+ Part One +

On Wed, 20 Nov 2002 00:21:51 +1030

(Cen. Australia Daylight Time)

Ann Cathery

<scaryvalentine@iprimus.com.au> wrote:

There are no such things as accidents. This, I am sure of. I've come to realize over the years that there is no such thing as mistakes either but instead, pathways. Endless pathways, some leading to temporary bliss, some leading to regret and some leading to, well, death. People may take a wrong turn or discover that the destination they wanted to reach is totally contrary to what they imagined, but no matter how horrendous the pit they find themselves in at the end of the pathway, beneath all the pain and entrapment they feel, somewhere in the hole is the answer to why they are there in the first place. No accidents and no mistakes, just all the answers. So, basically life is so tragically poetic that if people don't pay close attention to what path they are on, they can become so lost that finding their way back to the right path the one that will take them to the right destination is permanently obscured by a myriad of seemingly okay paths, but ultimately they go nowhere but destination discontent. This is where I was. This is my story and it may just be true.

I can't put a date to the day I gave up, but I remember it was sunny. I had just returned from my best friends' funeral and had come home to an empty house. My roommates had gone for the day and knowing them it could wind up being days before they returned.

I loved coming home to silence. I went straight to my bedroom, sat on my bed and unlaced my boots. I was too tired to change so I pulled my skirt and pantyhose down my legs and stepped out of them before I lay back on my bed. As I lay there listening to the silence I so desperately needed, on the bed that I'd jammed under the window frame of my bedroom, I exhaled the pain of Monica doing so much damage to herself leading up to her demise and then sealing the deal by killing herself at the end of her sorry tale. No thought was comforting and it would be four years until I finally understood and forgave her for putting me through such a shitty ordeal. The scariest part of it all though was that through her death, I had found my own path of self-destruction and I was at the starting gate. My existing pathway had come to a major crossroad via someone else's pathway ending at the proverbial brick wall. With the knowledge I have now, and a way to somehow rewind the last four or five years back to that day, I would have made everything different. Chosen a different way of getting to today. Then again, had I done that, would I now be who I am now? Would I have the knowledge and understanding and even the compassion that I have today? And above all the misery would I love so completely? Would I have found the path that led me to crossing paths with such a man? Such a beautiful, beautiful man? This is where it gets complicated.

Death was still hanging in the air and I was exhausted from keeping composed as I said goodbye to Monica. She'd chosen a wrong pathway. I had to drum that thought into my head to keep me from thinking that it was somehow my fault she was dead. That I never returned her phonecall she had made to me only a week before. That I took a friendship for granted because twenty five year old friends don't die. I focussed on the wrong pathway answer and failed miserably. The wrong pathway that spiraled so far down into a pit of madness, self-pity and rage, that it consumed her. Swallowed her right up and spat her remains right back at everyone who loved her. I had turned my silver lining theory into a monsoon, which wouldn't subside until years later.

I hated that day. I wanted it to be the next one so badly. I didn't want to be awake a moment longer. I got up and went to my dresser drawer and took out some painkillers the doctor had prescribed me after some routine minor surgery. I knew that two pills would relax me so I took four to send me to sleep. They worked perfectly. They also killed the pain. Not that I was suffering from any physical symptoms, just the raw and battered emotional pain of the day I'd seen through. When I awoke, the sun was up. I had made it through the darkest of nights. But through it, I had stumbled onto a new understanding about medication and I took two more pills with my coffee and cigarettes. I found myself able to cope and at that moment, as I sat on my porch with a relaxing hum of tranquility around me, I didn't realize that the starter gun had been fired and I was now off down my very own path of self mutilation and destruction.

I guess at this point I should clarify that this isn't the focal point of my story. This isn't a sad tale. This is a love story. This is my love story. Monica's death turned out to be a pivotal moment in my life but without it, as I said before, maybe I wouldnt' be who I am today. But where there's love there is also pain and I never realized how much I truly loved her until she was gone. She never knew and she'll never know. So this is more a base from which to begin. I could go ten further years behind me, but the outcome would still be the same. I would still be sitting here in my jeans and grubby old T-shirt with New York 1975 emblazoned in red across my chest. And, as much as I love telling stories, I have a habit of side tracking myself and I always seem to wind up telling ten instead. I also bore people to tears by reliving those moments as I tell them. Little snippets of information that only I can relate to sneak in and soon, I need to just shut up. But then again, life is just that. A collage of stories experiences emotions and time. And I live to tell.

