“I’ll tell you my sins, and you can sharpen your knife.
Offer me that deathless death” -Hozier
VI. Boston Mike
This sucks.
When I look back and think about it. I mean really think about it, my entire life, the only person I ever abused was myself.
This passage will cover Boston Mike, some of myself and what violently happened to me and between us. I don't think I have it in me to write exposition before getting to the point, so I’ll just jump right in.
After Paul, I was moved down to the rehab floor, finally and met a man named Mike. Mike was from Boston (duh) and had been here in treatment for over 45 days so far. 6 foot and wildly handsome. Jet black hair combed perfectly to the side, built like a football player, two sleeves of tattoos and the thickest Boston dialect I’ve ever heard. His story alone could be a movie and hopefully one with redemption at the end. Mike has only known a life of crime. He got involved with heroin and pills as teenager, selling, stealing, robbing, using. A decade goes by and he eventually gets locked up for several years. Upon his release, he moved to Florida with his girlfriend (whose was equally an enabler). In Florida, Mike would fall victim to more intense crime, armed robbery, grand theft, etc. Somewhere in that 15 year span he would find himself in Indiana, robbing pharmacies and with a warrant(s) out for his arrest. He skipped Bail and fled back to Florida.
When a life of crime gets out of control, it's even harder to get yourself back in the actual game of life. It feels like there's never a way back and I empathized with that logic.
Once the episode of shooting Heroin and armed robbery finished its sessions with Mike, he lost his apartment and skipped bail in Florida, moving to Long Island, NY with his girlfriend. His parents also lived there so he spent more time with his family and to be closer to his dad who is on dialysis for his liver. He’s terribly ill. But the mind of an addict and living in NY is a God-awful terrible combination. There's a vice on every corner. His using and selling came back full throttle. I’m not sure if he got arrested and was mandated here or he came on his own because he didn't want cops showing up at his parents' house with arrest warrants from two different states. I leaned towards this was a safe haven that was off the grid, he couldn't be touched here.
I've been told I wear my mood on my face and hide my pain inside. Mike wears his pain and his mood on his face. I’m not so sure what he holds inside.
He rubs his face with both hands all the time. Like he’s trying to rid a stain with a brillo pad. A sign of anxiety, worry, shame. He doesn't participate in group therapy and just draws flames of a fire on his notebooks.
Jesus the metaphors, right?
Even with his short temper, Mike would come up to me every day after a group therapy and try to give me some kind of uplifting. every day I cried in group therapy about what I had done and I don't know what to do or if i can ever come back into anyone's grace. His encouragement was always like “I've gone through the same thing with my girlfriend, if she loves you truly, she wont leave you to fucking rot or homeless. You can work on getting that back when you figure this shit out, fucking right?”
He calls his father every day, his girlfriend every night. He’s scared his father will die while in here and doesn't know what to do when he leaves. 38, No diploma, no GED, no resume, in a total stalemate. First one up in the morning, first one to the cafeteria when we all eat, first one out and first one that goes to sleep. For a heroin user he looks surprisingly good. Clean for 45+ days and somberly sedated on methadone. He is trying to get transferred to another facility in the Bronx sometime by the end of the month. This confirmed my hypothesis that he’s trying to stay off the grid, but how long can that hold out? I didn't see an end that had a had any resolution for him and he also knew that, hence the constant whirlwind in his mind.
I've stared at this screen for over an hour trying to type this entry. Heavy exhales and I type a few words every few minutes.
After the death of Paul and that entire situation, I hit an all-time low. The lowest I think I've ever possibly felt. I hadn't slept more than an hour or two every night since I got here. And it had gotten to the point where I feel like I’m hallucinating. Faces in photos becoming distorted, shadows moved on their own. I started to hear my name being called and no one would be there. Nightmares, waking up screaming, violent sleep walking. I felt useless, not reliable to anyone or anything anymore. I told myself even if I get better and become everything I promise I still wont get back what I love. It won’t matter. In sickness and in health was a joke of a term. Her family hates me, all my things are mixed with hers at home. It wasn't even my home, I just lived there, I just took up space. I have no friends or a social circle anymore or village. I was now an outcast. Exiled with hate from all. I tried to pray every night with a necklace in my hand and still I felt nothing would be heard.
