My Story - Part 2

Foster care

May, 1985

We knew something strange was happening when our father arrived home on foot, with blood on his face and hands. Being too scared to ask what happened, we just stayed out of his way. He rinsed his face, and proceeded to follow his usual routine of opening a bottle and shouting random abuse at us, so we relaxed and decided that everything was normal after all.

A few hours later, however, a knock on the door turned our world upside down. Our father had already passed the stage where he was unable to get up, so Peter, as the oldest, opened the door. There were two policemen on the steps, asking him if his father was home. He glanced over his shoulder at our drunken father in his usual spot on the couch, and let the policemen in. After a brief exchange, they put him in handcuffs, and supported - well, half-carried - him out the door. Then they came back for the three of us, put us in a second car, and drove us to the police station.

At the station, many people asked us many questions, but we were too scared to answer most of them. When the questions ran out, we were left sitting in a bare room by ourselves. By then it was already getting dark. There was a gecko, clinging to the wall above the window, staring at me with its large, round eyes. I remember staring back at the little creature, fascinated, and wishing that I had bought some booze to ease the fear I was feeling.

Finally, a very fat, friendly-looking woman walked into the room and introduced herself as Mary (not her real name), saying she was a social worker. She explained to us that our father was in trouble and had to stay there for a while. Only later did we realize that he had hit a pedestrian earlier that day, and left his damaged car at the scene. The pedestrian died, and because he was drunk at the time, he was being charged with culpable man-slaughter and leaving the scene of an accident, among other crimes. He was finally sentenced to 7 years in prison.

We had no idea how fundamentally our lives were about to change, or even how long he would have to stay. We asked when we would go home. She pursed her lips, sighed, and said, not any time soon. Unbeknownst to us, she had already made the decision that our father would never have custody of us again. She wanted to know where our mother was, but we couldn't tell her. She asked if we had any other family, but we didn't know how to contact our grandmother - we hadn't seen her in years. After leaving us alone again for what felt like an eternity, she came back and told us that she would take us somewhere safe for the night.

May, 1985

We arrived at the children's home late that night, cold, hungry and not knowing what to expect. We were introduced to the head mistress, and told that we would stay there until they found somewhere for us to live. We were assigned adjacent beds in dorm 3, sharing with at least a dozen other boys and commanded to get in bed and go to sleep. Being used to sharing, John and I got in the same bed. The dorm-father, rather forcefully, pulled him out from under the covers and shoved him in another bed. We lay quietly until we couldn't hear the dorm-father moving anymore, then he snuck back into my bed. We weren't about to sleep separately. We needed each other that night.

In the early morning hours, unable to sleep, I lay staring at the ceiling. In the corner was a gecko - small and almost transparent, clinging to the ceiling as if exempt from gravity. I pretended that it was my guardian, watching over me.

For the weeks that we stayed there, the staff continued to struggle to get us to sleep in separate beds and we continued to sneak into each others beds after lights out. We just weren't ready to face the darkness alone.

My memories of the weeks in the children's home is dominated by being afraid to go to bed, but waking up each morning and realizing that nothing bad had happened the previous night. They place wasn't exactly filled with love, but mercifully, there was no abuse. The staff did their best. There were just too many of us and too few of them to really reach out to individual children, especially children who were as deeply troubled as we were. The staff resorted to more and more force in their attempts to get us to sleep in separate beds, eventually even separating us by day in order to break our "unhealthy" inter-dependence. I still don't understand what was so unhealthy about it. I believe they thought they were doing good, but they turned my time into the children's home into one of the loneliest periods of my life.

A few days after we arrived, Peter's father came to pick him up. He would spend the rest of his childhood with his father.

Note: Peter lived with his father until he entered the army in January 1987, at age 18. After finishing his basic training and a 6 month deployment, he joined the special forces and went back to the combat zone. He never came back. Officially, he's been missing in action since 1989. They wouldn't even tell us exactly when he went missing. It was "classified".

