One Last Time

A few days, after I overdosed, maybe a week—I don’t know how long because all the days blur into the same dull apathy as I numb my mind and slowly fade into amorphous oblivion—my girlfriend whom we’ll call Serenity catches on to my decline. She comes home from work to wake me where I lay doped and drooling on the living room couch.

“What the hell is this?” Serenity rouses me, presents her arms wide.

I wake to my pit bull, Sophia, jumping off my lap and slide myself up from my nod on the couch. “Wh-what?” I rub my face and squint to see what she’s holding.

“This. What the fuck is this?” She shakes her arms, pushes the evidence closer to my face like I’m a dog who just got into the trash. “I found it in your jean pockets.” She displays an orange and white hypodermic needle and a blackened spoon, burnt from repeated use.

My stomach sinks. My gaze droops to the floor. There’s no way I can lie my way out of this. This is the same needle and spoon I’ve been using to shoot up heroin for the last four months.

She balls her fists at her sides, and her round face squinches, fighting tears. “You want to tell me what’s been going on?”

I stumble to my feet, my body shaking. A disgusting mix of unease, withdrawal anxiety, and hunger teeters in the pit of my stomach.  “I—you caught me. I don’t know what to say.” I grab the arm of the couch to steady myself.

She already knows, but I must tell her the truth. I know it will break her heart, but I have to tell her everything.

She rattles her head. Her beautiful brown eyes are a dark, piercing storm. Her lips are pinched and pursed. She crosses her arms, her glare not slacking. “Were you guys even going to meetings, or was that all just a lie?”

It was all just a lie—mostly. I’ve been taking Serenity’s younger sister, who we will call Lyla, nicknamed Ly, to Narcotics Anonymous meetings for the last few months. Sort of.

My voice quivers as I confess. “We went to a few. The other times we just got high.”

We did go to NA meetings sometimes, but only if we were severely loaded or if Ly’s dealer, a guy named T, didn’t answer. The meetings were held upstairs in the Colmack center of the Towson, Maryland, Sheppard Pratt psychiatric hospital. We almost never went upstairs. Instead, we regularly shot up heroin in the women’s bathroom downstairs.

Serenity stuffs a sharp index finger at me. “Every time you two came home I knew something was off, but I tried to trust you.”

“I know.”

“You lied to me.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

She plants her hands on her hips. “So, tell me what happened.”

I stare down again and shuffle my feet over the hardwood floor as I search for words, any words to not make the truth sound worse than it seems. It’s always worse than it seems.

*

I met Serenity when I was seventeen, the summer before our senior year of high school. I’d been hanging out with Ly’s junkie ex-boyfriend Brandon, spinning my wheels into a rut, finding every possible way to make it through probation while still getting high and not failing my piss tests. I would give Brandon rides to the methadone clinic, and in return he’d buy me spice, a synthetic cannabinoid sold at local headshops and give me half cap sips of his methadone or a quarter tab of suboxone, which would dope me up and have me puking and nodding for the whole day. Brandon and Ly kept telling me about her sister, who I’d probably get along with great. I waved them off, as I was never keen on the thought of being hooked up with someone. But once I met Serenity, we hit it off instantly and after a few weeks I asked her to be my girlfriend. I was her first boyfriend. She was my first long-term girlfriend. She was my high-school sweetheart, my prom queen. We dated for three and a half years. We spent nigh every moment together. We were the stoner love embodiment of Clarence and Alabama from True Romance.

I loved Serenity.

