Every once in a while, a book, or a film comes along and it drags something out from the very depths of me. My palms get a little tingly, my fingers find themselves twisting each other up and my heart races a little bit. This thing I’ve suppressed, this craving, only really reaches the surface when it’s called into question and romanticized.
And it makes me feel at first weak, for even thinking or day-dreaming, then strong, for pushing it back down into the bowels of thought.
Last night I went to bed with a big, bad cold brewing. Today I woke up and chose to medicate myself with Tylenol Cold and sit around, doing nothing for most of the day whilst Isobel did the same. Picked up the book I was thrilled to buy a few days ago, a memoir of an addict’s struggles with getting, remaining and failing at sobriety. Read it from cover to cover.
It’s so honest. So simple. I get the whole premise of his history, the fighting back and forth with himself, the suicidal tendency that drives him to put junk in his veins. I heard it loud and clear, because at one time, I thought the same thoughts. He wrote,
“I always get so overwhelmed trying to do everything perfectly. I can’t do a job and not put everything I have into it. I need to be the best employee, the best coworker, the best whatever. I need everyone to like me and I just burn out bending over backward to make that happen. Having people be mad at me is my worst fear. I can’t stand it. There is this crazy fear I have of being rejected by anyone – even people I don’t really care about. It’s always better to leave them first, cut all ties, and disappear. They can’t hurt me that way – no one can.”
Yes.
Totally. And,
“There’s something about outward appearances that has always been important to me. I always thought I was so ugly. I mean, I really did. I remember being in LA at my mom’s house as a little kid and just staring into the mirror for hours. It was like, if I looked long enough, maybe I’d finally be handsome. It never worked. I just got uglier and uglier. Nothing about me ever seemed good enough. And there was this sadness inside me – this hopefulness. Focusing on my physical appearance was at least easier than trying to address the internal shit. I could control the external – at least, to a point, I could buy different clothes, or cut my hair, or whatever. The pit opening up inside me was too frightening to even look at. But I could get a new pair of shoes and, here, I can make sure I’m clean shaven and have good skin.”
Could not have said it better.
I remember when I used to drop acid and being a rule-breaker, I’d go stare at myself in the mirror. The rumour is that you’re not supposed to look in the mirror when you’re high on LSD, because you’ll think you’re dead and a good high will quickly turn bad.
Not me. I loved looking at myself when I was high. I could see the death-pallor and for the first time, every time, it was like I was really seeing myself. I was already dead, walking around in a living, breathing shell. My reflection confirmed it: on acid, I was blueish white, all stretched-tight skin and romantic hollows; on cocaine, I was gregariously glowingly happy, with rosy cheeks, and cherry-coloured, full lips, made up by the most expert of post-mortem aestheticians; on heroin, angular and carved out of marble, framed by a high-contrast mane of orange. I was beautiful.
It was being sober that made me feel ugly.
Now, days go by that I don’t think of those dalliances – the joints rolled, the rails snorted, the junk injected. Weeks. Months.
Until I come across a book or a movie and because I get it, because I’ve been where they’ve been and seen some of what they’ve seen, because my bones have ached and my teeth ground themselves finer and my nose has run and bled more times than needs mentioning and I still to this day catch myself unintentionally sniffing every four seconds, I get frustrated.
It’s not the life I miss, the availability and being everyone’s favourite party favour. It’s not my life now that I dislike and pine to throw away for a weekend with an eight-ball. It’s what he’s missing, because he’s not really seen the other side. Caring for someone who’s in the thick of it, regardless of how little quantity of what they’re buying of what, or how many times the bottle or glass is raised to mouth, fucking sucks.
Because I know. I understand how easy and good it would feel to live life, just getting by enough to have the bills paid and a habit indulged. I know how easy it is to keep everyone at an arm’s length even though you’re telling them you love them – because you really do, at that moment – and how it can disappear when you’re faced with your own ugly face in the mirror again.
He says, sometimes, that not being here, with Isobel, with me, not getting to see her everyday and watch her every move kills him. But it doesn’t enough because he’s not taking the step into living with the itch, instead of living with himself the morning after.
I asked him, point blank, “Don’t you think you can have fun with your friends when you’re not drunk or high?” His response indicated that I just don’t get it. I don’t understand, apparently, because I’m living, walking proof that being an addict is a life-long thing, but choosing to put down the pipe is a one-second decision. It means I wasn’t addicted. It means I wasn’t, am still not, as tortured by it as he is or would be in my shoes.
Because of this disease and his constant feeding of it, because he doesn’t get that people can get clean and sober and feel better than they ever used to when they were trying to escape being clean and sober and authentic, because he doesn’t have the faith in himself or the universe, that he really could do it and do it well…
my heart breaks.
Every time he’s just a little too drunk. Every time he’s apparently cut back, but still needs to smoke a joint because he wants to relax after a long, hard week – and thinks I’m daft enough to not know that he’s told himself that same excuse every time a day ends with Y, but he’s substituted the word week. Every time I get a call or a text late at night, when he’s capable of honesty and saying the things we’re never able to say, but he’s also not to be taken at face-value, because he’s fucked the hell up.
Every time Isobel says she wants to talk to her daddy and I look at the clock and wonder if he’ll still be at work, or already with his friends and high or drunk, and I don’t say she can’t, but I put her off with a you’ll see him this weekend…
my heart hurts.
Every time I’ve given myself permission to think about the what ifs, my heart feels empty. Because as long as he only sees one side of it, as long as he’s incapable of looking in the mirror and seeing ugly and accepting it as what he’s supposed to see while he’s just looking for the ugliness, he’s lost.
Every once in a while, I see a film, or read a book and it makes me itch. And I never indulge the need to scratch, and you’ll never find me with a secret stash, because I know the danger that exists when you allow a part time romance. It blossoms into something far more potent than you ever thought it could.
It makes you look back during the moments of solitude, when it’s just you and yourself, eye-to-eye in the medicine cabinet’s glare. You see a different version of yourself and everyone in your life. You see the potential that’s been squandered. You mourn.
For everything that could have, and never will be.
