Addiction
Smashed
There is no greater feeling than falling in love, and no greater pain than when you lose it.
*sigh* I am not the broken one; I tell him as I turn to him and smile. You're broken, you've been smashed into a million little pieces and I cannot put you back together. All the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men have refused my pleas.
He looks at me as though I sliced his heart in two, knowing that I was hurting him. He slowly straightened his posture, looked me in the eye and said, you have the devil in you. You are mean and nasty and one day you will find yourself alone.
Those words ring in my head like a loud bell, every hour on the hour. He was my addiction. My drug; I was addicted to his kisses, his touch, his laughter, the way he made me feel and the sound of his voice. To this day his memory haunts me, chasing me through the halls of my brain like an axe murder.
Nothing in my 30 years could prepare me for this. I had overcome addiction many times before just casually setting down the pipe, the bottle, my pack of smokes, the needle. Many times over I picked up the same objects again and again, waiting for death to come knocking.
My son was born September 15, 2000 and at that moment I knew that I had a purpose. He was born at exactly 1316, 21 days before my 21st birthday, at the same time I was born. During his life I continued to struggle with addictions, smoking, drinking, meth....those were my choices now. I was never good enough for my son's dad, or my mom, or my sister. I was always struggling to fit in, to find my spot. But at the end of the day I knew I could come home to that sweet smile of my son and things would be ok.
And then I met Joe, a few short months after I kicked my husband out of the house for cheating on me, a few short months after my mother had been diagnosed with cancer, I met Joe. And I knew the moment I laid eyes on his beautiful, loving face, that I would never love anyone as strongly and as purposefully as I did him. I knew he was the one I would spend the rest of my life with. Thinking about that moment now as I write this makes my heart beat faster, my legs weak, and my palms sweaty. But, with in an instant I remember that I won't get to come home to him. I won't ever kiss his lips again, or hear him laugh in my ear. I won't ever feel his touch burn through the layers of my skin caressing my soul. His smell has disappeared from my memory. The light in his eyes when he saw my face has since faded and we are reduced to 3 or 4 word text messages every so often.
Joe was my greatest addiction, my weakest moment, the hardest thing to let go and even harder to accept his words. Never, has a man looked at me with such awe and love as Joe, to him I was the most beautiful woman in the room. No one could break his loving gaze and yet I was the vilest. I was the meanest woman he had ever been with, evil to the core as he would say. When we fought he would tell me that I was the poisonous yet most beautiful creature he had ever encountered. And to that I admit I was mean. I was venomous. I bit him with words strong enough to hurt the toughest man.
I was spiteful and angry. I was loving and caring. I was loyal and stood by his many attempts to get clean. OH? My dear audience, I failed to mention....Joe was not only addicted to me like I was to him, but he was addicted to opiates. If ever there was a mistress it was Opium (well, synthetic opium best known as opiates or opioids), like our relationship his love for me and opiates spiraled out of control and I along with it. I used occasionally. I lied about it, as a good addict does. I fought day in and day out for the love of my fiancé, my soon to be husband to be returned to me. I held his head when he overdosed and was puking, I cleaned him when he shat his pants, time and time again I lifted him up, drove him to the hospital, denied relationships with my adopted brother, his family and friends I had known all my life. Time and time again I sat in the uncomfortable chairs at Community Bridges, listening to the friends and families of other addicts beg and plea for their loved ones to come back. When it was my turn, I sat silent. I wasn't there for them, I was there for him.
Time and time again I had to threaten his drug dealers, who finally after asking around after me discovered I was not joking when I stated plainly that if they came near my house again I would kill them. Time and time again I had to control his intake, and hide his drugs. Time and time again I had to suffer through my own anxiety and pain because I could not have Xanax or pain pills in the house. Finally in February 2011, I gave up, and after years of fighting, violence and pure hatred. I checked out. I wanted nothing more to do with him, his addictions, his family or his ego. About that time, is when he came back to me, but by then I was angry, I was hurt, I had built walls to keep him from loving me.
Rewind about 8 months. He attacked me, choked me, held a knife to my throat and threatened to kill me and my son, because I refused to let him leave. Because I knew he was going to use. I held him hostage until he fought back. I wasn’t scared that he would do anything, I was afraid he was going to use. He was going to leave me. The police came, arrested him, and kept him away for 2 days. Up to this point, that was the worst 2 days I had to suffer through. He came home at 3am 3 days later, after I bailed him out of jail with the help of his dad. He knocked on the door, and I welcomed him home with open arms. I hadn't missed something so much.
I wrote a letter to the courts, claiming it was the drugs that we were working on getting him assistance and counseling. The day he went to court I discovered that he had cheated on me a year prior. I confronted this woman, as though we were junkies fighting over the last hit. I confronted him, made him grovel at my knees for abusing my trust and my love. Over the next few months from September, things were chaotic but peaceful. We battled with addiction to each other and with opiates, we fought and made up. We kissed and we hated each other. And with each passing day our lives became irreversibly out of control. A black hole spinning and twisting, eating everything in its path until one day, I came home from work to find him on the floor, naked, he had downed 33 30mg oxy’s, a handful of Xanax and then some. I came home, and he was slumped on the floor, head between his legs and incoherent. Once more, I lifted him up, cleaned him off and held him. We were the poster children for co-dependent relationships. I continued to enable him. I had assisted him in getting to this level.
I left my amazing job to move closer, so that I could be with in a cab ride or bus ride home. I refused to let him break me and I kept him hooked with my smiles and kisses. Empty words whispered in his ear, empty promises. I love you's and even the I want you's. We lost our truck, we struggled to pay our bills, because I had taken a 10$ hit on employment, he lost his job due to the drugs, and we were barely getting by. Another round of community bridges, home detox, and trying everything to help him get clean, while i became more and more twisted in my lies and deceit, while I hung over his head pulling the strings on this lovely Marionette of mine. Do this and you’ll get this, do that and I will give you my body. And he did. I broke him on December 19th 2010, right before Christmas.
