Return to Sender

My legs and arms ached. I had sweat running down my back and my hands shook. This was my life a year ago, all the time withdrawal, until that next fix. But this instance in time, it’s from moving. Moving into my own apartment with a close friend. Carrying my belongings into my room, not the pawn shop. I feel like I’m having an out of body experience. Is this really me? Am I worthy of these things? I’ve been contemplating life a lot lately- I’m so hyper vigilant to my feelings, now I can do nothing without intent. March marks a year that I lost my dad. I know he’s gone. I understand, in this urn by my bed that he’s there but, I cannot seem to conceptualize it. It’s just a definition, a sad ending in a story, that I’m only reading, not living. His death was like a slow leak of carbon monoxide. I didn’t see it coming, it hit me hard. It wasn’t just one breath of pain, it was multiple breaths. I wonder have I condemned myself to the garage with the car running.

I remember the phone call so vividly, a year ago. I remember smelling my perfume and being in dress clothes, having just come from my final corporate interview, which I landed. I remember collapsing on the floor and my mother’s hand on my back. I screamed, I was so angry. I had spent so much time in active addiction the years prior, I lost time with him. I was selfish, I stopped calling as much or seeing him. It was too hard. Some days he was lucid, but other days he would look at me, and think I was my mother, they were young and in love and he’d ask, “Is Kristan out riding her bike?” How do we deal with these things? I didn’t know. I just went with it, when he knew it was me, and asked if I liked that Hawaiian pizza we had after we went hiking, I would smile, “I loved it Dad, how about that view, by the way.” It’s funny our parents get older and we become the parent because they return to a more oblivious childlike state, maybe that’s best. Maybe knowing the harsh realities of the world, living with all your regrets and mistakes, it’s too much to deal with. Compassionate of the universe really, in a warped way.

I didn’t know how to deal with any of that, so I ran. I stayed away and then it became easier and easier when the grips of addiction really took hold. I lost the job, can’t pass a drug test on a heroin and Xanax diet. I was apathetic of my life. I didn’t care. Death was natural, we’re born to die, might as well keep living. Really I was daring the universe to come at me with all it had. I realized I had learned behavior from my father, those years he went missing after my parents’ divorce. He rationalized staying away because he would only be hurting himself and not me, although we all know this isn’t true but the logic of an addict isn’t always sound. And here I was, screaming, banging my hands against the carpet. I wasn’t capable of tears. I hit that fight or flight mode.  I am always a fighter but my instinct was flight, at that moment. I went and got high. I remember waiting on the heroin, sitting there thinking he would understand. The carbon monoxide, a slow leak.

The next few months of my life were chaos. Falling asleep in court for a speeding ticket, nodding out. Claiming I was still clean, of course. Getting an abscess and watching them clean it and lance it with no pain medications. I’m red flagged at the emergency room for coming in on overdoses of heroin and benzos. On a funny note, this always reminded me of the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine keeps going to different doctors because she demands to know what they’re writing in her file that makes them look to her so inquisitively. Essentially, being a junkie in the emergency room is the same, only with precedent, obviously.

Instead of spending more time with my mother, I stayed away as much as I could. The mortality of my surviving parent was so clear but I just couldn’t deal with it. Trying to numb the pain in any way possible, casual sex, drugs, whatever it took to not feel. I of course in the midst of this chaos attended detox to, what junkies would call, “get the family off my back.” In this detox I met a girl, we’ll call her Courtney. Courtney was younger than me, maybe 22 or 23. She had a wonderful personality and carried a photo of her son with her, even in our group discussions. You could see the love radiate from her when she would talk about him. I could also see the pain radiate from her as she discussed her drug usage with me. I remember her saying that she wanted to stop, but if she were being honest, this is how she lives, how could she stop? I empathized with her, I was just in detox at that moment for a brief 5 day funded “vacation” and to score a Suboxone script I’d lost.

Courtney and I went our separate ways after the stay, but kept in touch. When I got out of detox that day, I had a full rig waiting on me in the car with my friend, as did she. No intent to quit. Why save something you don’t care about? I used a few times with Courtney upon meeting up and getting one another’s connects. But time did its usual and the drug world collaborated, and we lost touch.

I moved into my apartment yesterday, leap year. It’s like this day was never suppose to exist, but alas it did. Again, the thought, is this really all happening?  The same month I lost my career a second time. The same month my father died. I found out last night Courtney overdosed. Life is just that quick. So I had these thoughts. Am I deserving of these things that are happening? The new corporate job? The apartment? Why am I not dead and gone?  I don’t argue with life so much anymore. I have learned to take ownership of the bad things I have done, my regrets. I suppose while writing this I am convincing myself that in that same breath, I have to take ownership of the good things happening to me. I thought about Courtney’s son. I wish I could send him a letter and say, your mother really loved you, take it from a girl that knows her father really loved her…even though the drugs were his ultimate demise. I’ve been to a dark side, a side of life where I was pen pals with death, overdose, bring me back, almost overdose, “do more I don’t feel it,” as I nod out. It seems like death is sending out all these notices, annual notice father’s gone, intermittent friends and good people overdosing. Life eviction notices. I’m thankful that I made it out alive. If I see a letter in my mailbox from death these days, I just return to sender.

Dedicated to both Courtney and Dad.