'You shouldn't hate your life,' I say, reaching out to touch his arm.

He grabs my wrist and pulls up my sleeve, revealing large scars on my forearm.

'We are the same person,' he says.

I look at the man sitting across from me. He is 18, maybe 19, I'm not really sure; I never bothered to ask when his birthday was. He doesn't go to school. He lives at home with his fucked up mother and works as airport security at Philadelphia International Airport. He gets drug tested randomly at work, so he doesn't smoke weed anymore. He replaces it, instead, with coke and dust.

This was a coke night, and this is the come down. It is five in the morning, the sun is up, the birds are chirping, and we haven't slept yet.

I look at the man across from me. He is not a good person. It's not his fault that he is not a good person, but he is not. He has a bad home life, and fills the void with drugs. He has no respect for other people, except for the few that he considers his good friends. No one else matters. His dependence on drugs makes him an angry person.

I sniff and taste a drip in the back of my throat. So what if I do coke? I am not the same person as he is. I do not smoke PCP, or eat Perkisets, or any other pills, Adderall or Ambien.

I look at the man across from me. He has let go of my wrist and is leaning his head against the steering wheel. We are not the same person. I am in school, I am doing something with my life. I don't plan on sniffing coke for the rest of my life, or even smoking weed for the rest of my life. He will never stop the drugs. He will be working at the airport until his is old enough to retire. He will never get married, because no one will want to be with him when they realize how dependent he is on foreign substances. No one should do the amount of drugs that this man does.

I rub his back. He has been talking about driving into the Delaware River. We are not the same person. I may have thought about that at one point, years ago, but I am so much different than what I once was. Even if I was like him then, which I wasn't, I am not like him now.

'Can we lie in the back?' he asks. I look at the seats behind us. They are folded down so it is like a bed. I look back at him and nod. We climb into the back and lie together. He rests his head on my chest and I rub his back with one hand and hold his hand with the other.

I am not the same person as him. I have never broken down like this to any of my friends, because I am not like him. I do drugs, but they do not rule my whole life, as they rule his. I can control the amount of drugs that I do. So what if this is the third night in a row that I won't sleep. It's only because it is my birthday weekend; I had to party.

'How many times have we done this?' he asks quietly.

'Done what?'

'This. Stayed up 'til the birds come out. I hate hearing the fucking birds and knowing that I wasted another night not sleeping. I have work in three hours.'

I look at the clock. I have class in three hours.

'We don't do this too often,' I say.

'Yes we do. Not together, but I know that you're doing this every weekend, cause you always call me to get it. And I'm doing this every weekend. We just don't do it together usually. But we both do this too much.'

'I don't do it too much. Maybe you do, but I don't.'

'Don't you hate this? I hate this drug. It's the worst.'

'I hate it sometimes. I hate coming down after a huge binge and wanting nothing but more coke.'

'I hate it always. I don't know why I do it.'

'I don't know why I do it either.'

'Because we're the same person. All we want is to get high. We don't care about the come down, or how horrible today will be. We just want to be high whenever we can be high.'

'We're not the same person.'

'We have three hours,' he says, and he kisses me.

His hands touch my body and I touch his. We move together. We can't smoke weed. How else are we going to tire ourselves out enough to get an hour or two of sleep?

When we finish, we put our clothes back on and lie together again. His arms are around me. He pulls up my sleeve and wraps his hand around my forearm, where the scars are.

'We are the same person,' he whispers into my ear.

We are the same person.