But I was never sure if I was really “in love” with her. I cheated on her quite a lot. Sometimes, it was anonymous sex with random men I’d found online, and sometimes with women, sex workers I paid to fuck in cheap Baltimore motels. I thought I might be bisexual; I was confused about who I was. Eventually, I stopped cheating and owned up to everything. When I told Serenity, she forgave me. She embraced me with far more compassion than I’d expected. Our relationship and sex life quickly refreshed and had never been better. But I still felt like I didn’t deserve her. I left her to “find myself.” We got back together a week later, just a small hiccup in our three-and-a-half-year relationship. I was afraid to be alone. She gave me comfort and reaffirmed my straightness. I was struggling to understand my sexuality, wrestling with self-hatred and uncertainty about my identity. I needed Serenity. But she wasn’t enough. Our relationship grew stale and routine; Netflix and weed, and a comfortable silence we had both outgrown.

I slept over Serenity’s dad’s house most nights. Serenity would go to bed early to get up the next morning for her job at the local Deli. On those nights I would stay up late watching horror movies with Ly, who was only about a year younger than us. I was twenty-one and they were twenty and nineteen respectively. Ly and I got along great, and to be honest, there was a long buried sexual tension between us that had existed since before I met Serenity. I craved the passion and romance long absent in my and Serenity’s relationship, but I was too weak to become my own person to find it elsewhere.

I didn’t know what love was.

Ly had been in and out of rehab, struggling with a heroin addiction. I saw how much her drug use was hurting Serenity, and I started to care for Ly. I wanted to help. I had read a few books on addiction; I had had my own issues with coke and alcohol and always thought I might write a book about my struggles one day. I thought I knew a thing or two about getting clean, so I thought I could give Ly some advice. I saw myself in her. I knew that if I never took a chance to help her and she overdosed, I would never be able to forgive myself. I read about psilocybin mushrooms and a psychedelic drug called ketamine, or K. I learned about experimental psychotherapies that use K to reduce opiate cravings and withdrawals and treat depression. Although it’s a dissociative at lower doses and has a high potential for abuse, higher doses of K can induce non-ordinary states of consciousness such as out-of-body experience and something called an ego dissolution transcendental experience. Essentially, the user temporarily loses all sense of self and comes back down with profound realizations, which strengthen the bond between the conscious and the unconscious minds. This powerful experience, paired with the fact that K reduces opiate cravings and withdrawals, plus greatly reduces anhedonia, makes it a powerful tool for heroin recovery.

Ly made me margaritas while I told her about K. She got me nice and drunk while I told her about the power of magic mushrooms to change your beliefs. I thought K might be what Ly needed. I would have done anything to help her. So, despite being more than a little drunk, I called all my hippy drug dealer friends and we drove to Baltimore city in search of K.

I thought I loved Ly.

We never found any K, and our search turned into two addicts and one wanna-be lover prowling downtown Baltimore city at 3AM and ended with us scoring some crack for me, and some dope for Ly. She gave me a few caps of the dope. I did one small line and didn’t even like it. I flushed the rest down the toilet, but the next morning, I was itching to try it again. Ly begged me to buy her more. “Just one last time,” she said over and over. “Then I’ll get clean. I swear.”

She badgered me so long that I finally broke. I couldn’t pretend the small taste I had didn’t have me fiending, too. And I confessed, I thought I had fallen in love with her. I knew the cold truth about addiction: nobody gets clean until they’re ready. Maybe one last time was really what she needed. So, we came to an agreement: if I got us dope, she’d sleep with me to help me decide if I still wanted to be with Serenity—but I knew if I did love Ly, I couldn’t make her do that. I didn’t want to sleep with her unless she wanted me for me, not for dope. More importantly, I couldn’t cheat on Serenity again, least of all with her own sister—there is no more egregious a betrayal. The truth was I loved both sisters in different ways. I was torn in two, paralyzed betwixt fantasy and reality, between desire and devotion.

Whether I would ever fuck Ly or not, my betrayal of Serenity had already begun. But I knew if my love for Ly was pure, the only thing I could do was try to help her. So, I agreed to buy us dope, only if she would do K and eat mushrooms with me, then let me take her to NA meetings. I thought if I let her do dope one last time, she would get the need out of her system, and by doing it with her and going to the meetings too, I thought I could lead her into recovery. I hoped we would get clean together.

