“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.” Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

I spent so many years in high school proving to "them" that I was cool, that I could drink and smoke and fuck with the best of them. But somewhere along the way the person I was pretending to be became the person I was, and I found myself shooting heroin, coke, meth, smoking crack, lying on filthy beds and stabbing my swollen arms in Oakland and the Tenderloin, touching men who made my skin crawl.
My experimentation took on a life force so virulent and strong that to this day I feel it pushing out of my chest at the mere thought of a crisp needle sliding into the fold of my arm. It's a part of me so ingrained into my personality and my development that it still aches to ignore it. But I know with every element of my body that this craving is a lie, that if I gave in I would sober up completely alone and without even my body to call my own.
The saddest part is that now that I'm sober I don't give a shit that people think I'm cool. Now that I have a real life it doesn't matter that my tongue is pierced, that my arms are covered in scars and everyone whispers about me when I walk by. That stuff that used to seem dangerous and cool to me now seems very sad and pathetic. I risked my life, my health, my happiness and my family, and for what? I got exactly what I wanted and in some ways that's the worst punishment of all.
I find myself doing the same thing now- pushing for a new identity I can thrust out in front of me. Am I the bulimic? The successful business woman? Should I become the bohemian college student? The anorexic? The whore? The wife? The mother?
I fought hard for what I have now- my sobriety, my tenative health, my driver's license, my job and my boyfriend. But once I got each of these things I stepped on them to reach up a little higher. These things I want, whether objectively good or bad, carry consequences that I can't see right now. What will happen when I'm 100 pounds? Will I finally prove to everyone that I am a successful eating disordered person? The way I proved I was a successful drug addict?
In some ways it fills up the raw hole inside to chase and dream, to focus all my energy on the next goal. But other times I feel the pressure of the world pushing in on me and I wonder if maybe I'm missing the whole goddamn point of being alive.