Jesus In The Christmas Lights

Decorative Christmas lights are one of my favorite things, and I am notoriously famous for my outdoor light displays.

My recent Christmas light shenanigans garnered much attention from the world, two years in a row. One of them included an NPR interview for the show “This American Life”, and two other of the most wonderful blurbs, one on “Chelsea Lately” last year and the other in a Town Hall Debate on Fox News National in 2012.

Unfortunately, I believe the NPR interview was never aired because it was a 15-minute segment which was scheduled for around the 23rd of December, 2012.  I did the interview early in December before the ACLU became my legal representation in a lawsuit against my city.  Once the litigation started and a date was set for trial in Federal Court, a gag order was made effective.

However, there was this one incident involving me and  Christmas lights which only garnered the attention of God, thank God.

I had been shooting dope for days.  When I shot dope, I always did it for days, and back then it seemed like all I did was shoot dope, for days, because I really did.

In hindsight, the amount of dope I used to score, every day, still amazes me.  And, honestly, if I could still get good coke like I did back then, I would probably still be shooting dope.

But, this one time, almost fifteen years ago, I was at Rocky’s house.  I am not sure what title to apply to Rocky because he was my friend, who thought he was my boyfriend,  but he was never my boyfriend.   I never pretended to be his girlfriend, so he had to have known I didn’t like him in that way,  but I did fuck him sometimes.  And, come to think of it, he really wasn’t my friend, either.

At that time in my life, I didn’t give two holy fucks about having a boyfriend, unless he was holding an arsenal of cash, and I had several of those throughout my drug years.  None of those guys ever achieved “boyfriend” status.

Cocaine was my only true love and I was always a faithful partner.

I basically squatted at Rocky’s house for a decade or longer.  Rocky and I would get loaded for days on end, especially around the middle of every month when he would get his $5000 check.

Previous to Rocky’s drug addiction, he was in the insurance business and he did very well for himself.  He did so well, in fact, that in fifteen years of work he finagled a 5g check every month for the entire time I knew him, and I never saw him do a bit of work.  Rocky had already been on a three-year sabbatical when I met him.

On the day I made the rash decision to end my life, it was very, very cold outside and raining.  It had been raining for several days.  I do not remember the exact year or date, but it was probably 2001-2002 and I know it was pretty close to Christmas Day.

Like I said, we had been getting high for days.  This was normal for Rocky and I, but at this particular time, Ryan, my ex-husband happened to be at Rocky’s house.  I do not remember how Ryan ended up at Rocky’s house.  Looking back, if I had to guess, I suppose I had been at Ryan’s house getting loaded and became too paranoid over there at his house, so I went back to Rocky’s house, to ease the paranoia.

That happened to me quite frequently.  Most times, though, I was too paranoid to move from where I was sitting when I pulled the needle out of my arm (and threw it), much less, travel.  However, if I ended up on a good binge, staying awake longer than four or five days, the paranoia would always dissipate and turn into outright psychosis, sans paranoia.

I LOVED SANS PARANOIA!

It didn’t matter to me if Elvis was riding the Easter Bunny, sucking Ron Jeremy’s dick in Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen, and they were all waving to me through the window while I clicked my heels three times and said, “There’s no place like home”, once the paranoia left…I WAS GOOD.

That day, though, I wasn’t paranoid and I wasn’t good, either.

Those two dudes were pissing me the fuck off.

Yes, I became a paranoid schizophrenic as soon as I saw the blood register and pushed that plunger down, but I wasn’t the tweeker who was constantly peeping out the blinds and acting crazy.

I have always been able to keep that crazy inside of me.  That peeping out of the blinds shit, and not being able to talk shit, and when you do talk only talking about whose at the door or about dope….that wasn’t my bag.  I hated getting loaded with those kinds of junkies, which also happens to be MOST JUNKIES…so I mostly wanted to get high alone. That was also why I like Rocky’s house….he never did all that stupid paranoia shit which irritated the piss out of me. Only Ryan did that.

Rocky and Ryan both, however, had the nasty habit of doing the dope which I would give them, and then immediately start pestering me for more dope when I had always shared everything I had, and shared it in copious amounts. Honestly, it wasn’t altruism which inspired me to share so much, but it was more the paranoia and wanting to get the dope off of me once the paranoia bit me.

Nevertheless, I did not mind sharing, I knew the favor would eventually be returned (except from Ryan).  I only had one request:

FOR THE SEVERAL MINUTES AFTER I BANG MY SHOT….COULD YOU PRETTY FUCKING PLEASE NOT TALK TO ME ABOUT DOPE?  I WILL FUCKING ACT LIKE I NEVER HEARD IT AND YOU DON’T EXIST.

NEWS, SPORTS, AND WEATHER…..and that’s it….that is all I want to talk about.  Don’t fucking talk to me about anything illegal while I am high, ok?  I’m giving you two fucking fucks all this cocaine for free, and I’m not even making you suck my dick for it, so it’s the least you can do, right?

WRONG.

After days of giving and never getting that one request fulfilled, my patience were no longer.

We ran out of coke again and I said, “no worries”.  I grabbed my keys and headed to the dope man’s house.  He lived about ten minutes away from Rocky, not far, at all.  I jumped in my car and off I sped and made it back to Rocky’s house within half of an hour with yet, another eight ball.