I found out later that they also contacted our mother and asked her to take us, but she refused. She elected to sign away her parental rights, making us wards of the state, rather than take custody of us.

As the days passed, I started to relax and allow myself to believe that maybe, just maybe, it was over. I spent my days waiting for the call that meant they had found us a new home. I thought about about our new parents, and wondered if they would be able to find someone who would be nice to us, unlovable as we were. In the midst of my loneliness, I allowed myself to hope.

July, 1985

Welfare found a placement for us at a foster family in July. They were described to us as a husband and wife, Jeff and Anne, with a daughter, Susan (not their real names), who was our own age. They could not have more children after Susan, so they decided to become foster parents. They lived not far from where we used to live, so we would be able to go to the same school we had always gone to. Jeff was an influential man. He was a Deacon in the local church, served on the parent's committee at the school, and had a government job. Anne was a stay-at-home mom.

We were both scared and excited - we would be part of a real family, with a mom and a dad and even a sister. On the other hand, there were no guarantees that they would like us. We had been taught that we were unlovable and we had learnt that lesson well. What would happen if they decided that they didn't want us after all?

They picked us up from the Children's home on a Saturday morning - us, dressed in our Sunday best, hands and faces scrubbed clean and hair plastered to our scalps with wet combs in an attempt to make a good impression. They looked like a normal, average family - all smiles and reassurances. It turned into a rather overwhelming day, full of new things, but not all bad. John and I were to share a spacious room with two single beds, a large, colorful carpet in between them and a desk where we could do our homework.

There were a lot of house rules to get our heads around - chores that had to be done, things that weren't allowed and things that had to be done in a certain way. Used to rules changing on a daily basis, we didn't pay much attention to them and promptly got in trouble for closing our bedroom door.

Being expected to sit around the table with the rest of the "family" for dinner was another new experience. Anne was shocked to realize that we had no idea how to properly use and knife and a fork, and the rest of the meal was an agony of embarrassment as she attempted to teach us. I believe it was only the training at not showing emotion we received from our father that kept me from bursting into tears of humiliation.

Sunday morning brought another new experience and more humiliation. We were sent to Sunday school. I had a vague concept of God and the Bible from religious education at school, but I didn't know the Bible and got confused looking for a passage in the wrong testament. Fortunately, the teacher was understanding and helped me without making a big deal out of it. The children, however, showed with their self-righteous smirks what they thought of someone who didn't know in which testament which books were.

I was relieved to get back to the house and out of my scratchy new clothes, but determined not to complain or show that I was anything but happy. I knew that sooner or later the foster parents would get tired of how stupid I was and send me back. I was powerless to stop this from happening, but I was going to do everything in my power to postpone it as far as possible.

July, 1985

It wasn't long before I stopped being afraid of being sent back, and started wishing it would happen.

The first time I saw him drunk was within days after we arrived. He had come home from work, opened a bottle of Whiskey, and proceeded to drink the entire bottle. As the level in the bottle went down, his anger rose. Pretty soon the insults were flying thick and fast.

We were a pair of stupid boys whose own parents couldn't even love them. Our father had obviously not beaten us enough, or we wouldn't be such sissies. He hoped we realised that we should be grateful to him for the rest of our lives for taking us in when no one else wanted us.

Anne and Susan didn't escape either. Anne was a whore who should stop defying his authority. She was raising Susan to be just as much a slut as she was herself. The house was in a terrible state, probably because she spent all day fucking other men rather than being a proper housewife. The food was inedible. She should talk less, her voice made him sick. Susan should hope that she will find a man stupid enough to marry her, because she would never be able to look after herself. Unless she became a hooker, that is. She would be good at that, since she was being raised by one.

He went on and on like that, getting progressively more cruel as he got more drunk.

I was indignant that Anne didn't make any effort to defend herself or her daughter. I could stomach the insults he threw at John and me, because they were true, but surely the things he said about them were wrong? Why didn't she fight back? Years later I would come to understand that she was a battered woman, broken down beyond the point where she was able to stand up for herself.

