no settin' sun

i caught you knockin' at my cellar door
i love you, baby, can i have some more,
ooh, ooh, the damage done.
i hit the city and i lost my band
i watched the needle take another man.
gone, gone, the damage done,
i sing the song because i love the man,
i know that some of you don't understand
milk-blood to keep from running out.
i've seen the needle and the damage done
a little part of it in everyone
but every junkie's like a settin' sun.

i am very sad today.

i am exhausted. physically and emotionally. i got up at 7 am and missed "morning reflections" because it was held in the smokers' area, which i naturally avoid. there are two tables of butt filled ashtrays, smothered in cancer stick residue right next to the" med" room, which is also where they hold all contraband. whenever i shuffle in to pop my cuckoo tabs, i ask to spritz my hair with some hairspray. i feel like the uncool, cranky old lady who sits on her stoop and wags her finger at anyone that touches a blade of her grass. i would love to get to know some of these kids better, and they are kids, but they perpetually hang in a smoke-filled haze. and then there's me, the only non smoker out of 15.

the girl who's never smoked a cigarette. ah, the irony.

i had a huge breakthrough with my psychiatrist today about why i have repeated dreams about screaming at a particular person. about the lack of support and nurturing and love i have felt. and perhaps why i turned to pills.

but perhaps my biggest breakthrough today was in music therapy. for me music is my all. any kind. night and day. and it was when b, the counsellor played this piece by neil young at the end, that my guts gushed forth in a deluge of emotion that i could not control.

it was neil young. his honey-caramel voice lulling this group of emotional misfits with pure canadiana. and my heart ached and ached for a time of complete innoocence. when it was so cold we could walk on lake ontario. when a summer storm would pass through and the humidity wouldn't budge. when those maple leaves would peacock their glorious shades, then gently pirouette to the freezing ground. and when i didn't know about death and pills and addiction?

[did i ever know that time?]

so, i cried and cried for all the poor choices i've made, and for that little, bossy canadian redhead inside who is stomping to come out, but in the end, i was soothed. for "i know that some of you don't understand", but that doesn't matter. in order for me to bear no shame, i need only to judge myself.

and so i think of all the the settin' suns i've watched in my life, never once thinking, i metaphorically would be one...

well, i refuse to be. i still don't know how much work i have ahead. and the colors are spectacularly tempting, but i will not be a settin' sun...

[cue: harvest moon...for k.]