We all watched the new 007 movie in the afternoon and there was a scene in the where he gets poisoned with a specific virus, he would only die if he came in contact with his girlfriend or daughter. Thats what I felt like, poison.
Another hour goes by here before I started typing again.
Later that night I sat on my bed talking to myself and trying to talk myself out of it. The only voice in my head was that I am poison. I just let people down. She won't miss me, no one will. They’ll be fine and move on so quickly it wouldn't matter anyway. They already have. Did anyone really care in the first place? It didn’t really matter anymore. There's no salvation here for me.
To quote the song Could Never be Heaven: “The deeper I sank, the less I died
The trees swayed, slow in the tide”.
So that was it.
Mother forgive me, there’s no worse way to say it. The room spun. I tied a sheet to a pipe and my body. I tried to kill myself.
Please understand something. Understand that I was on a level of psychic pain that was incompatible with human life. Torturous and malignant and antagonistic itself that constituted a harm to myself. Sitting, standing, doing, resting, speaking or being silent. Living or dying, it was all not just unpleasant but literally horrible. That it was it feels like for people like me, on a constant. I felt I only had one of two choices, jump from a window to avoid the flames of a burning building or stay and let the flames consume me. I had to choose one and just let go, and for a moment, I did. My feet left the ground. I chose fire. I didn’t think. I just reacted. My action divorced from all emotion and logic. I was no longer human or inhuman. I just was.
What I remember is that it hurt. I saw white. A white room with no windows and no air. What air there was tasted like fire, ash, aluminum. I could move around the space I was in but there was no horizon. Only traces. Only static. I finally let out everything that had been hurting for so long.
Jesus the relief. It felt instantaneous, and I had been in this room for forever. I didn't know anything except that it hurt, but the kind of hurt from release. Such a dangerous and wonderful thing it was. And that's when everything changed again.
I woke up on the ground.
Boston Mike. Mr. Crime himself. He knocked on my door and came into my room to see if I wanted to watch a movie when he saw me in the corner and proceeded to tackle me to the ground. I woke up to hear him yelling “what the fuck are you doing bruh!?” I tried to answer but he slapped me hard. “What the FUCK were you thinking?” a closed fist hit, harder this time. I tasted blood in my mouth. Finally coming back to earth, I didn't know what to say except sorry, it's too much to go on since my life is uprooted and done and I don't know if I can ever go back. Mike picked me up, put me on my bed and smacked me again. “wake up mother fucker this not the way to fix anything not at all.”
After the beating Mike gave me, he sat next to me on the bed and put his huge defined arm around me. He told me if when I keep putting things in my closet all my life, one day that closet will bust open when you least expect it and all your horrors, all your unresolved problems will fall onto you when you least expect it. He called me a scared little rabbit. He said I wouldn't understand the sorrow I would impact on so many people if I left here, friends, family, even the dog I would leave forever in confusion. Thats not fair to anyone. He said if I want to be reliable, get my mind back, my life, at some even people, even the fucking dog you need to make yourself GOOD first before any of that can happen. Wake the fuck up. Become a wolf.
I looked at him with furious doubt and a horribly blood shot eye. Mike said “fix your face, there is a black, evil as fuck wolf after you and it takes a wolf to catch a wolf, understand? Prove you can be a stronger, reliable, different person that will show up not only to those you love and care for, but for yourself or you will die and no one wants that to happen, not even me even if you don't believe it.
He told me men attempt to kill themselves 70% more than women under the age of 40. Congratulations Kyle, you are now a statistic.
