Addiction 1

I was on my way to Charleston, when I realized I didn't know for sure where the meeting would be. I tried calling the director to no avail. I took the first exit into Arcola, a quaint little Amish town. I drove around a bit until I found a beautiful tree flowering and parked beside an old red bricked church.

As I sat inside my car, wishing something decent would play on the radio I decided to get to work. Time to call my muse.

Shelia it's Emily. Nichole changed numbers again.

"Oh Hi, yeah yeah you ready? Her number is 412..."

As I scrawled her number down on a crumpled animal cruelty pamphlet, I thought this last number lasted only 3 months. Who's she running from now?

I can still remember the smell of freshly cut grass, chlorine, and sunscreen that marked our summers. Foxwood Eastgate swim team was our world. We would swim for hours until I was as dark as the mixed girls, and Nichole was as red as a lobster. Then we'd bring our towels out to the crumbling black top, and bask in the warmth listening to Blink 182. Drinking Kool-aid and ordering pizza for the third time and having the same delivery guy. We'd play mermaids, sharks and minnows, Egyptian Ratscrew, and Jail Break.

Fast forward. 30 days clean and it's cold outside she tells me. She tells me about being dope sick on a park bench and realizing she can't do it anymore. She's doing better she tells me. She needs help, and by help she means money, and I know it's a hustle. I tell her I can't. Not this time, but in the end I give in. I appease my conscience screaming "you're just enabling her" by sending her a gift card. I should know better, but how can I turn my back?

As I sit in my cramped dorm room, procrastinating because I just can't write that paper I listen. That's how it goes, she talks and I listen because the trials and tribulations of my day life don't even register once she's done.

"You see what had happened was...I woke up and some dude was on top of me trying to take my pants off. I threw the mother fucker off of me but then he grabbed me real hard and slammed me up on a wall and he pistol whipped me."

He what?! Are you ok?

"He fucking decked me an hard. I got away though so it's cool. What's been up with you? I haven't heard from you in a minute."

I can't believe how matter of fact she is about all of this. I try to keep my composure.

Yeah just been busy with school shit. Trying to write a paper on Representations of the Model Minority in Modern Media, got class early tomorrow.

"I don't know how you do it. It sounds so hard."

My life sounds hard? As I sit in my warm bed, with my tuition and rent paid for, where I work Sundays as a diner waitress for spending money. My life sounds hard? My biggest problems are that my boyfriend forgot to call me back and I got a B on my last exam.

Another few years pass. I'm a graduate. She's a mother.

"Hello? Yeah I'm on my way to my mums."

I just got off the phone with her. I need a favor.

"I need 2 ketchups and ranch...No no you're right I said that backwards gimme 2 Ranch and Ketchup. Oh and an M&M milkshake."

I hear her laugh and it's infectious as she chats it up with the teller. She sounds just like her mum. Sorry she tells me, she's a regular.

"Yeah what's up what do you need?"

I'm gonna try and perform this spoken word piece on Thursday. The topic is addiction so I thought I'd call an expert. I just don't know what voice to use.

"Well hunny you've been witness to a lot of addiction in your life. I think it means more when you tell it from the heart."

I was thinking I could do it about my love affair with addicts. Even if I meet someone years before they pick up the first one. It's not even like I'm introducing them to drug culture, but almost everyone I get close to becomes an addict.

"You have this desire to fix what's broken-"

-'Savior's Complex' I know...

"No it's not just that. It's like you want to heal a broken soul."


I try to let that one sink in, then I realize its gold and quickly write it down.

"So you want to know what I think when I hear the word addiction?"

Sure we can start there.

"Pain. Agony. Powerlessness. Evil. Pain. Lonely. Hell on Earth. Numb. That's what addiction is Numb."

If it's so terrible why do you always go back?

"Because its Beautiful...yeah Beautiful. Its compelling. It becomes everything. It consumes me it takes me. It strips you of everything your worth. It strips you of everyone you love."

"And usually everything you own," she adds with a laugh.