Months went by and winter set in. I was becoming withdrawn from my work, my friends and my life. I no longer wanted to go out on weekends because she wasn't there with me. My roommates, Davis and Jane were becoming increasingly concerned but I managed to keep some level of normalcy when I chose to leave the confines of my bedroom and sit with them. It was fraudulent but after a while, I actually started believing in my own bullshit. I was continuing with the daily ritual of taking the pain medication to sedate me enough for the day and by this time I had also taken on a second drug to decrease the insomnia I was now suffering. With the mixture of opiates during the day and benzos at night, I had pretty much settled down into a perfect routine to hide the fact that I was mourning the loss of my friend, my new found isolation and in retrospect, I was becoming a junkie.

That winter felt like it lasted about two years. I still struggle to completely recall events, special moments and even who was around me at specific times. Davis and Jane were the easiest to fool, besides myself, of course. Davis was a DJ and was constantly going out to raves and clubs and through his own use of illicit drug taking, he somehow managed to not notice what I was doing with my days and nights. Jane was different though. She didn't let go of her desires to see me happy again. Like when she and I had first met.

I met Jane at a party for a mutual friend and she told me she was looking for a place to live and Davis and I happened to be looking for a third roommate to lower the rent we paid each and other expenses. We had decided not to ask any friends of ours and instead get someone weren't all that familiar with because he and I were so close, we didn't want anyone to infringe upon our time we spent together. Infact, the only times I didn't hear Davis pottering around the house or driving me insane with his god awful music blaring from his room was when he had met a girl.

He seemed to be meeting his soulmate every month or so. He'd leap out of his car on Sunday night after having shared the time of his life with the one only to find out about three to four weeks into the relationship that his soulmate was actually either a sociopath, a schizophrenic or lesbian. He also had the relationship killer habit of becoming a girl's big brother and ultimately adding another girl who is just a friend to his list of women who took his breath away. I always looked forward to the Monday afternoon coffee Davis and I ritually shared together while we chain smoked and he told me of his new love, in love, or lost love. I always knew when he was hurting though because instead of the repetitive booming sounds and vinyl scratching coming from his room, he'd go to my CD collection and always play the same album, August and everything afterby Counting Crows. Raining in Baltimore will always be imbedded in my brain as the song that hid the sobbing that echoed the hall of 75 Hill Street when my friend Davis had a broken heart.

So, the three of us were living in a rambling old sandstone house that was in desperate need of renovating but perfect for three twenty somethings searching for our place in the world. Each of us set up our own little corner of the house and used the living room for our communal gatherings. Sunday nights were usually spent around the TV with videos and pizza. Sundays were commonly known as get over the hangover day and none of us were out of bed before noon. But our bedrooms were our own place of solace and peace, relatively speaking. Davis had his room filled with records and turntables and trinkets from his Indian safari a year or so back, Jane had the back corner of the house that we could shut the door on due to the stench of cheap incense, the candle wax on the floor and the sporadic artistic phases she went through when she decided it was time to paint another piece of the mural on her bedroom wall.

My room was my favorite though. It was big and light and airy. I had a beautiful lead light bay window, which would cast amazing colors and shadows on the walls. I could have laid for hours on my bed watching the colors dance around the room as the sun moved across the sky. Some days, I did.

Just before Monica's death, I had purchased my first computer with intentions to write my first best seller. I have always had delusions of grandeur, but after she died, I found nothing to write about and the more drugs I took, the less creative I got. Of course, I was still writing throughout my drug taking, but looking now at the crap I wrote whilst I was high is like reading a sermon for a congregation in the seventh circle of hell. My path was taking an interesting down turn and I was going full throttle all the way.