As soon as I suggested the outing, Ly latched onto the idea like a toddler to the word fuck. Before long, I became just as addicted as Ly. I became addicted to Ly. I was all too happy to let her use me for dope. Heroin was the only thing keeping me together when I knew everything with Serenity had already fallen apart. And still unsure about my sexuality, maybe there was a part of me I’d hoped to quietly kill.

For months, every time Ly and I left for a meeting we swore to each other, just one last time. Soon we’d graduated from a few “meetings” a week and started “going to meetings” every evening. Ly and I did go to a meeting once, maybe twice. But not before shooting up downstairs. Before long I had become so addicted, I donned the phrase myself; indoctrinated into her cult like a bright-eyed youth. “Just one last time,” I would say, knowing damn well I didn’t mean it. One last time became our shattered promise, an agreement we silently agreed to break again and again, each time the needles broke our skin.

On the floor of the women’s bathroom, Ly taught me how to heat the spoon just long enough to make the water bubble. I remember how that sharp vinegary scent filled my nostrils. She taught me how to roll the cottons thin and round, so they filtered out the cut just right; to make sure the hole on the needle faced up and the tip never hit the spoon. She taught me to push the plunger up and flick the rig to remove the air bubbles. She taught me how to tie off and hit a vein; to inject the needle at just the right angle and just the right depth; to pull back on the plunger and let the blood fill the syringe before slamming it all home. She taught me to carefully untie my arm before pulling out the needle, so that my veins relax.

Relax.

That was the one thing she didn’t have to teach me: how to lay back on that dingy bathroom floor without a care in the world. I would slink back against the wall in a blissful nod; rest my head against the tile wall, feel that warm rush flood my brain, taste that bitter choke at the back of my throat.

When the ritual was complete and our whole bodies were enveloped in bliss, we would check the time. The meeting would be over, and we would swear that next time we would go. Next time would truly be our last time shooting dope. Next time we would get clean.

**

Serenity glowers at me with her hands firm on her hips. “How could you do this?”

I stand there, lip-locked and bobbing my head.

“Well?”

I stare her dead in the eyes, rigid faced and robotic. “I wasn’t gonna let her do it alone.” My voice is a low monotone mumble, all bass, and no emotion. I tell her how I got suboxone to wean us off and that Lyla has been clean for a few weeks. She got clean on her own. “But I couldn’t—I can’t stop.” I didn’t know it at the time, but in this moment, I’m too numb to feel real sorrow. I’m only sorry I got caught.

Serenity loosens her stance and raises her index finger. “I’m gonna help you stop. I already flushed it all down the toilet.”

“Flushed all what?”

“Your dope.”

“What dope? I’m out.” I open my palms. “I did the last of it this morning.”

“You can’t lie to me. It was in that little container in your backpack.”

“That wasn’t dope.” A weak smile cracks my face and I exhale a sniff. “That was my maca root. The supplement I take.”

“Oh, whoops.” She flits her lip in momentary bemusement. “I was going to say, I’ve never seen so much dope.” We both laugh for a second and the tension eases.

I sigh and shake my head. Sophia nudges against my leg, and I scratch her behind her pointed ears for brief respite.

Serenity studies me, leans in closer and grabs my arm. “I can help you get through this.”

“No.” I pull away. “You can’t help me.”

Her solemnness breaks. Her lip trembles. “We can get through this together. You can start writing again. I’ll proofread your stories. Babe, I can—”

“That’s not even what I want to do anymore.”

“Then what do you want to do?” Her sleek black hair drapes down along her face, like curtains about to close on a dark stage, silent with grief. “Tell me how I can help.” Her huffs turn to sobs and sniffs. Tears streak from her Ghirardelli eyes, running down her rosy cheeks, now puffy and soft. “I love you.”