That night, John and I got in the same bed again, holding onto each other, sobbing quietly while we listened to Jeff screaming and Anne crying. We both realised that nothing had changed.

Self-destruction

August or September, 1985

The first cut was completely accidental. I was doing the dishes while trying to think of a way to get my hands on my foster-father's whiskey without him noticing. I stuck my hand under the water, feeling around for cutlery, when a deceptively sharp vegetable knife found the soft flesh in the palm of my hand. I pulled my hand out of the water to find a 2cm cut. It was bleeding profusely, but I felt no pain whatsoever. I stood there as if hypnotized, staring at the blood dripping into the dish-water, my senses heightened. I could hear my breath and my heartbeat, and feel the blood rushing through my veins. I felt alive!

Susan walked into the kitchen, breaking the spell. She gasped, grabbed my wrist and pressed a paper-towel onto the cut. I submitted, feeling slightly dazed. After a few minutes the bleeding stopped, and she fetched a plaster from her mother's closet. Only then did it start to hurt. We emptied the sink and filled it with clean water, scared that her father would come in and we would get in trouble. Then she helped me with the dishes, saying that I shouldn't get the cut wet again.

She was always sweet like that.

I couldn't forget the incident. I thought about it constantly, almost obsessively. I stared at my skin, imagining the blood running through my veins under it. It seemed impossible that I could have this torrential stream running through my body all the time. The pressure of the blood against the walls of my veins felt unbearable, as unbearable as the emotional pressure building up inside me, day by day. I lay awake at night, thinking about cutting open all my veins and releasing the pressure inside - all at once.

When thinking about it wasn't enough any more, I locked myself in the bathroom with a razor blade. I sat on the floor and slowly, tentatively at first, slid it over my forearm. A perfectly round drop of blood formed at the end of the cut where the blade first touched my skin, and then, suddenly, a line of blood was running down my arm and dripping on my knee. I imagined the chaotic thoughts and feelings in my head flowing down my veins, and dripping from my arm. I closed my eyes, and cut again, parallel to the first. And again, and again. I was hypnotized. I couldn't stop, until my hand became so slippery with blood that the blade slipped to the floor. The soft "ping" of the blade hitting the tiles jerked me back, almost as suddenly as Susan coming into the kitchen had. I frantically started cleaning up, both myself and the bathroom.

No one must ever find out. They would think I'm crazy, and lock me up. Perhaps I am crazy. How could I voluntarily hurt myself like that? On the other hand, what's the point of hurting only inside? Shouldn't my outside match my inside? Perhaps I should be locked up. God, I belong in an asylum!

From that day, cutting became a habit; a secondary addiction. I couldn't go a week without seeing my own blood and releasing the pressure. I took to wearing long sleeves only. I felt cold most of the time anyway - inside and out.

December, 1985

This first time I smoked put was in an empty plot, with a school friend, during the Christmas vacation of 1985. It seemed so harmless back them. We were just two 13 year old boys, breaking the rules in the name of fun and rebellion. And it was a lot of fun!

My first impression of pot was one of relief - this was what life was supposed to feel like! I believe that is why, while for my friend this was just a fairly harmless act of rebellion, for me it was the beginning of a downward spiral that took me to a place that was darker than I could ever have foreseen. For my friend, pot presented fun. Me for, pot offered an escape from reality.

My friend smoked with me two or three more times before he backed out, saying that his goal was simply to find out how it felt, not to ruin his life with drugs. I should have heeded the warning in his excuse, but I didn't. I couldn't get enough. By the time school started again, I was smoking almost daily and had scaled down my drinking quite a bit. Pot was cheaper than booze, and easier for a minor to get his hands on. From the start of the school year of 1986, I regularly went to school with my bankie of pot in my suitcase, and would spend breaks smoking in the bathroom, often missing classes because I was simply too high.

It couldn't last. Getting caught was inevitable.