My winter continued and I kept myself on cruise control. Drugs in the morning, drugs in the evenings and then what was originally one benzos, had now become three. My workdays were beginning to suffer, my night times became longer. My writing was shit and my body was taking a medicated beating, but still, I went on. I could think about Monica without crying I could get through a day on one emotion, which I can only describe as blas and at night, in the confines and safety of my room I could write. Soon though, my writing tapered off and being the only release I had at the time, it left a huge empty hole in me. So I filled it with the Internet chat rooms.

Suddenly, I was warm again. I had found the place in the world where everyone is beautiful. Everyone can do whatever they want, say whatever they want and behave however they want. I became Satans Girl Friday and roamed from chat room to chat room looking for stimulating conversation. It didn't have to be intelligent banter, just something to keep my mind from drifting to the places and the path I did not want to look at. Eventually, I realized that people were trading pictures of themselves or who they wished were themselves, so I raced to the store, bought a roll of film, loaded my camera and started shooting. I held out the camera to get a nice headshot of my myself. I tried it inside, outside, infront of a tree, laying on my bed, but nothing was coming out the way I wanted to. I enlisted Jane to be my photographer.

Jane wanted to make it a special affair and did my make up for the shoot. That girl will engross herself with anything that requires her to hold a brush and paint. I relaxed on the floor in the living room, Jane put on some music and made me beautiful. She covered up the darkness around my eyes and hid the fog of despair that I emanated. She shot the pictures of me at so many different angles, some of me smiling, some of me pouting but when I saw those pictures, I saw the beauty of me again. I went to a local computer caf and scanned the pictures onto a disc and suddenly, I had a face to a name.

Now, my second addiction was born. I had become an Internet chatter. From the moment I woke uptil the time I could no longer keep my eyes open, all I wanted to do was chat. I had no real desires to chat to anyone in Australia and instead chose the USA Rooms as a base to make contact with people mostly male from my favorite place in the world, California. I talked to every kind of guy. A cop, a drug dealer, a porn director, a record producer and even an armed robber. It didn't matter to me whether they were telling me the truth, the important thing was that I was somehow being noticed and listened to. My pale skin and long black hair adorning my big weepy eyes and pouting red lips scanned, uploaded and ready to be viewed by men and women across the globe. One photo in particular was a hit and soon it was the only picture I would send out. The bitter irony is that I found myself feeling so comfortable in an almost alternate universe. Real in a fake world. My path had delivered me some company, but the price of getting close to someone two dimensionally would prove so costly to my emotional state and naturally, my drug addiction. I was ready for anything though. I was the master of my own personality. Everyone is beautiful on the Internet.

Summer came and went and life made some big changes along with it. Jane had vaguely told Davis and I about an old boyfriend from Victoria. Apparently, he was an asshole, and had taken her to hell and back, but that he may be calling her as he was planning a visit to Adelaide. That was fine with Davis because by this time he was being a chef by day and a DJ by night and was bouncing off the walls in between. For me though, it meant that for a few days, while Jane sat by the phone and waited for the call, I couldn't obviously talk to my new friends online. So, as soon as I got this news and had gotten over my initial enormous panic attack, I quickly logged on, emailed everybody to tell them not to worry, I was going to be offline for a couple of days. Of course, I also left my phone number incase anyone needed to contact me. What the hell was I thinking? Sure, I had become a member of the elite group of LA chatters that logged on intermittently throughout the day and night, but I was now letting them know of my whereabouts and in case of emergency, to contact me! Life was getting strange. Jane's boyfriend never phoned. That is because he knocked on the door instead. The house was about to become divided. Davis was the man about the house, I was the matriarch and Jane was the child. We had no room for another man. Especially one like Michael.