I glance at the floor then bring my eyes to hers. I do the only thing left to do. I tell her the truth. She deserves it, and I can’t keep living a lie. “I fell in love with Ly. We didn’t have sex, but I wanted to. And she gave me a kiss once. I tried to use tongue, but she didn’t let me.” I step past her and stalk down the long hallway to her bedroom knowing this is the end. “I can’t be here anymore. I’ve done too much damage to both of you.”

Serenity trails behind me, tugging at my shoulders and begging me not to go. I ball up my faded jeans and my black Independent skate tee and stuff them into my backpack. I slip on my sweatshirt and slide into my black Nikes. Outside, snow still covers the frozen ground. The shrill February wind whips and moans just beyond the wood paneled walls. I sling my backpack over my shoulder and turn to Serenity.

Her face is red and knotted, and her cheeks are wet and splotchy. “I feel like I’m never going to see you again.”

Looking back, I sometimes still wonder, what if I had stayed? Would my heart have journeyed home from my sickened tryst with Ly? If I had let Serenity help me, would she be proofreading this essay and standing by me still? Or would she have seen through the monster I’d become and left me to the mercy of my own ill fortunes?

I pull Serenity into a loose hug. Her phantom limbs are light against my sides. “I’m sorry,” I whisper in her ear. “I wish I wasn’t such a fuck-up.”

**

A few weeks later, I start doing coke again. I’m injecting like it’s the hot new sport I just invented. Every few days I buy an eight ball, stay up all night, cooking another shot every twenty minutes, and save my dope so I can come down and sleep away the whole next day. Then I start shooting speed balls, a vicious concoction of coke and dope. When I run out, I re-soak my cottons and slam back anything the needle didn’t suck up the first time. When I’m out of used cottons and T isn’t answering the phone, sometimes I shoot up water instead. I don’t care what goes into the needle—I even spend a whole night shooting up crack before realizing I need to use vinegar—I just fall in love with the way it feels when the needle pierces my skin. Whether coke or dope, when that rush floods my brain, nothing else matters.

But I’m almost out of money. I burned through at least $6,000 from October through January supporting both Ly’s and my habits, and now I’m running out of options. I consider who I can rob. Maybe I can sell my body for sex—the thought terrifies me and intensifies the urge to use, solidifies the need to stop.

I drive to see an old friend late one night and wake up, crashed on a hillside in Freeland Maryland, at the corner of Keeny Mill and Oakland Road. My friend and I used to wait on this same hill to buy weed when we were fourteen. I rolled up to the stop sign—next thing I know I’m parked on the hill, popping up from a nod.

I’m okay. There’s no damage to the car, but I’m shaken.

I become scared I might overdose. My friend Jamie died from a heroin overdose just one year before. I’m scared I might end up like him, or worse. I know that if I keep using like this only one of two things can happen: either I will die and everyone that loves me will lose me, or I won’t die, and I’ll lose everyone I love. Somehow, I know I’m not good enough to get it so easy like that and just die. I’ll have to live to see the hell I’m creating.

When I get inside, I tell my friend that I’m really drunk. I just need to sleep it off. I shoot up one last time in his bathroom, then flush my last two caps of dope down the toilet.

The next day I crack and buy more. I’m trembling from withdrawal and cursing myself for being so stupid to waste it. I start only buying a few caps at a time. Every $20 bill I spend will be the last, I swear. When I first started, one cap would last me a whole week. Now, I need to shoot one and a half caps at a time just to not get sick. If I shoot two, I can get “sort of” high. But two full caps of scramble is almost too much to shoot at once. It usually gums up in the syringe. And it’s hard to get two shots off in a row. I don’t want to feel anything but high, but even that’s barely an option anymore. It’s like the old cliché of chasing the dragon around the cul-de-sac, except I am the dragon, and the cul-de-sac is a high-speed treadmill leading back to the same pains I try to escape. The depression, the loneliness, the apathy, and shame. I numb myself merely to exist. I can’t stand to be present in my own consciousness. If I hate myself this much, how could I fool myself into believing I ever loved Serenity? Our relationships with ourselves are the standards against which all other relationships are measured. If we aren’t in tune with ourselves, we will always fail to truly connect with another, no matter how hard we try or how badly we want to.