An eight ball is drug lingo for 3.5 grams of cocaine, whether it be powder or rock.  I prefer powder cocaine and that’s what I always got, much to Rocky’s dismay.  He was a crack smoker.  Ryan had no preference about the density nor texture of his cocaine.  Ryan really never cared at all about what drug he was doing, as long as it made him high….even if it really didn’t make him high at all because it was a placebo and all in his head….but that’s another story for another day.

When I returned to Rocky’s, they were both waiting for me in Rocky’s bedroom because that’s the room where we got loaded.  I pulled the bag of cocaine from my vagina and opened the bag which was now moist with the naturally occurring fluids a woman’s vagina makes. I poured half of the eight ball, a sixteenth, onto Rocky’s nightstand.

This was some really good powder, but then again, I always got really good powder. The smell of cocaine was so strong that I almost got paranoid just from that alone as I poured it onto the table.  I think I did start to become a bit weird, but I was easily able to shake it off because I wasn’t going to jail today, I was going to fucking die, goddamnit.

I already knew what I was going to do and my stomach did a somersault in anticipation as I saw the fiending look in both Rocky and Ryan’s eyes as they went for it.  As soon as Rocky’s hand got near the pile of coke, I took the biggest breath my asthmatic lungs could hold and then I exhaled with the most vigorous passion I could muster…all over the pile of coke.

Did I mention Rocky’s bedroom was carpeted?  HAHA!!!  I was the big bad wolf and I blew it all down, into the carpet, never to be retrieved again except by a vacuum cleaner.

While the boys immediately hit their knees scrambling to pick up powder from the carpet, an exercise in futility, if ever there was one, I made a beeline for the guest bathroom at the front of the house.  I locked the door behind me and wasted no time.  I emptied the other half of the eightball (the bigger half, lol)  into a table spoon and added the water and mixed.  There was so much dope that it hardly fit in the spoon once I got the water in there, so I was very careful.

After, I made the chemical change from solid to liquid, I put a piece of cotton from the end of a q-tip into the spoon and drew it up into my syringe.  I will never forget how thick and yellow it was and how there was so much that once I was finished drawing up every last drop, the plunger could not extend any further.

Now, it was on to my death.

Because I had blown just about every usable vein in my body, shooting up cocaine so much, I figured this time would be just like every other time, lately, I tried to get a hit.  I thought I would never get a register and if I did I would miss.  I was wrong.

I pushed the needle into my left arm, where I first started shooting.  I had quit using that spot long ago because of the amount of scar tissue I had to dig through to find the vein.  Amazingly enough, I registered immediately.  I thought to myself, “ok, this is it, here we go”, and I didn’t even have to count down from ten, like I usually do before I have to do something hard.  I just pushed the plunger.

I pulled the needle out of my vein quickly and set it down on the sink, there was no need to hide it, because I wouldn’t ever need it again.  I had just enough time to walk out of the bathroom and make it to the living room where Rocky and Ryan were standing.  Ryan had his hands on his hips and his face in a snarl, looking like he was ready to kill me….HAHA BITCH, YOU ARE TOO LATE!!!

I remember waving and saying, “bye!” and then I hit the ground.

My body started convulsing like nothing you have ever even seen on a Poltergeist type movie.  It was weird because I knew exactly what was happening, my brain was still able to think, but my body was in a grand mal seizure.  I was coming up with each convulsive thrust, at a ninety degree angle and then back down.

I can still feel my head hitting the ground each time my body threw itself down to the floor.  Up and down, up and down, up and down.  I could see Rocky and Ryan standing over me.  They were doing nothing but looking at me like this was something I deserved.  I was trying to talk but I don’t think any words were coming out of my mouth.  My body kept convulsing at those ninety degree angles.

I realized then, that I DID NOT WANT TO DIE.  Something inside of me kept saying, “Sarah, as soon as you stop seizing, you’re gonna die, this is it, are you ready?”

“NOOOOOOOOOOO, I CHANGED MY MIND!!!!!!!  I DON’T WANNA DIE……GOD, PLEASE STOP THIS!!!!   JESUS, WHOEVER THE FUCK YOU ARE, HELP ME!!!!!!   HELP ME!!!!!!!   I AM SO SORRY!!!!!  I DON’T WANNA DIE!!!!!!!  I’M SO SORRY!!!!!”

In my head, I started praying.  I didn’t really know how to pray and I didn’t know anything about God or religion except that I knew there is a God, but that’s all I knew.

I started praying for everyone in my family, “God bless mom and daddy and Katy and Mimi and”,….on the list went and I prayed for everyone in my family.

Through the psychotic jungle I was navigating in my mind, praying and begging and and convulsing worse than an epileptic having their worst seizure ever, I could hear Rocky and Ryan talking out loud wondering where I had put the rest of the dope.  I heard Ryan say, “well, she usually keeps it in her bra”.   The convulsions went on for a while and I know I remember at least getting part of the phrase, “call an ambulance”, out of my mouth, but both of them ignored it.

Then they started wondering out loud where they were going to dump my body.

I kept on praying for my family in my head and all of a sudden, it stopped.  The seizure was over.

I saw Jesus in the Christmas lights strung across Rocky’s living room.  Jesus was in every one of those bulbs and He spoke to me.  I got up off the floor and I left….psychotic as fuck….but I left and I don’t know how because the estimated lethal dose of cocaine , VIA NOSE is 1.2 grams and I just put at least 1.6 straight into my left arm.