The fateful day came pretty quickly. Someone had recognized the smell of pot in the bathroom and the police arrived at the school with sniffer dogs. The entire school were summoned to the school hall. The principle explained that the police would go from classroom to classroom and everyone who had drugs, or who had ever had drugs in his suitcase, would be caught out and charged. (Of course this isn't strictly true, but I didn't know that.) Mercifully, he also offered a last chance to avoid arrest - those who stood up immediately and went to the headmaster's office, would be disciplined by the school, and not handed over to the police.

I will never forget the look in my brother's eyes when I stood up. I don't think he had any idea before that day. I was spanked and suspended for a week, and warned that a repeat offence would result in expulsion, but the bigger punishment was looking my brother in the eyes that afternoon after school. With the simple act of getting up in the school hall that day, I shattered his faith in me, and dealt a blow to our relationship that would take years to repair.

I was his hero, but I had feet of clay.

To make matters worse, the shame didn't motivate me to stop. If anything, it motivated me to use more.

1986

My grade 8 year passed in a haze of booze and drugs. I started off smoking pot almost daily, and substituting with booze over weekends. My friends were now mostly older boys - boys who looked old enough to buy cigarettes and booze, and who knew where to find pot. Sometime during the year someone introduced me to painkillers. I loved them. They made me feel mellow and relaxed. Also, they didn't smell, which meant that I could use them at school without getting caught. I have one bizarre memory of popping pills during a math class, and getting in trouble for eating candy in class. If only the teacher knew what kind of candy I was eating! I received a spanking for my misdeed, but thanks to the wonders of prescription-grade narcotic painkillers, I didn't feel a thing. My lack of reaction to my punishment must have puzzled the teacher to no end!

One night, while hanging out with my older, drug using friends, one of the girls sat down next to me and put her hand on my leg. I instinctively recoiled when she moved her hand up to my crotch, but then the drugs kicked in, and my body relaxed. My memories of that night is rather vague, but I remember that she made me touch her breasts, and then she undressed me and screwed me. There really is no other way to describe it - it wasn't love making, because there was no love involved. It wasn't really sex either, because sex implies a couple doing it together while I was no more than a passenger, lying back and allowing her to have her way.

It took me weeks to process what had happened. The feelings it awakened in me was too paradoxical to make any sense. On the one hand, the whole experience was terrifyingly reminiscent of what my father had done to me, and yet on the other hand, this was not at all painful. It wasn't even unpleasant. In fact, it was rather enjoyable.

A few weeks later I ran into the same girl again. I looked at her, remembered the feeling of her full breasts in my hands and my first orgasm, and threw caution to the wind. What the hell - she was hot and I was a pubescent boy, after all. I walked over to her, and started kissing her. This time one could definitely call it sex, because I was a very enthusiastic, even if rather inept, participant. I walked home with a smile on my face that night, not because I was in love, but because I had sex with a girl, and I had both controlled it and enjoyed it. That meant that it wasn't true when my father had called me gay and told me that I'd only ever be a sex-toy for other men. I had slain at least one daemon, or so I thought.

I don't think I ever saw that girl again, and to this day I don't know her name, but I saw many other girls, and had sex with as many of them as I could manage, always eager to prove my father wrong. The truth is that I was still deeply confused about my sexuality and my promiscuity was a pathetic attempt to dispel the doubts I still had about it. Like drugs, sex only ever offered temporary relief. The next day, or the day after, I would remember how my body had reacted to the rape and what my father had said about it, and the doubts would be back.

February, 1987

I arrived at my dealer's flat in my school uniform, as sick as a dog. My pills had run out the previous night, and I could feel the spasms starting in my abdominal muscles. I had 10 bucks in my pocket, but I would do anything for a hand full of pills.

Jason, my dealer, made a face, "Sorry, I'm fresh out of pills."

I could have happily killed him in that moment. However, he invited me in, saying that he had something else I could try instead, if I wanted. He showed me the white powder, but when he told me it was smack, I had my doubts. Heroin scared me. Attempting to reassure me, he told me that it was just like the pills I'd been taking, only faster, stronger and better. He said I would only become a junkie if I didn't treat it with the respect it deserved, and that those who OD on it do so because they are careless. He said I was too smart to loose control. After a few minutes of this, punctuated by stomach cramps that told me I'd be puking pretty soon, I was convinced. Fuck school - show me the smack.

