It’s not too late. Or is it? I should not tell myself a thing I would not tell a friend.
Things like:
It will get better.
Be grateful for the things you do have.
You’ll get over it.
Time heals all things.
For every cloud, there’s a silver lining.
Don’t give up hope.
Tough times make tough people.
Blah, blah, blah.
The truth is, I’m tired. I’m so tired, I don’t have the energy anymore to describe how bone and soul crushing it really is, this tiredness.
Do I mean I don’t experience joy, love, or inspiration? Of course not. I live for those moments, and I have never managed to numb myself to the finer things in life. The beauty, the stunning beauty all around us. The exquisite color, sound, magic surrounding us, that truthfully, is sometimes almost more than I can bear. I feel so much, see so much, it’s overload. How can I hold it all?
No, I’m not numb, far from dead. Miles and miles from not caring, not feeling. I just can’t feel much about you anymore. I’m just so tired. Tired of it. I would like to rest. And it never comes.
I try to separate myself from the craziness. I succeed, sometimes. It’s a necessary thing, but an acquired skill. When there is a new chapter in the drama, I find myself watching, yet again. Mostly to give myself the sense that I might be prepared.
I troll the mugshot sites, watching for you, for those connected to you. Eventually we will find you again, if you don’t die first. Death or prison, those are the choices you’ve left yourself, so I watch to see; what way will we grieve?
I am past the point of grieving for you, but not past grieving for the others who love you. And the truth is, I may not care about you much at all anymore, but the course you take will impact me nonetheless. Those others-they can’t seem to help themselves; they still think the loss of you-to death, to prison-is something to lose, something to maybe prevent, something to be fucked up over. I know the feeling, because I have been there. But there’s nothing, nothing they can do to stop you. Nothing but face it square, and move on with their lives. They won’t, not for a while, and they will torment everyone around them with their own coming to terms with it all, but I knew it all along.
Since I’m telling the truth here, I might as well say it. I don’t care if you live or die. I have had to put my care elsewhere. Why is that so hard for me to say? It sounds ugly, unsympathetic, so harsh. Sorry. I didn’t get here overnight.
How many ways can you rob people before you’re seen as a predator? Myself, I saw you this way quite a while back. I knew what others were just catching on to. I knew you were going into peoples’ houses. I knew what comes next, and of course it did. Someone came home while the two of you were still there. And bad things happened. Everything finally caught up to you, didn’t it?
Or that’s what everybody thought. Poor, innocent people. They really thought that with all those dozens of charges, all those felonies, at least you’d be safe in jail, unable to self destruct any further for a while. Unable to hurt yourself or anyone else, anymore. Forced to get help. And of course, it’s what you said you wanted. Help.
Well, now. What a surprise for everyone. Except me. And now, the moment you had a window, you did what I would predict. You fled.
To a few people, you are a loved one. To most of the world, you are the reason they lock up, keep guns in the house, see a suspicious person in the neighborhood and call the cops. The world isn’t wrong about you.
Everything I’ve said has been true. No one will ever tell me that, because they think that means giving up hope. It doesn’t. It’s just truthful. To tell myself a lie would only help you continue to victimize others. While I can’t stop you, I won’t help you lie to yourself and everybody else. And I won’t open the door. It’s shut tightly to you.
And this will make me unpopular, and tired, lonely. It will cause a rift between the people that still love you, that believe that there’s some kind of reset button on you, a default setting you can revert to if only the drugs would go away; a rift between them, and myself. But I know this game, this fantasy, too well. I will not play. I want only to extricate myself.
I still watch the mugshot sites. I hate the way it makes me feel. Like a participant. But it’s information I need, for as long as it’s necessary. I will protect myself; no one else is going to do it. They’re too worried about you. And they say, “I never thought he’d do such a thing.” They always say it. But I did. And you’re far from done.
I asked the cops to try not to kill you when they catch you again. I know how easily those things can happen, especially when I know you will likely do at least one more really stupid thing when they find you. You can’t say I never cared. But I know it’s coming, something’s coming, and when it does, I know whatever peace and rest I do have will be rocked again like it has been before. People around me care in a way I won’t, and they won’t understand. They won’t understand that I just don’t care anymore. If they can’t bring themselves to hate you, to blame you, they will hate and blame me, because they still have to blame someone. And it doesn’t change a thing that I think. That I know. They hate to hear the truth, even when it’s right before their eyes. Even when it’s hurting them more and more to not admit it. And I’ve always told them the truth.
I’m not looking for answers; this is the world of meth and opiate addiction. The world you live in. The world you’ve brought to everyone you know, everyone, people who didn’t enter it by choice. The answers your loved ones are looking for, well, they haven’t figured out yet that they can’t save you from yourself. There’s no answers for saving you. I’m powerless over your addictions. So are they. But like a stone thrown in a pond, the ripples go out and out, and what you’ve taken from me, from your babies, from everyone you touch, it goes far beyond whatever you could pawn. It goes on, will go on for your children. And you can’t even fathom it, because what you care about is your own need. What you cried for was your own trouble, your own self behind bars. Not the hurt and harm you’ve cost, but for the way you yourself were suffering, all because you will choose, every single time, to feed your own endless bottomless pit of need, even if it means the ruin of someone else.
Some people say you’re a victim. Victim of the drug, of the economy, of the people you got tied up with.
I call bullshit.
Choice. Make a choice. No one said it was easy. And no one can choose but you.
Yes. You are someone’s child. But you’re not a child anymore. This may be your last chance. The train might be leaving the station for good. You don’t have a ticket. What are you gonna do?
Choose, it’s your choice.
