Boundaries- Day 22 ‘Tempo’

 

These expectations aren’t healthy.

I can’t breathe between the space of who I am, and what they want from me. It feels too much like drowning. Like I’m begging and pleading for just a second but no one can hear me. Everyone wants something. And that’s an all too familiar place for me. I thought I had learned how to escape the weight of it; but I’m hearing my blood pump like there’s nothing containing it. The tempo’s too high and the walls are closing in. I thought that I had it, but I’m spinning again. Why does it always end up like this? I learned to set boundaries but those walls are dependent.

On what?

On anyone giving a fuck.

 

by Ashley King

© All Rights Reserved 2020

Me Too

How the fuck does one write a Me Too story? Or maybe more so, relive the memory in order to share it with others? I say relive because is there really any way to recount what’s possibly the worst thing that has ever happened to you without reliving it? I’ve been watching the Me Too Movement grow in momentum over the last few weeks and it’s truly astonishing to see how many women and men have shared their very personal stories of abuse and sexual assault in all it’s varied, horrifying forms. I’m well aware of the statistics; and of the large number of women who never report, and therefore never become a part of the statistical bigger picture. Facts are: the statistics are much lower than the actual number.

I’m one of those numbers, both the reported and the unreported. How do I tell that story? No one wants the gory details and I don’t have the stomach to put them all on the Internet. But it deserves to be said, doesn’t it? Everyone who’s truly close to me, and even some who aren’t, know my story. I just happen to be one of those people who endured more than their fair share of shit. I fall into a couple different “statistical categories”:

•Child abuse under the age of 12

•Child abuse over the age of 12

•Molestation

•Rape

•Intimate partner sexual assault/rape

•Sexual assault perpetrated by a stranger

•Child Victim of Physical Abuse

• Victim of Stalking

Grotesque, isn’t it? It seems crazy to me that one person, that I, have endured all of those things. I’m a walking statistic. And part of me, probably the damaged part, wonders how I attracted all of these sick individuals; but really, I didn’t attract most of them. My biological mother did…

I guess this “Me Too Story” starts with when I survived a year of sexual abuse at the hands of my mother’s boyfriend, who is also my little sister’s father. I successfully testified and was cross examined at the tender age of 8, and had that man rightfully convicted of Sexual Battery of a Child Under 12 and Lewd, Lascivious Acts on a Child Under 16. He received two life sentences, without the possibility of parole, and two 30 year sentences, to be served consecutively. That was the only one I reported; but only the first of many. I was 5-6 years old when the crimes were actually being committed, but by the time I testified against him I was already getting the shit kicked out of me by my mother’s new husband. That occurred periodically from the time I was 7-8 until I was 12. I have the scars to prove it. Then on to the next boyfriend, Chris. He was a father type figure on and off for a couple of years until one night, when I was 16, he decided to stick his hands down my pajama pants when he thought I was sleeping. I wasn’t. I blacked out for 30 minutes or so until I came back. I pretended to wake up, asked him for a cigarette to act normal while pretending I didn’t know what had just happened, then walked downstairs and puked my brains out. I remember staring in the bathroom mirror after throwing up and feeling like nothing was real. I had no way out. He had the only phone and it was after 3am. So I just shut down. I was stuck at his house until the next morning when my mom was supposed to be picking myself and my little sister up from “visiting him” after he got home from jail. It was just a bad set up from square one. But I didn’t see it coming. I had no choice but to go back upstairs and crawl back into the bed that myself, him, and my sister were sharing. I couldn’t sleep though, so he asked why. I fed him some bullshit about my “back hurting”. So of course, the sick fuck starts to rub it, but mostly my ass cheeks, while I shut down and completely disassociated from my own body…just like I learned to, at 5 years old. I don’t remember anything else between then and the next day once I was home again. I told my mom what had happened after getting really high and she called him and cussed him out. He proceeded to send me flowers, cards, money, and opiate painkillers “for my back” for the next year. Who sends a 16 year old girl money and flowers and drugs to say sorry? I wasn’t his girlfriend? And the drugs? Yeah, totally normal. A year and a half later my mother started fucking and dating him again. She hid it from me (like that made it any better) until I finally just told her I knew; at which point she said “Is it okay? If it’s not I’ll stop.” That ship sailed when she crawled into bed with him again knowing what he had done. So I plastered on a fake smile and said I didn’t care as long as I was never alone in a room with him again. He was the last one of her boyfriend’s I ever let near me.

But now we have to go a year or two back in time. I was walking to a friend’s house one night when I noticed a guy following me. I thought maybe I was being paranoid, he was just walking the same way as me, right? But I felt it. That gut feeling that tells you something horrible is about to happen. I tried every trick those worthless self defense coaches teach you: “Pretend to be on the phone. Hold your keys in your hand. Make multiple turns to shake them off.” None of it helped. At one point he disappeared. I almost took a breath but I could still feel that something was very wrong. Just then, he popped out of a small alleyway between stores and grabbed me. He was significantly bigger than me. We struggled until he got me on my knees with my hair wrapped up in one of his hands while I tried to wiggle away. As he was undoing his pants and saying some things I’d rather not repeat, I remembered the butterfly knife I always kept in my back pocket. Before I could think about it I grabbed it, opened in, jammed it into the inner thigh of his left leg, twisted, and pulled. He screamed and dropped. I ran. I showed up some unknown amount of time later on a since deceased friend’s doorstep covered in blood and shaking with the knife still in my hand. I don’t know what happened to that man. And I don’t fucking care. I never told a soul other than that dear friend of mine.