When there’s nothing left but me, I realize I need to change. I decide to get clean. For real this time. I make it a few weeks. I relapse. Then I decide to get clean. I make it a few days. I relapse again. And again. And again.

By the end of March, I take my own advice and use ketamine. One key bump at a rave with my weed dealer and his friends, and the next day, I have no urge to use. I’m not sick either. Ketamine really does reduce both opiate cravings and withdrawals. In the following week, I still relapse a few more times, but I know this strategy can work.

I buy one gram of K. This is a tool, I tell myself. I promise that I won’t let myself switch addictions. I do one shot a night for an entire week, and when I run out, I don’t buy more. At the end of the week, I take two paper hits of LSD. It’s the new moon, and I aim to set my intentions. I hope a powerful psychedelic experience can open my eyes and help me change. I leave my phone playing a hip-hop station on Pandora, and the song “Dance with the Devil” by Immortal Technique plays through the speakers. The lyrics echo through my mind. They paint a vivid picture of the wicked man I’ve become.

My bones rattle, all my neck and arm hairs perk up, and my body is paralyzed with fear. How could I do this? I think how selfish I was to covet Ly. I finally understand how self-destructive I’ve become. I’ve lost control. I’ve become a monster. I’m terrified by the path I’ve chosen, and I know whichever way I turn at this crossroads, there’s no going back. I must choose life or death.

I think about how I betrayed Serenity, how she loved and trusted me, and I took her for granted. I think about how I could have been responsible for Ly’s death if she had overdosed. I think about my mom and how I have been treating her, how I screamed at her every time she tried to talk to me, every time she expressed concern when I would sleep all day and skip meals. If anything is to change, first I must fix things with Mom. It might already be too late to fix things with Serenity. If I don’t tell my parents about my addiction, there’s still a high chance I will fall back into that pit.

The next day, I surprise Mom when she comes home on her lunch break. I make a big stew of chicken, beans, rice, and vegetables. I sit down with her at the glass table on the back deck. It’s a sunny early April day with a light breeze. Spring has sprung in buttercups and honeysuckles in the backyard. I spill the whole story about my addiction to heroin. Ly. Serenity. She sits and listens with the calm look of non-judgment only a mother can give.

“I just don’t understand. How could you do that to someone you’re supposed to love?”

“I don’t know. I just—” My body shivers as I speak. “I got carried away.”

“Serenity’s a good girl.” Mom’s hay-bale hazel eyes cut through me, searching for her son. “What’s so great about Ly anyway?”

I lean forward with my elbows on my thighs looking at the deck railing behind Mom, avoiding her gaze. “I thought I could help her.” My eyes drift off to the distant tree line in the backyard. I look anywhere but Mom’s eyes. I can’t bear the guilt they’d impose. “I guess I thought I started to love her.”

Mom stirs her bowl. “But you’ve been with Serenity all this time. You don’t love her?”

“I do. Or I did.” I sigh, then pause for a moment and drop my chin. “But I guess I got bored.”

She hangs her gaze on me. Her face is wind stricken with rosy cheeks. “Can you even imagine how you must have hurt her?”

“Well actually I think she’s happier now. Ly got clean, and they’re like best friends again.”

She inches closer; her blonde hair swaying in the breeze. “And what about you?”

“What about me?”

She places her arm on my back. “How do I know you’ll stay clean?”

“That’s why I’m telling you. So I don’t go back.” I look up. “I’m gonna tell Dad next weekend.”

“I’m just worried about you, Colin.”

“I know.” My eyes water and my voice cracks. “I’m sorry.”

She raises her pitch. “It’s alright.”