Jane and Michael virtually made themselves a den of debauchery in Jane's room and didn't come out except at night for showers and food, only to retire back there again. Davis and I didn't like it one bit and pretty soon the house was completely divided. Davis and I no longer had our Monday coffee on the porch, Sunday movie and pizza had all but died away and now we were all in a subtle form of attack mode. Davis and I tried music first. Michael and Jane liked Davis' music so that would be no use, but I was the only Nine Inch Nails fan at the time so they became the music to bring out the lovers from their quarters and by now, we hoped, would send them packing. Well, the music didn't quite work. Davis and I would bear the thousands of decibels it took to rouse Jane and Michael but instead of them coming out of the room, it gave them license to be as loud as they wanted to during their sexual exploits. We would have to pass their bedroom door to get to the bathroom and we could smell the sex as we passed. Our time there was coming to an end. Davis retreated to his wax scratching, I returned to my alternate universe online and Jane and Michael got pregnant.

I've always imagined a child being conceived amidst some magical night of love making, not hanging from chains and bound in leather straps. Davis and I sat on the two living room chairs that were traditionally our thrones during any TV watching and Jane and Michael sat on the sofa together holding hands and giggling as they told us. Davis has a wonderful raw form of sarcasm and straight off burst out laughing at the news. I was more concerned about what kind of demon seed had they concocted together during all those nights where the ceiling creaked and cracked from the hooks jammed into the rafters strong enough to hold a grown adult. They were both unemployed, and deranged from weeks of hiding in the dark and fucking themselves raw and now they were also expectant parents. After a couple of minutes trying to shake myself back into reality from hearing their news, it dawned on me that this was our way out. Davis and I had a chance of once again being best friends and maybe, after we�ve burnt the furniture from Janes room and covered the cracks in the ceiling, we could get another roommate. So, I took the reins and said that we didn't want a baby in the house. By this time, I was so infuriated by our roommate and her house buddy that I wanted an argument from them. I wanted the opportunity to tell them what idiots they were, how the filter coffee is for the people who paid for it and how a $3.00 bottle of smelly shampoo doesn't compensate for using my salon formula. Unfortunately, I never got the chance. They had somehow, amidst their torrid days and nights found a place to live in the northern suburbs. Adelaide is a small city, but nobody in their right minds makes a decision to move from the inner eastern suburbs filled with alfresco dining, art house cinema and cars younger than ten years to the North. Once you leave the inner city, it's an eye for an eye and every man for himself. The easterners who get robbed, don't bother checking with the Northern pawn shops because no one out there has a car that will get them that far. Snobbish, I know, but I am calling a spade a spade here. So, there we all were, Davis laughing hysterically, by now, me wanting desperately to return to my room and these two morons on the sofa fantasizing about playing Mummy and Daddy. Two days later, Davis and I came home from a bitching session at the local bar over beer and a pool table and the den was dead.

They were gone but the smell and diabolical mess remained. I was pissed off. They owed three weeks rent. Davis then told me he'd decided to move to Sydney.

75 Hill Street was all but gone. I had found a one bedroom apartment on the inner east side and Davis was selling everything he owned. I sank into a depression. I hated where I was moving to. My first night there was a Friday. I remember that from laying semi catatonic on my sofa watching 90210 on TV. I could hear my neighbor next door vomiting from drinking, my upstairs neighbor beating the crap out of his girlfriend and cats scratching at my window. I was in hell. And summer was unbearably long that year. My path was becoming trechorous and by now, I had passed the point of no return. I was going to have to see this path to the pit. I knew it by now too. I was gaining weight, and losing track of who I was. My dreams of a better life were limp from substances poisoning my body. During a thunderstorm one evening, that finally cooled the cement block I was living in to a bearable temperature, I sat infront of a mirror with only a candle lighting the room due to the storm and realized I didn't know who I was looking at anymore. I was bitterly lonely, taking drugs everyday and night and losing the game I had created myself. I had made up the rules, followed twists and turns, but now, I was losing speed. I was no longer on the proverbial highway to hell. I had arrived and I never even noticed.

Everything became decayed. My car started having endless problems and no matter how much I cleaned and scrubbed and wore my fingers to the bone, I could not get my home to feel clean. Maybe it's because by then, I was so dirty. My beautiful long black hair no longer had any shine and broke off when I brushed it. The sounds around me as I tried to sleep were consuming the last pieces of sanity I had. The pain medication wasn't working like it used to and I was increasing the dose to dangerous levels.