He cried that he couldn’t do it anymore and we checked him into a dual diagnosis clinic. I had just started a new job and was scheduled to fly to Wyoming for a few days before Christmas. I had to cancel. I was his only emergency contact and while I had pushed and fought him to this point, I couldn’t let him die alone. So off he went, to the clinic, no shoe laces, 3 gallon zip lock bags of all of his medications, memories of friends we lost, of friends he lost because of our abusive relationship. We took him to the clinic, the look on his face killed me inside, it broke my heart into a thousand pieces. Shattered my soul. Not 25 minutes after checking him in, I had a pipe in my mouth and I had forgotten about our fights, I just wanted him. I wanted him to be next to me. Kissing me, loving me. Fucking me. Because he was better than any high I had ever experienced. He was worse than any low I’ve come off of. I was addicted to him. He was addicted to me.
He was released December 24th, we had some sort of a Christmas. He stayed in the room while I stayed in the living room, I cleaned, made food, and went to a friend’s house like I had for the last 13 years of my life in Phoenix. Slowly but surely our entanglement slowly undid itself. We were no longer two lost lovers, we were no longer one half of the others soul. We lived, side by side in our house that once was, barely being held together by my son and our niece. The kids were the only reason our house still stood. We barely talked like we once did and avoided eye contact as often as possible. He would go to his sister’s house and come home late; I would lay on the couch and listen to the Beatles, or hank the 3rd, or NOFX. I would go for late night walks to cry, because I didn’t want him to see me cry.
Like everything living, our love had died a violent and bloody death. Together our last act as a couple was to kill and bury our love in the back yard. One night, on one of my walks, he caught me. He caught me crying, and for just a split second our love was as pure as winter snowfall. He held me and I cried. We laughed at moments in our relationship where we held each other up when times were tough. Mine was the day my mom passed away, I had been sitting at my computer, and all of a sudden I heard this high pitched giggling sound....I turned around to see him one nut out, underroos up to his nipples and his finger up his nose. His was the day brought Gianna back into our lives, I had been pushing him to make up with his sister, as I already had, and she and I had arranged for me to bring Gigi home for the weekend, all Joe needed to do was make the call, he made the call and the light came back into his eyes once he saw her beautiful face.
Our addictions finally came a horrific end when I traveled to West Virginia and cheated on him. Never in my life had I cheated on anyone. I was always the forever faithful girlfriend even after men time and time again cheated on me. And I told him. I had finally shattered his soul. He fell to his knees and I had never known weakness until that point, through all our battles, our tears, our bruises and our name calling. What I had done to him did no compare to those things. I asked that he leave, with a weeks’ notice. I went about my business, work and home, work and home, work and home. We slept together, we fucked, we got high off of each other until the very last day. Every morning he would ask if I was sure. He was willing to work it out; he was willing to keep feeding into this ever growing black hole that had now consumed so much of our normal lives that we couldn't control it. I told him I was. It had to end. The misery, the fighting, the name calling. It all had to stop.
The morning he left, I took my son out to breakfast. We got our hair cut. And by the time we came home, he was gone. His side of the closet empty, his side of the sink empty, his medicine cabinet empty, shower...empty. We agreed on some things, I kept the things we had collected together. He sold the TV, xbox, PS3, laptop and iPad. His side of the room empty. My life was now empty. What I had known for 2 plus years, my soul, the other half of my heart was empty. I went through withdrawals, screaming and crying. I didn’t eat for a week maybe more, and any time I could I got high. I got as high as I could.
I finally moved his sister in, and with that the reboot of an addiction I had kicked 5 years prior. Meth. While his sister looked like a typical tweeker, I kept my round full face, my eyes anything but lively. But that was due to my soul slowly dying. My skin still soft and supple. Tan. My teeth intact and my overall appearance didn’t change. But inside I was a rotten corpse, maggots eating through my flesh. Skin crawling, hallucinations that I could hear him outside my bedroom door. Smelling his clothes and buying the same body wash and shampoo to make him reappear.
We tried a long distance relationship that withered miserably like flowers under a heavy frost. He couldn’t trust me (and with good reason) and I couldn’t trust him. We fought, and again I killed his soul a 2nd time, berating him for leaving when he should have stayed, cursing him. Crying for him to come home. Anger swarming within me. Little by little I pushed him further and further away. I completely severed my love with him. As I pushed him away, I got higher and higher. Days and nights came together, I lost count of sleep, of days, of people. I just did. I worked, I came home, I got high, I cried, I walked the streets until I had to go to work the next day.
I stopped using on October 12th 2011, 2 days later a lady ran a red light and nearly took my life. I hit the windshield head on, and walked away with nothing but a scratch. It was at that time I decided my best option is to leave. Leave my playground, leave my playmates, leave my playthings and get sober. With a big insurance check coming, I made arrangements to move to Tennessee, for my ex-husband to assume full custody of my son, and put my stuff in storage. Sick and alone, I drove 2300 miles to Tennessee. Ever so tempted to keep going to Pennsylvania, where Joe was. I stopped in TN. I stayed there for 5 months, and in that time I learned a lot about myself, my addictions and my actions towards Joe.
Joe, the love of my life. I can’t say he is the one that got away, but I can say that he is my soul mate. Where the gods separated us, we have been brought together many times over the course of many lives, and each time ended in tragedy. One day, I will look upon his face with love again, and one day he will hold me like he used to, calling me beautiful, his touch burning through my skin to my soul. When that day comes I don’t know, but until then his prophecy remains. I am and will always remain single.
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