain back-fires and restarts trying to pull the plan together.

My arm feels a weird ache and I think back. Back to the bathroom and the needle and the simple formula. I miss it. I feel it in my face and my brain and my heart feels like someone's stomping on it, like you've ripped it out and shoved it back in at the wrong angle. And all I can feel is want. No emotion seems to rest in me besides need and desire and that feeling of emptiness.

The future seems empty. Without that feeling to push me forward. On towards Tuesday, and Friday, and Sunday, towards the day when I will feel this on my own.

And so I sit in the Parisian park with my friends. It's cold and dark out and the lights are glowing. Our drinks are warm and our throats burn. So I stare at the hash. I think about 35 days. I reflect on the fact that I haven't been clean for this long since I kneeled at the foot of the toilet, that first time at 16, heaving out bile with my father in the door way asking if I was alright.

So I put it to my lips and inhale. And now all that's left is a need. It's worse than before. I can't take it. Those thoughts pile in again.

Still I'm there, struggling in the snow, with my arms pulled up above my head, and my stomach exposed to the bite of the cold wind. I wonder if it's better to just let them drag me off, to give in, it seems like less of a hassle at the moment.

But I remember, it'll only get worse when it's gone. All of these moments will only double ten-fold, and I won't even stand a chance, so I continue the struggle. I know it's futile. Maybe one day, I'll finally be able to wriggle out on to the asphalt, turning around and stand up, to limp home and hang my damp clothes in the bathroom. That bathroom that used to be my home away from home, but now it's just a bathroom and a memory. You can still see the specks of blood on the light fixture if you look up there, I couldn't clean them all off. I wouldn't want them to go though, I need to know that it wasn't a dream. Not something I cooked up in a teenager's head for some poor excuse for attention. Teenage angst crushed into a vein, and splattered up on the walls.

I can't tell if I want the struggle to end. At the moment, I'll keep flailing and flopping, just to make sure I have enough time to finally make up my mind.

Sometimes I read the blogs of people who have kids that are junkies. I feel bad for them. I feel bad for my parents, too, in a way. I don't know. Weird shit. It doesn't hit home so much for me, cause of my parents really ignoring the facts. And that pisses me off now, because if someone had really tried to stop me, I might not be having as hard a time. I know, I can't blame other people. And I'm not. It was my choice. But at 16, I really didn't realize what I was getting into fully. It's some dumb shit.

I can't sleep right now. Laying in bed, pulling at my skin, curling into a ball, trying to make the thoughts go away. It's so much need right now. It's unbearable. It's like I want to crawl out of my own skin. That hash has made my cravings 20 times worse. I think about drinking some vodka, to help me sleep, but that is BAD. BAD BAD BAD. I can't use alcohol like that. I will become an alcoholic. I really need to finish that bottle off, and get alcohol out of my room. I feel like I"m about to rip off the skin on my face and arms and stomach, just grabbing at it and pulling on it. I can't take tonight. All of my muscles want to tense up and I just want to curl up into a ball and get high. I need to get high. But mostly, right now, I need to sleep.

What keeps me from getting high, if you're really wondering, is that I'm really fucking afraid of scoring on the streets. Especially in a country where I don't know the language, it's just scary. And in NYC, although I know the language, I don't know, I'm too nervous about getting ripped off on the streets or getting arrested. Damn, I want it so bad right now.

Hopefully, I can get over the hump... the one good thing is that, a little hash, isn't gonna take me back to square one depression wise. I'm just hoping the intensity of my cravings goes away in a few days (preferably tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath).

Anyway guys, I'll talk to you tomorrow, hope you have a better night than I am!

- Lucy

34 days... and it's BLANCHE NUIT!

Tonight the entire city of Paris is staying up to run around and see all the crazy art exhibits... I finished my homework earlier and I'm just kind of chilling out, thinking about working on some other shit I have to get done. I feel like it would be a lot easier to stay up all night if I had some coke... not that it'd be pleasant the next day. But it's nice to stay up all night and not even realize the sun is rising and it's morning until 7 am.

I'm gonna make myself a screwdriver to carry along with me on the journey... and slowly, get fucked up. I'm sure we'll buy beer and shit as we go, which is what I want. I want to slowly dive into drunk land, because if I get drunk before hand it'll be way unpleasant.

Last night my friend sprang into my room around 2 am, high on hash, but I was alright cause I was lonely and pissed at some of my other friends for flaking on me and forcing me to spend the night alone. We talked to Mike on the phone for a bit, cause I told him I was going to beforehand, and she was kind of bitchy about that (as if she had the right to be, I was putting her up for the night... not by choice). Anyway, we started talking about drugs, and how people here are behind us in the whole partying thing. At 18, I'm much chiller than I was at 16 or 17, I kinda grew out of the whole LET'S GET FUCKED UP ALL WEEKEND deal, so we're just at a different place in our life. She was talking about how she almost did heroin once, but the needle freaked her out, and I had had a little to drink, so I rolled up my sleeve and I was just really telling her how I fucking missed the needle, and I don't know, it's that yearning that I sometimes get, but I really don't usually tell people about it. I woke up, at 8 am, still missing it, I don't know, it's a bad week for me and the cravings. Anyway, I kicked her out of my room, the metros are open, she could go home now. I don't know, I kinda wanted to be left alone and have my room to myself again.

It was weird man, I don't like really talking about that kinda stuff for that reason, but I mean, sometimes my mouth gets the better of my brain.

Talk to you all tomorrow!

- Lucy = )