I've been trying to process and organize the thoughts and the feelings I've had over the past couple of days but it's been a very difficult thing to do. There are things going on in my head that make me question the entire past year with such anger and such disgust that I am beginning to question my own sense of good judgement. However, I know it's not me. It can't be. I know better. I don't know whether writing about the things that occurred over the weekend is appropriate, but I'm going to go ahead and do it because I can't seem to rid myself of any of it unless I get it out in front of me.
I picked her up nearly 4 hours later than I had initially planned to because it always turns out that way when we try to get together. She's become so completely antisocial over the past few years as a result of her dependancy that it has become a matter of psychosis. It is a monumental task for her to even leave the house, let alone do so on any sort of time frame. Needless to say, when I told her that I would have liked to pick her up in the afternoon, I should have known I wouldn't be granted the courtesy of her being on time, nor would she even be ready when I got there the way she said she would be. In fact, she was very late, but since she had asked to borrow $20 from me - after knocking on her door 3 times, and having her finally answer not dressed, not made up - she was more than ready to direct me to the closest ATM machine.
Why I didn't question her behavior right then and there, I don't know. Especially after she was paged while we were both inside the house, and before she got into my car, she stopped and said something in Spanish to the mysterious guy sitting in the car parked just outside. She said something about telling her brother his friend was waiting, but I knew immediately that she was lying. Maybe I was in shock. I don't know. Even now, I can't understand why I couldn't say anything. So off we went, I withdrew and passed her the $20, and we returned to her house.
When we pulled up, I decided to wait in the car because she said she would just be a minute or two while she grabbed her make up bag and would be right back. I watched in my rearview mirror as she ran into the house, but then something else happened. I tilted the rearview mirror to get a better angle - only to see her come back outside, open the door and duck her head into the parked car, then back up and close the car door. As she ran back into the house, I realized that I had just been asked for money so that she could buy drugs. She lied to my face. And now, as I sat fuming and waiting for her, I knew that she was most likely inside shooting up while I waited and waited and waited. 15 minutes passed. I had already called Brian, enraged about what I just witnessed, and I was seconds from just driving off and leaving her there when her front door opened.
She got into the car wearing a different outfit and armed with a string of excuses for why she had taken so long. She had to change clothes, her grandmother called because they were taking her Mom to the hospital, her boyfriend would be using the money she just borrowed to return a rental application, etc. Lies. All of them. She said anything she could in a failed attempt to divert my attention from what had just happened right before my eyes. I was so completely filled with hurt and disgust that I could say nothing. I just drove. I turned the music up very loud and I drove. Trying, desperately trying, to just enjoy her company.
We sat down to dinner, and I watched her try to focus on the wedding book of scraps and tearsheets from magazines and photos that I'd brought. Even though this was the first time we had seen each other since Christmas, and the first time she'd been able to talk with me at all about the wedding; she couldn't pay attention to much of what I was saying for more than a few minutes at a time. She would twist and grimace in her seat, complaining that she was cold, or too full to eat anymore, or that she needed a cigarette but didn't have any. She was visibly uncomfortable the entire time. Later, she even made mention of how she noticed that people would stare at her, yet she couldn't understand why. When she said this, I stood staring off into the distance at nothing.
Finally the check came, and I paid the bill. We went to the coffee house next door. I paid for that, too, and then we found a spot in the back where the room was very dimly lit. Although the atmosphere was sublime, I couldn't say the same about the company. She seemed even more uncomfortable and sick than she was at dinner. Then, in a moment of "bravery" as she put it, she took off her ever-present, long-sleeved sweater.
Needless to say, that after years and years of abuse, her arms looked like something out of a horror movie. It was as if a special effects
artist had created makeup on her arms to emulate that of rotting, frostbitten flesh. Both of her forearms were covered from elbow to wrist in blackish purple, gouged and scarred, one of them wrapped in a tight ace bandage while the other one was exposed. She claimed that the wrapped arm was still recovering from a recent surgery. I just nodded in silence and disbelief ... and in horror.
This once beautiful girl - the one I thought I would know and love for the rest of my life - had made the decision years ago, in spite of my begging and pleading for her to stop, to destroy her life and her body and her brain, from the inside out, one needle at a time. This was what it looked like. It was the first time I had seen, with my own eyes, what it looked like. And she treated showing this to me as if it were no big deal. Even her voice, as she said "You haven't seen my arms before, have you?" sounded as if she were showing me a new dress she'd just bought. No big deal. Just a thoughtless mistake she'd made a few years ago. As if it were something she couldn't have helped or predicted or avoided.
At about 11:00, a familiar look came over her face. She began to crouch as if having eaten a decent meal for a change had poisoned her. She asked if I'd mind if we could get going because her stomach had begun to ache. The reasons why were something I didn't want to think about. I did everything I could do to try to make the evening we had a pleasurable experience, a nice memory for once. Yet nothing could help me sleep after the barrage of nightmares that were forced upon my mind as I tossed and turned in bed that night. In fact, all I want to do now is forget. I would do anything to wipe this hideous, haunting image from my memory ... but I cant.
