Hilary D Zamora writes and paints

"My self-loathing and self-doubt strangled me like the vines that climb the walls of desolate seclusion. I could feel the inner struggle wrapping around my neck, choking me, encouraging me to tear free. I wanted to feel included with these kids. This would be the first of many nights sitting in vehicles, buses, vans, cars, or RV’s, snorting meth, dirty crank, with apathetic addicts trying to sell me five dollar lines. I was literally stepping into a ruthless realm of uncontrolled crisis and misfortune where every single day I exposed myself to substantial peril and risk. I was so stupid. I didn’t know that this one night would lead me into a journey of a million tragedies.

It was before I’d seen different cooks in different places mixing chemicals and drying batches. It was before I knew how to melt the meth in brittle, clear, glass pipes that would rot and break, like a tweeker’s teeth, bones, relationships, promises, spirits, morals, and souls. I can still hear the fiend inside me screaming; that very first night this voracious beast was activated, animated, and empowered. I stirred a creature of abhorrence and indulgence that I wasn’t aware I had inside of me. My monster was ruthless, but we were still strangers.

It was living behind my skin but had yet to be born. That night gave birth to my natural longing for excess but I had no idea what that would lead to. My mind rewinds to a different time, to a plate of lines, and a play of lies, to the story’s lifeline. And it’s as if machines have kept this thing breathing, in order to allow it to flow from my hand and mind to the present time, and to the past, to the depths of my affair with meth." ~Hilary D Zamora