Mike said he won't tell anyone or the nurse what happened if I committed to something greater than myself. I was now under his wing, in his debt that he didn't want to collect. Instead, he wanted to give me hope. Mike stayed with me the whole night, reading a bible, praying with me.
He said starting tomorrow I don't leave his side, we eat together, work out together, write in our journals together, play spades together and lift each other up together like men should do for each other, especially the ones who believe they are totally alone. I had no choice but to accept it. So, I did. I wanted to prove to myself I could bring out the best in me and show up. Not talk. But have proof. Then they’ll see.
I started to wake up. We became a team from that point on. I've never had any support of this kind from any man in my life. Everyday Mike would howl at me like a wolf. Even if he was across the room or passing me in the hallway.
It took a few days, but I started to howl back.
Inpatient Intermission: Line, please
It’s hard to walk through all the places that your life used to be in
So you thought you’d shed a layer, maybe try on some new skin
Your friends are all imaginary, your shrink stopped answering her phone
So you decide to make incisions at your home while you’re alone, all alone.
In the valley of your slowly-fading memory
Are there pastures bathed in some uncertain light where you won’t graze?
Paths you won’t take?
Can you hear me?
What does it feel like to shine between everything? -Same Logic & Batter Up
“Hey”
“hey”
“When is this gonna stop”
“It’ll get better”
“But how”
“Time is not a concept that applies to me, so I don’t know”
“I see the faces flash in my mind, every happy moment, every trial that we made it through.”
“You’re a hope fiend, you figure it out”
“I’ve had a billion things happen to me in my life, this year, how am I supposed to know which ones are relevant”
“Well that's an easy one. All of them”
“I spent my whole life looking for answers because I think the next answer might change something”
“Oh Boy here we go”
“Maybe make me a little less miserable, forgivable”
“This trend will get old very quickly”
“Then I run out of questions and I don't know if I’ve run out of answers, So I run out of hope”
“How poetic. You should write a book”
“Its like shadows tower over me everywhere”
“Oh for fuck sake shut up are you just gonna talk in sad, philosophical bullshit? We’re going to spend a lot of time together so please don’t be annoying so early”
“I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE ALONE. I HAVE NOTHING. NOTHING ALRIGHT ITS ALL GONE. I’VE LOST EVERYTHING. THIS IS THE QUIEST MOST PERSONAL HELL POSSIBLE AND I CAN’T STOP ASKING MYSELF WHY DO I HATE MYSELF SO MUCH BUT I THINK IM DOING THE RIGHT THING YOU HAVE TO SEE THAT. THE ONLY THING I HAVE LEFT IN MY LIFE IS A HOLE WHERESOMEONE USED TO BE I LOVED SOMEONE BEYOND LIFES MEASURE I MIGHT NOT MAKE IT WHO WILL I LOSE NEXT LOCKED IN A HOUSE THATS NOT MINE IM FIGHTING NOT TO SIT ON THE BEACH OR THE WOOD AND CALL IT A NIGHT PERMENANTLY I WANT TO BELIEVE THAT THINGS CAN GO BACK TO SOMETHING NEW IN TIME YOU TELL ME I CAN FOCUS ON GETTING THAT BUT NOT UNTIL I GET MYSELF GOOD BUT NO ONE COULD POSSIBLY LOVE HER MORE THAN ME NOT ONE FUCKING PERSON NOT WITH WHAT WE’VE EXPERIENCED IM A COWARD AND CANT TAKE THE PAIN I KNOW ITS NOT FAIR I THINK ABOUT A PLACE WHERE NO ONE WILL KNOW WHERE I AM THEY WERE MY FAMILY WHAT DOES IT TAKE DO IT DO IT YOU
MOTHERFUCKER DO IT FUCK YOU DO IT NOW”
“Do what”’
“Get me out of here”
“Where do you want to go”
“Home”
“Your already home, your dead”
