I looked in the face of addiction for two years, but it did not matter because I had loved him.
I watched him go from playing for his city’s basketball team and working hard the first summer we met to becoming an empty shell who hibernated in his room and always looked at me with bloodshot eyes more than a year later.
At first, he started selling weed. He was clumsy, constantly getting scolded by his older friends for rookie mistakes. It was just to make a few extra dollars on top of what he was already making. Then he started smoking it, but it was still nothing to worry about.
He then began finding peer pressure at the bottom of liquor bottles.
His grades were less than sub-par and he spent less time talking and more time holed up alone.
His mother switched boyfriends as often as her hair- styles and would leave him and his sisters in charge of the house for months until she was tired of the relationship. His father was still nonexistent, only making his presence known once every few months.
With no authority, he started staying out later, disappearing with the moon and stars as the sun rose. I would ask his sister his whereabouts, but she had as many questions as I did.
I had made myself comfortable in his room while I waited for him to return one day. His room was still the same cluttered mess it had been since we met, but this time he had two new additions. In a drawer in his nightstand was a heavy, unloaded steel weapon. Under his bed was a well-hidden notebook reading “journal” on the cover.
With the discovery of a gun, I contemplated flipping through the pages of his thoughts. I feared he would hate me for reading his words, but I chose to open the book. Several entries in, I found passages where he thought death was the only way to ease the pain.
Four years ago, that was the night I told him I loved him.
He never changed. We led separate lives. We graduated high school. I went to college. He went to work. We lost contact.
Today, he reeks of cigarettes and cheap liquor and usually has a Xanax or two nearby.
But he is still alive.
I view addiction as a means of escape. We drink, smoke, inject for a temporary happiness. We ride the artificial joy for its course and then return to reality. For some, that artificial joy is reality.
No one should have to live a life where they believe that an altered consciousness is reality. We can do nothing but empathize with their pain.
However, no one should have to live in a reality where they have to witness a loved one destroy themselves through such means.
Witnessing his deterioration, I learned several things.
There is no right and wrong in this situation. You are not wrong if you leave a stressful situation. You should not force yourself to allow the aftermath of someone’s addiction become your own. You owe as much support as you have given.
Ending an addiction is done on his or her time, not yours. You must choose to suffer the experience of an addict in a way that does not mimic theirs. Be an example for him or her, not another reason to escape reality.
Love from a distance healthy enough for you, but do not destroy someone so fragile because of your own frustration.
You would not destroy a flower trapped in the rain; you would protect it.
That person is just a flower drowning in the tears of his or her thoughts.