I picked her up nearly 4 hours later than I had initially planned to because it always turns out that way when we try to get together. She's become so completely antisocial over the past few years as a result of her dependancy that it has become a matter of psychosis. It is a monumental task for her to even leave the house, let alone do so on any sort of time frame. Needless to say, when I told her that I would have liked to pick her up in the afternoon, I should have known I wouldn't be granted the courtesy of her being on time, nor would she even be ready when I got there the way she said she would be. In fact, she was very late, but since she had asked to borrow $20 from me - after knocking on her door 3 times, and having her finally answer not dressed, not made up - she was more than ready to direct me to the closest ATM machine.
Why I didn't question her behavior right then and there, I don't know. Especially after she was paged while we were both inside the house, and before she got into my car, she stopped and said something in Spanish to the mysterious guy sitting in the car parked just outside. She said something about telling her brother his friend was waiting, but I knew immediately that she was lying. Maybe I was in shock. I don't know. Even now, I can't understand why I couldn't say anything. So off we went, I withdrew and passed her the $20, and we returned to her house.
When we pulled up, I decided to wait in the car because she said she would just be a minute or two while she grabbed her make up bag and would be right back. I watched in my rearview mirror as she ran into the house, but then something else happened. I tilted the rearview mirror to get a better angle - only to see her come back outside, open the door and duck her head into the parked car, then back up and close the car door. As she ran back into the house, I realized that I had just been asked for money so that she could buy drugs. She lied to my face. And now, as I sat fuming and waiting for her, I knew that she was most likely inside shooting up while I waited and waited and waited. 15 minutes passed. I had already called Brian, enraged about what I just witnessed, and I was seconds from just driving off and leaving her there when her front door opened.
She got into the car wearing a different outfit and armed with a string of excuses for why she had taken so long. She had to change clothes, her grandmother called because they were taking her Mom to the hospital, her boyfriend would be using the money she just borrowed to return a rental application, etc. Lies. All of them. She said anything she could in a failed attempt to divert my attention from what had just happened right before my eyes. I was so completely filled with hurt and disgust that I could say nothing. I just drove. I turned the music up very loud and I drove. Trying, desperately trying, to just enjoy her company.
We sat down to dinner, and I watched her try to focus on the wedding book of scraps and tearsheets from magazines and photos that I'd brought. Even though this was the first time we had seen each other since Christmas, and the first time she'd been able to talk with me at all about the wedding; she couldn't pay attention to much of what I was saying for more than a few minutes at a time. She would twist and grimace in her seat, complaining that she was cold, or too full to eat anymore, or that she needed a cigarette but didn't have any. She was visibly uncomfortable the entire time. Later, she even made mention of how she noticed that people would stare at her, yet she couldn't understand why. When she said this, I stood staring off into the distance at nothing.
Finally the check came, and I paid the bill. We went to the coffee house next door. I paid for that, too, and then we found a spot in the back where the room was very dimly lit. Although the atmosphere was sublime, I couldn't say the same about the company. She seemed even more uncomfortable and sick than she was at dinner. Then, in a moment of "bravery" as she put it, she took off her ever-present, long-sleeved sweater.
Needless to say, that after years and years of abuse, her arms looked like something out of a horror movie. It was as if a special effects
artist had created makeup on her arms to emulate that of rotting, frostbitten flesh. Both of her forearms were covered from elbow to wrist in blackish purple, gouged and scarred, one of them wrapped in a tight ace bandage while the other one was exposed. She claimed that the wrapped arm was still recovering from a recent surgery. I just nodded in silence and disbelief ... and in horror.
This once beautiful girl - the one I thought I would know and love for the rest of my life - had made the decision years ago, in spite of my begging and pleading for her to stop, to destroy her life and her body and her brain, from the inside out, one needle at a time. This was what it looked like. It was the first time I had seen, with my own eyes, what it looked like. And she treated showing this to me as if it were no big deal. Even her voice, as she said "You haven't seen my arms before, have you?" sounded as if she were showing me a new dress she'd just bought. No big deal. Just a thoughtless mistake she'd made a few years ago. As if it were something she couldn't have helped or predicted or avoided.
At about 11:00, a familiar look came over her face. She began to crouch as if having eaten a decent meal for a change had poisoned her. She asked if I'd mind if we could get going because her stomach had begun to ache. The reasons why were something I didn't want to think about. I did everything I could do to try to make the evening we had a pleasurable experience, a nice memory for once. Yet nothing could help me sleep after the barrage of nightmares that were forced upon my mind as I tossed and turned in bed that night. In fact, all I want to do now is forget. I would do anything to wipe this hideous, haunting image from my memory ... but I cant.
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Just be very strong, stronger then her.
I remember when he told me he was strung on on coke and heroin both and got a bloody nose on his french fries telling me, and then I had to punch him in the stomach ten minutes later, when I caught him chewing on a coke straw. Later he kissed me and my lips were numb and I was unspeakably angry.
Just remember you are two different people. Let the pain of the world fill you with amazement, and let it teach you the desire for something else then either pain or numbness. It's very dark, and deep, and hard, but it's very real, and when you're in the tunnel, you cannot sit down. No matter how bad the tunnel is, no matter how dark, or long, or anything it is, you just have to walk forward, and not look sometimes at anything, just trust your footsteps on the ground, propelling you...
The eightfold path says there is suffering. It also says there is an end to suffering. The only alternatives are denial or total extistentialism. Don't let yourself hurt. Rise. Stay very alert. Stay very strong. And observant. Think of it as a war inside you, a war of heart and memory, and decide who will win, or better yet, find a way to declare a truce.