“No. It’s not.” I sniffle. “I saved up.” My eyes are soaked as I glance into her face and our eyes meet for a moment. “I stole a bunch of money from your safe a few years back. I pawned your jewelry. I was gonna pay you back with the money I made selling weed.” I wipe my face on my sleeve and stare at my hardly touched bowl of stew. “But I spent it all on drugs.”

She rises and wraps me in a hug. My soppy cheek presses against her shoulder. “It’s alright. I forgive you. I just want you to be happy. You know I love you.” We hug in silence for a few minutes before she leaves for work. For the first time, I don’t feel like a burden to her.

I was always the problem child, the middle of three, the one who got in trouble at school. She never let me forget it. But in this moment, I know Mom truly loves me. She’s the first person to believe in my recovery. She’s forgiven me without question. She’s supported me and loved me when I needed it most. Its that kind of love that makes me want to be a better person. Its that kind of love that gives me the courage to stay sober and love myself until I find the woman who will permanently steal my heart.

But I’ll never forget what Mom said to me about Serenity that day: “How could you do that to someone you’re supposed to love?”

How could I?

I always thought that I loved Serenity, but after I started doing dope, I no longer felt it. I grew numb and void. I thought I fell in love with Ly, but I was only obsessed. Consumed by the rush. Addicted to what I thought love was. I was chasing a new high in a new person. Only in losing Serenity was I able to see how I’d lost myself. It was as if some part of me was missing, and that part was her. I realized I still loved her. But I was unfit to love anyone because I never learned first what it meant to love myself.

I learned I loved Serenity for all the wrong reasons. I loved her for the way she made me feel strong and comfortable in my masculinity. I loved her for the pain and depression she soothed and the emptiness she filled. I was attached, for certain. But did I ever truly love her for who she is? I don’t know. Sometimes when you’re young there comes a time when you’ve just been saying ‘I love you’ for so long that you forget what it means.

**

I’ve been clean for about a month. I’m registered for classes at the local community college. I have a new job working the register at Chick-fil-A. Everything seems to be going well for me, but there’s one thing still missing.

I give Serenity a call.

We meet on a warm spring afternoon and bring our pit bulls for a hike around the Pretty Boy reservoir. I ask her about work and her day. We make small talk, winding down the dirt trail towards the rocks by the water’s edge. Sophia, and Serenity’s dog, Nala, run up ahead to the ends of their leashes. The dogs sniff each other, sniff the dirt, poke their noses in piles of leaves then return to sniffing each other as they trot out in front of us. A small circular clearing with a few fallen branches and old stumps opens ahead. Gray boulders and scattered rocks jut out of the ground forming a small overlook. A low cliff hangs out over the water like a windowsill, curtains of trees drawn off to the sides. This is a popular place to fish or rest after a short hike, but we’re alone. We find a flat spot and I sit first to assure her it isn’t wet. I dig a small baggie of weed from my pocket and pack up a bowl for us to share.

“I got clean.” I cough into my elbow. “Everything but weed.” I pass her the little red and black spoon pipe. “I did it for you.”

She flicks the lighter and I cup my hands around the bowl to block the wind. “Thanks.” She breathes out a small waft of smoke, tugs at Nala’s leash to pull her away from the bush she has her nose buried in, then passes me the bowl.

“I miss you.” I run my finger through the ash, poking down what remains.

Serenity lingers somewhere beyond the opposite shore while I take my hit. I tell her I don’t think there’s much left, and she waves her hand as I try to pass it to her. “I’m good.”

I stuff the bowl back into my pocket. “I want to get back together.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she says. “I’m happier now than I have been in the last three years.”

I look at her in disbelief. This is what I wanted, right? Three and a half years down the drain and it’s all my fault.

“I think this will be good for both of us.” The midafternoon sun glistens off her glossy black hair.

I don’t understand how she can smile. Was she really that unhappy for our whole relationship? How can she be so happy while I’m so miserable? I wrap my elbows around my knees. This is what I asked for when I took that first step out the door with Ly. When I snorted that first line of dope. When I told Serenity no, when she wanted to help me get clean and proofread my stories. This is what I deserve.

