I had dinner after the meeting tonight with a few friends, one of whom is the mother of a heroin addict. We ended up being the last two left at the table after a few others left, and it was fun swapping our war stories.
"There was this belt on the floor, and I just knew he'd been using!" she explained. I told her about how I'd developed a similar belief in my own psychic powers when I found a scarf on the floor a while ago.
It's funny how many of these weird things become triggers. It's not just belts and scarves. We talked about how spoons always seem evil now, how cigarette lighters are menacing...and (GASP!) syringes are awful, frightening things. Syringes give me a chill up my spine like a spider in the bath tub, or like an eery face in a window...it's primal and traumatic and terrifying.
The worst syringes, of course, are the ones I've found in my house over the last crazy years, but they are scary any time. They are scary on television. They are scary in movies. They are scary at the pharmacy when they are for diabetics. They are scary in pictures on boxes selling test strips for diabetics or sharps disposal boxes. They are awful, evil things.
It's kind of funny and kind of sad to share these things with someone, but it's always refreshing. It helps me more than anything to know that I'm not alone...that I'm crazy, but it's a common crazy that grows from living in uncommon circumstances.