Jason was always a sneaky bastard.

He smiled, fetched a needle, and asked if I wanted him to show me how to do it, or if he could just do it for me as a favour to a first-timer. I told him to just do it and get it over with, so I could feel better.

The first sensation when the heroin hit my brain, was a sour, acrid taste in my mouth. By the time he had removed the needle from my arm, I was caught up in the most extreme, most intense rush I had ever experienced. I still think that first smack rush is about the most pleasure the human brain can endure without exploding. Seconds later I was puking off the balcony. I turned back and stumbled to the couch, lost in a daze of happiness. Even the puking seemed enjoyable!

In his book The Heroin Diaries, Nikki Sixx writes that alcohol and cocaine were just affairs, but when he met heroin, it was true love. Substituting pot and pills for cocaine, I felt the same way. Doing heroin was like coming home after a long, difficult excursion to find everything beautiful, warm and inviting. I felt comfortable, safe, happy, relaxed, and completely at home in my own skin for the first time in my life. I thought that I could stay high on heroin for the rest of my life and never care about anything else. It was like falling in love with the most beautiful, the most charming, the most wonderful woman on earth, and having her love me back.

I had no idea that I had just taken another step towards the depths of hell.

Addicted from the first fix? Its hard to tell, because I was already addicted to painkillers, but I definitely knew right from the start that I wanted more and that nothing else will ever be good enough again.


By the second term of 1987, I could no longer function without heroin. I no longer used to get high - I used to get well. The perfect rush that had seduced me the first time was only a distant memory. In its place was a constant race against sickness. I was a full-blown junky and I was only 15 years old.

If I had nothing to shoot in the morning when I woke up, I'd be off to Jason's before school. More often than not on those mornings, I would never make it to school. On the days that I did make it to school, I spent most of my time nodding off behind my desk. My perpetual long sleeves now served a double purpose - it hid both my track marks and the scars from my cutting. My school marks, that had always been reasonable before, plummeted. I didn't care. At the end of the winter term, I failed 4 of my 10 subjects and scored dismal marks even in those subjects that I passed.

Soon, petty theft wasn't enough to fund my habit any more and I started working for Jason - delivering drugs to other kids in the area and receiving their money, which I then handed over to Jason. I quickly figured out that I could charge a premium and keep the profits for myself. Suddenly, I had a regular supply of money. My drug use escalated further.

John and I were barely on speaking terms. He didn't know what I was using or how much, but he knew I was using. I was desperately lonely without my brother, but my addiction was a barrier between us. He was too confused by how I had changed to reach out to me. I was too ashamed to reach out to him. So I used even more in an attempt to fill the hole the distance between us left in my gut.

Once, he asked me if I realized that what I was doing would kill me. I told him yes, I know, but I don't care. It was true. I didn't care whether I lived or died, as long as I could get high.

Up to then, life had taught me that I could not depend on anyone. Life had taught me that all I could expect from tomorrow was more insults, more abuse or at best, to be ignored. It had taught me that adults who aren't angry, mean alcoholics, get abused by the angry, mean alcoholics. Growing up was certainly nothing to look forward to.

Life had taught me that I was unlovable and that I would never accomplish anything. Looking in the mirror, I saw the same disgust that I had seen in my father and in Jeff's eyes in my own eyes. I stopped looking in mirrors. That same disgust was now also in my twin's eyes, and in the eyes of my former friends. I stopped looking people in the eyes.

Heroin allowed me to forget everything that life had taught me. It took me to a place where only the here and the now mattered, where I could relax in my own skin and where being alone wasn't lonely. Life didn't look like a very appealing alternative to drugs. It certainly wasn't worth giving up my new savior, lover and best friend for. I chose to let go of life, embraced death and dived head-first into addiction.

Part 3: Fighting to survive