We sit side by side in silence overlooking the reservoir. Her hands rest daintily, holding Nala’s leash between her knees, which are pulled into her chest. She glances at Nala and then out over the reservoir. Just beyond the shadow of the trees, the sun shimmers atop the dark brown water, sprinkling diamonds off the little waves and ripples.

I position myself closer and rest my arm on her lower back. “You don’t miss me?”

“I do.” She shifts away and my arm falls to the cold rock below. “But I like not having anyone to worry about.”

Was I really that bad? Of course, I was. How many times did I start fights and threaten to leave just to see if she would beg me to stay?

I groan. “Maybe you’re right.”  Out on the reservoir a man in a kayak, paddles slowly in the distance. “It’s just so hard.”

“You have to be strong. I know you can.”

“I don’t know what to do without you.” My lip twitches. “I have nothing.”

Serenity turns to Sophia. The dog is investigating a section of raised roots that weave throughout the rocks by the water. “You don’t have nothing. You have Sophia.”

“I don’t know why I got her.” Our eyes meet, but I quickly look away. “I think I’m gonna take her back to the shelter.”

“No, it’s too late.” Serenity’s eyes swell. “You can’t do that to her. That dog loves you.”

“It’s just so much work.”

“Oh, I know.” She raises her index finger. “Who do you think takes care of Nala? Not Ly, that’s for sure.”

I twiddle a brown oak leaf I found on the ground next to me. It’s a relic of last fall better left to decay. “I guess I just got her cause I didn’t wanna be alone.” Sophia wags at my side, pushes her little brown snout up under my outstretched palm. “But I still feel alone.” I crumple the leaf in my hand as I twirl it.

Serenity puts a soft hand on my back. “I’m sorry.”

I fish around in my pocket for the weed to start packing another bowl, but I stash it when I hear voices.

A man comes down the trail with his two kids. Rods in hand, they look excited, ready for the catch of the day. Our private conversation busted; Serenity and I decide we better grab the dogs before they scare the kids. We disappear through the woods along the path back to our cars. We hug for what neither of us knows is the last time, and we part ways.

Seven years later and still clean, I’ve finally learned to love Serenity enough to let her go. Clichéd, but true. I’m eternally grateful Serenity never took me back. Why should she have? She loved me through the worst part of my life when I didn’t know how to love myself and for that she got fuck all. I have the utmost reverence for her ability to let go where I could not. Without her I was forced to grow. Forced to recover and embrace sobriety for myself. Without that perspective shift, maybe nothing would have changed. I think I love Serenity more now than I ever could have before. Because isn’t that what love is? Giving someone the space and freedom to be themselves—wanting the best for them—knowing that you’ll always care and want them to win no matter how far you drift apart?

Love, the thing I wanted the most, I destroyed because I didn’t know I already had it. But maybe I had to destroy what I thought love was in order learn what love is. Sometimes, a little destruction is what we need to grow. Tear down the remnants of the tattered shack and torch the weeds—what remains—fertile ground to sprout a life you’d never dream to run from.

I watch Serenity pull out in front of me in her Subaru. The gravel crunches and pops beneath her tires as she turns onto the road. As I watch her leave, I wish I had some dope or coke—something stronger than this weed to numb the pain of goodbye. But at the same time, I’m glad I don’t. I think about what she said. “I think this will be good for both of us.” I hope to a god I don’t believe in that she’s right. I really fucking hope she’s right.

I turn to Sophia, perched on the passenger seat; her tongue hanging loose from her wide, panting, smile. I rub her little brown head and her gremlin ears slick back. With as much curve as I can muster in my flat-lined face, I say, “buckle up.”  I pull out onto Falls Road, unsure if everything is falling in place, or falling apart—or if maybe those are really the same thing.