Run Out

I've been doing a lot of thinking, as you might imagine. I've managed really to screw up my life.

I used to think it was everyone else messing up my life. I guess some of them helped. I never knew my Dad, so I guess you have to say he helped me screw up. He and my Mom had a one night stand, and she never saw him again. She told him she got pregnant, through a friend. He said my Mom was just a whore and he had no intention of talking to her again.

She was hurt by that, because I don't think she was a whore then yet. But after that she had to make a living, because her parents threw her out, so I guess she got money however she could. At sixteen, what can you do?

Anyway, so she drank a lot and used drugs and got AIDS, and you know how that scene goes. Sometimes she acted like she loved me, and sometimes like she hated me, because she blamed me for her own misery a lot; but most of the time she just ignored me. It wasn't long before I got what I wanted myself.

So how does a kid do that when he's too young to get a job? Shoplifting. I knew it was wrong then; but hey, I had to eat. And then, I got to thinking it was my right. Somebody owed me a living.

Stealing wasn't very satisfactory. I really couldn't get anything worth much, and I got caught and warned and my mother called more than once before I was ten years old. Then I found something that paid better.

You gotta understand, by this time I was kinda desperate. I had nothing. I wore the same clothes almost all the time till they wore out and then maybe my Mom would get something from Goodwill or one of those places. I was ridiculed all the time by other kids in class. At first I tried to be a good kid in school, cuz I'm no dope; but after awhile, it just got to be too hard to worry about school and getting by at the same time. So I started blowing it off. My mother made me go because the authorities got on her when she didn't; but by this time I was mostly just angry at the world, and no one could tell me anything.

That's when I was recruited by a gang. They gave me some money. All I had to do at first was stand lookout while they were dealing or stealing. Later I made better money running between dealers, and by the time I was fourteen I was dealing myself and actually making pretty good money. I had clothes, I had good food, and I had a car.

Oh, yeah, I had a car. It wasn't mine of course, but I paid for it and I drove it. Lots of underage people are driving - bet you didn't know that.

So I got cocky. I got caught a couple of times, for one thing or another; but I was smart, like I said. I didn't carry large amounts of dope at a time, and I never did use it, except for some weed, so I was hard to get for anything very much, until I was eighteen.

When I finally did get nailed, I got two years. Two *** years wasted, I thought, and I was bitter. I still wasn't blaming myself -- I was ticked but good at the idiot who set up the deal with a narc, and I made up my mind to get him. In stir, I met some other dudes who knew the ropes and taught me a lot - about all the wrong things it turns out, but I was eager to learn. I guess they helped me mess up my life, too.

When I got out with a lousy hundred bucks in my pocket and the shirt on my back, for a few days I thought about getting a real job. Ever try to do that when you haven't got a real address? Not a chance. And hardly anyone wants to hire ex-cons or professional dealers and thieves, anyway. The day jobs paid crap - I mean not enough both to eat and to crash on the same day, so I was back into the "trade." Maybe the system was a help getting me to where I am, too.

I was doing pretty well for awhile; but I didn't really understand how closely the cops were watching me. I was making a big deal, when we were raided, and a cop got dead. I don't even know if I pulled the trigger that got him; but they said I did. I blamed that dead cop a lot for screwing up my life, too.

So now I've been doing a lot of thinking. It took me five years to start really to look at myself, and I've had another four to work on it. I guess a lot of people helped me blow my life; but now I look back on it a little more objectively, I guess maybe my own decisions really messed me up the most. Even now, it's hard to see what other decisions I could have made when I was, like eight, you know? But some of the things I did helped me get where I am, and since no one else was interested at all in helping me out of it, the only one who could have straightened out my life was me.

So now I know it, but I can't do squat about it.

This guy has already put the IV into my arm and is turning the valve. My time has run o--.....