I went from being an insomniac to never wanting to wake up. I could sleep for 15 hours a day. I screened my phone calls and the only time I left the house was to go to work or see my sister, Lisa. She only lived three minutes from me, but in a much better building.

I was so lonely, I was beyond tears. I missed Davis and even sometimes Jane. Days were made shorter by sleeping. I had lost the ability to fight. I started fantasizing about death and as soon as I let any thought of it entertain me, I thought about Mon. Why she died, how she died, everything. I was back at number seventy five watching the light on my walls dance to PJ Harvey or The Cure or whatever band I was obsessed with that particular week. Music always made me feel better, somehow. I had a wonderful collection of CDs that provided me with the perfect blend of sound for any given situation. The situations though proved to be shrinking to a limited number. I no longer listened to my favorite punk rock or the classic 70's and poppy 80's music that I love so much. I was down to two or three songs that I connected with and I let them sing of my pain and my loneliness and my heartache. Nothing was going to bring me out of this mindset so I launched myself off the couch one night, turned the lights on, turned the stereo off and hooked up my computer.

If you stay offline long enough you have to try and reintroduce yourself. I saw a few old nicknames online but the core of the LA chatters group had gone and been replaced by people basically looking for a date. Guys would send private messages asking for your location and as soon as they knew you weren't in the same area code, the ignored you. It was time to find a new place. A place where I could speak my mind. I was tired of the innuendo and general bullshit filling my screen. If I was to scrape the last of my sanity back together I had to fill my mind with something more stimulating than giving some stranger who probably isn't who he says he is my stats. I used to be happy to describe myself to someone across the globe and pretend that through sentences like I'm 5'9 and I have green eyes and black hair with a slim build they suddenly had a clear picture of me in their heads and that it was enough to hold their attention for hours. I was so wrong, but without that knowledge, I wouldn't have found the path that would ultimately change my life forever. And when I finally saw the diamond of light amongst the ashes of the pit, I grabbed it and ran for my life like I'd just stolen the Holy Grail. I had to get out of the pit I was sinking in and if I didn't, well, I was going to end up like my neighbors.

I found a chat room called Race Relations. I couldn't quite make out what the chat room was all about. Was it about dating someone of a different race? Or, was it discussion about racism and anti-racism? This topic always gets me fired up as I was raised not to look at color, but character. I always hated racism and have had several heated discussions with racists, including, to my surprise, Monica. Because I found out so many years after we'd become friends, I ignored her racist undertones and remarks, but deep inside me they hurt and festered until one day, I exploded at her. I just couldn't bear her stupid jokes and her ridiculous notions about the anatomies of white people verses black or Asian. I remember she once slept with an Asian-American guy and wouldn't shut up about how freaky it was to have fucked a nip. It was time to put it to a stop. Well, it wasn't really a case of planning to shove a fist in her mouth, so to speak, but more of a case of the straw that broke the camel's back. That was my first real experience having a racist friend. I've never had another and have ended any relationship since then if I find out that I am friends with a brainless twat who thinks white people rule the world because they have bigger brains than black people.

I needed a voice. I was barely working, broke and needing something to occupy my time. Through the race relations chat room, I found out about websites where I could educate myself more thoroughly. I went to Aryan sites and the KKK, as well as the websites suggested by my new African-American friend, Rob. I just felt compelled to know enough to have an educated discussion with any racist rather than just type madly at someone calling them all the names under the sun. Rob and I began meeting regularly in the Race Relations chat room but the dynamics were slowly changing and Rob was beginning to move me in more ways than just political. He was intelligent and insightful and very spiritual but one other thing Rob was hot! I felt like an idiot. I had seen so many internet relationships fail and so many people get their hearts almost literally ripped out of their chests by someone they met online. But, Rob was so different. We spoke for a month or so and he asked for my phone number. I gave it to him and he called me the next day. I was swimming in uncharted waters without a life jacket. I didn't care though. I was feeling energetic again and even slowed my drug use right down.

. . . . . .

TO BE CONTINUED

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scaryvalentine@iprimus.com.au