My ex had a really bad drug problem. As positive of an impact he left on my life, he was in a pretty rough spot when we met. I tried my best to get him out, but he wanted to stay where he was, he wanted to keep walking down his tunnel of darkness. I had to acquiesce to his decision and exit. I remember the last time I saw him, when the finality of things were settling in, I looked at him from the couch. His face was silhouetted by a single lamp, hovering over a black table covered in lines of cocaine and heroin.
During the whole ordeal I had to restart therapy to get my feet on the ground and figure my way out of the situation. I remember talking to my therapist and she explained his addiction with a startling simplicity. “When you’re a kid Amber, you self soothe. You suck your thumb. As you grow older you build better techniques to soothe. His self soothing technique is drugs.” When he was stressed he would rummage through his apartment and start popping random pills. “Research chemicals” he said. There’s a different kind of intimacy that comes with seeing a man in an intense state of vulnerability. It felt like I was observing a bulimic girl wandering her home, trying to find salvation in her body.
Oddly enough, he taught me to self soothe. When I was with him I would get stoned and sit on the couch and rant about my life, everything that was going wrong, all the problems that had put it out of alignment. People say therapy is good, and yeah it can be a bridge between one reality to another, but being able to talk to him felt different. I would ramble, he would nod his head, and then he would look back at me, as if to say “this is completely fixable, I have no idea why you’re concerned. You can do this.”
I was so insecure when I was younger. My parents shattered the foundation of my life and I was desperately trying to put it back together. I felt defeated and I felt like reality had shuffled me into a place I didn’t belong. He went to private schools, Ivy League schools, flanked by America’s crème de la crème. He would listen to me rant, he would listen to how hard I worked, everything I struggled with, and he would turn to me and calmly say “Amber, I’ve been in classrooms with those people, you’re smarter than them. You can do this.”
I still have ritualistic couch time. Every night I come home and burn sage and let whatever unprocessed emotions are sitting in my body unfurl themselves in my living room. There are waves of depression and anxiety that hit, and then eventually the cloud breaks and clarity emerges. I have to start my job search, that’s the only thing that matters to me right now. I put things together and they fall apart, but I keep going anyways. My life is always on a fucking tight rope and I hate it. I close my eyes and practice tracing along the surface of balance.
Currently listening to Not Perfect
a soft death 