The mind is a dangerous place, my mind especially. Neurons form associative pathways based on past experiences, and it is extremely difficult to reprogram them. Add to the mix…well, we’ll call it background noise, and some days I feel like the top of my head is about to explode outwards in a shower of gore and fire. I am a person who takes medication to keep things manageable, and I make no apologies for this. There is a marked difference in my mood and tolerance for everyday stumbling blocks when I do not, so I have chosen to keep taking meds. Even still, I find myself ruminating on past life experiences more lately, and I think maybe it is time that I purge.

I know part of it has to do with the weather. It’s spring, and warm with a cool breeze, the kind of day I used to hope for when I was running in Baltimore. That way, you see, it’s not too hot or cold in the abandominium hideoouts where I and the other junkies liked to sit and hoard our meager scores. I miss sitting on scavenged milk crates, avoiding foul-smelling piles in the corners, and talking big with random people. I know it’s somehow disturbing that I miss the griminess, the feeling of being bad, the rush of my heart when a cop drove by (”Will he stop? Does he see me?”), and I want to leave it behind. It seems to dog me, waking and asleep. It would be so easy to slip back to that life of running and hiding and dealing with nothing.

So I guess I keep putting one foot in front of the other, having little community meetings in my head, and trying to concentrate on the good in my life now. Some days it’s just really fucking hard.

I love Baltimore. It’s diverse, sometimes bizarre, often dirty or dilapidated, and it’s damn interesting. I love the people on the sidewalk at 3:45 am on a Tuesday. I love the grimy panhandlers accosting me at every streetlight–hell, I used to know some of them pretty well. I love the way you can feel the life throbbing through the streets. I love the neighborhood grocery stores and corner bars that have no problem with you paying for a half-pint of rotgut vodka and a pack of generic smokes with dimes, nickels, and/or pennies. I love the smell of the Harbor, an olfactory punch in the gut. I love how you can go from ghetto to tourist area to working poor in a few blocks.

There’s nothing pretentious about Baltimore. It doesn’t (despite attempts from the City Council) pretend to be something it’s not. It’s real. And I miss it.