"The Pink Princess"
By Rizm
The Pink Princess is a true story based on one of my many countless escapades detailing just one of my multiple addictions. This one in particular was a pill I nicknamed "Pink Princess", obviously. One for her pink color and two because it had me feeling like it was more of a person than a pill. We had an abusive relationship to which I found myself to be an even more torturous form of slavery, than the pain I experience in the belly of the physical prison I was residing. Until late one night when He found me in the darkness, lifted me up out the pig pen like the Prodigal Son, and brought me back home to the remembrance that He's Bigger Than any giant I face.
"I'm going through so many things
don't know what to do
My head is spinning
tryna figure out what to do
Thought I had a grip on life
In spite of it
On the real God
I can't handle it
I'm grown up, so I ain't a little boy no more
Won a few battles, but I'm so tired of loosing this war
I ain't big enough, for the biggest One I wrote this song
Run to throne, not the phone"
It's ironic how different the circumstances of my life are right now, as I listen to these words, in comparison to where I was physically, mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually when the words were first written on paper.
Amazement of another form begins to cover me. How unfamiliar the voice of the artist sounds, even though, because I know the heart of the source from which the words flow, I know the voice is my own. The man who wrote the words was a prisoner, but the man singing the words is free, yet they are one in the same. That God could find some good use for a dirty, broken and worn out vessel like me. Yeah! You got it. Amazing!
I wrote "Bigger Than" at three something in the morning sitting on the cold back stall of the prison bathroom. A place where birthday's, Thanksgiving and even Christmas do not serve as celebratory markers in time. I'm sitting on a galvanized steel clone toilet in the back stall of the institutions dorm C. The cold steel has no respect for the material of my government issued pants and shows it by stretching its reach all the way to the marrow of my femur (ya'll know that big bone in ya thigh).
I tolerate the uncomfortable feeling because it's not life threatening and there is a "Bigger" giant that needs to be slayed.
As I sit, I'm staring not at, but into the small pink pill, being embraced by my thumb and pointer finger. The pill should have been in my mouth swallowed, partially digested and beginning to enter my blood stream and do it's cause and effect thing to my bodily functions, but instead it's between my fingers. Not even in my hand, because the outer capsule is so sensitive that the heat my own body generated would melt it.
Normally, I don't take the time to look at it before I "pop off". The pill that is, but this time I did stop to glance at it and the glance turned into a gaze and the gaze turned into a "moment of reflection". I stared into this little pink pill, that under normal circumstances I consume. It sucked me in and consumed me. Predator has just become prey. I saw myself. Not the dude sitting on the toilet in the back stall holding the little pink pill. Not even who I could be, but who I really am without the pill in my hand.
I see myself before I ever met the "Pink Princess." Her elegance and beauty are mere deceptions to blind me of the fact that she's killing me from the inside out, spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally. But before I die, she has predestined me to be her slave for what remains of my life. I'm lost in the abyss of my thoughts and drowning in the memories of my true self like quick sand. I remember that it's going on year number eight and some change for me in this hell hole.
These last eight years, I've earned my respect in this place but "The Pink Princess" has no respect for me. She's made me lose respect for myself and it's blatant. Everyone get respect just on GP until you give me a reason not to respect you and then it might take you a lifetime to earn it back. I originally thought this was the experience of my scenario with the "pink princess." I thought she would respect me, who I was, what I had been through, my strength, reputation, and the stripes I've earned. I thought wrong. She ain't see none of that. She never respected me. Not even at the beginning. Here mere introduction into my life directly disrespected and violated the very core of who I am and my character.
I recall being up late one night, which isn't out of the ordinary for me. I'm on the top bunk, headphones on riding out. It's about 2 something in the morning. Me and the "pink princess" have been dancing all night, but we so caught up in the extra additional experience of the feelings music brings into our already highly intoxicating situation, that we have cease to care about the pain of our feet hurting. Her presence numbs me to the pain, but the fact that for even one second I took my focus off the music and payed attention to the thought of feeling the pain was a reminder to me that slowly but surely we were descending from the clouds, our high coming down with us and by the time we've hit the ground it won't be "we" it'll be just "me." Me in the lonely bottomless pit that is myself.
This also reminds me that if I don't want to crash, I need to refuel my jet and pop a couple few more pills. After grabbing the pink princess from her designated hiding spot in the crease cuffed fold of my military style bed make up. I could just "pop-off" and take the pills right here without ever leaving the bunk. It's as dark as its gonna get and "almost" everyone is sleeping aside from the true Night Owls like myself scattered throughout the dorm. None close enough to be able to detect what I'm doing through the shadows of darkness and I can swallow the pills without water no problem, but popping the "pink princess" always makes me extra paranoid.
Indulgence in the "pink princess" leads me to fall in the latter of the two crackhead categories causing me to display the character of one who is utterly controlled, ruled by and enslaved to "junkie behavior." I felt unimaginably good feelings with her, but she had me acting all out my character. When I found the "pink princess" I lost respect for myself.
After grabbing my date I began to slowly climb down from off top of the off balanced bunk showing
as much respect for my sleeping bunkie below as possible. I began to make my way to the bathroom, but on the way I stop off to the water fountain next to the officer station. Yep, asleep as usual. I take big gulps of water. Normally I don't drink this much water, but because I haven't eaten in a few days, not because I couldn't, my locker filled, but I don't like nothing else being in my system, when "pink princess" is in my system. She's jealous, demanding to have me all to herself, so inspite of hunger pains and feeling the direct effects of the physical damage being done to my body by her cause and effect of ignored warnings against taking her without food on the stomach, I take off. I'm caught in her web like prey in the silky chains of a black widow. Her venom numbs me to the pain her poison is inflicting on me.
In true junkie fashion I'd rather get high than eat and float away to my demise on a ignorant cloud of bliss. Maybe I ignore it because the pain I was trying to escape seemed so much bigger than any pain I thought she could ever cause me. A lot of times, I don't even drink water because I don't want to dilute her before she enters my blood stream. Like I said its been awhile since I've eaten or drank anything, so I drink water so I don't go into dehydration not cause I'm so concerned about my own health but because if I get sick or pass out from dehydration it'll blow my high. Simple logic people. I don't want to get fucked up and die not cause I'm worried about dying, but I seriously feel like dying would put obstacles in the way of me continuing to get high, that to say the least present themselves as challenging. "I don't want to get that high, it kinda defeats the whole purpose, don't you think?" Is what I used to say. Looking back in hindsight I realize how retarded my mind frame was at the time.
I had the 3rd gulp from the water fountain in my mouth without swallowing and continuing making my way to the bathroom. I pass all of the front stalls and straight to the back I go and plant my "flag" which is a role of toilet paper with about 6 or 7 squares unrolled signaling to any travelers starting to wonder far back here in this kut, not to. Anybody see it knows that it's somebody already back here handling some business that's none of their own.
Edited by Candace Smith
*******TO BE CONTINUED*******
STAY TUNED
*Disclaimer- Due to the nature of this story some events, names, locations, dates, and details have been altered. This story is for entertainment purposes only.