That one almost made what happened with Chris worse. With him, I reacted. I defended myself. “Fight or Flight” right? Wrong. There’s a third one: “Freeze”. With that man in the alleyway, I fought. But a bit later, with Chris, I froze. I separated from my body and I just survived. Just like when I was a kid. It took years to not hate myself for freezing. I couldn’t stop the thoughts that said “Why didn’t you fight back? Why didn’t you hit him? Why did you go back upstairs? Why didn’t you get yourself and your sister and run? Why? Why? Why?”

See, I knew it wasn’t my fault. People spent my entire life saying that one sentence: “It isn’t your fault.” But, as it turned out, I wasn’t blaming myself for any of these things happening. I blamed myself for not stopping them.

But this story doesn’t end there. At 18 I met a tattoo artist and we started to date. He told me he was 28. I later found out he was 32. I stupidly stayed anyway. He lied to me, manipulated me, isolated me from every single person I knew and loved, even the ones I lived with. He was a new kind of monster, one I wasn’t as familiar with; and so his games worked better because I didn’t recognize them until it was way too late. It all started innocently enough. He had trust problems. He was insecure about me being around men. He wanted to be involved in everything I did. But it ended in him stalking me relentlessly. I remember trying to break up with him over the phone one night. I did it, hung up, and got in the shower. When I got out and went back to my room every hair on my body was standing on end. I knew he was somewhere near. And then he called me. I answered the phone and he said “Boo”. But I heard it through the phone and… my closet? I crept to the door and opened it. He was standing in my bedroom closet. I don’t think I’ve ever screamed like that in my life. Not before then, and not since. There were two locked doors and a deadbolt between the street he came in off of and my bedroom door. He said how he got in was “his little secret”. He said he wouldn’t leave until I told him I loved him and took him back. I already hadn’t slept in weeks because he would show up and call me and make me talk to him constantly. He was embedded in and in control of every aspect of my life. Thus why I was trying to leave him. That night ended with him on top of me, having sex with me, while I cried. He didn’t care, and all I can remember him saying is “You’re going to tell them I’m your man, right? You’re going to tell them you love me, right? That I’m the only one?” The “them” he spoke of was a group of teenage girls whose belly buttons I was driving to the next town over to pierce the next day. He was absolutely convinced there was going to be guys there and that I was lying to him. So all of this, because I needed to make some money and agreed to pierce a couple of 18 year old girl’s belly buttons. That was one of 4-5 times that he had sex with me after I said no, while I cried the entire time, while I physically shook because my body was so against everything that was happening to it, yet couldn’t make it stop. It took me finally losing my sanity and packing two bags of clothes and a $439 paycheck into my Acura Integra at 4 in the morning, and driving 100mph to Wichita, KS., 1,365 miles from home at 19 years old to get away from him. I eventually came back for the holidays but got stuck when my car started having problems. I had gotten a 3 month break, but he started stalking me again. One morning I found him sleeping in his car out front of my then boyfriend’s house. I lost it. I grabbed a baseball bat, beat the shit out of his car while screaming that he was a rapist at the top of my lungs. Stupid son of a bitch got out of the car. That bat and his body became very close friends. He didn’t stalk me anymore after that.

After him I was pretty fucking damaged. It took me two years to stop having panic attacks every time I heard a car like his or saw someone parked outside of my house. It took even longer to stop sleeping with bats and knives and guns stashed under my pillow and throughout my house. It took me a long time to be able to feel like I could thank the male cashier for ringing me up, or to feel like I was allowed to have any friends, especially male ones. It took me months to speak when in a group of people because I was so used to spending hours fighting after an outing because I told someone I liked their shirt or stood with my hip cocked out to one side. And somehow, in that time after him, I still ended up dating two different people who treated me like property. Men who took “No” and “Not right now” to mean “Try harder” or “Guilt trip me until I give in”. Men who felt it was my duty and responsibility to stop everything I was doing to send them pictures of my body or to talk to them or sleep with them. Men who spoke to me like shit and treated me worse.

I always knew they were wrong.

Yet I kept finding them and making excuses for them because they “just need to see that I’m actually a good woman” or they “have trust issues” or “have potential”. Eventually I learned that it is not my job to pay for the misdeeds of other women and that you can not have a relationship with potential. There were some good people I met, ran away from, or fucked up because I was so fucked up at that time. But it didn’t matter. I was convinced that all men were like that once you really got to know them. That they all wanted something from me and it was up to me to decide whether or not the cost met the benefit. Saying I had trust issues is a gross understatement. I still do. But today I do trust people and some of them are men. One of them in particular is my man and he is a good man. I don’t have to make excuses for him or hide his behavior from the people who love me. There are good people out there.

So, as I read these Me Too stories, I think about all of my own stories, I think about trying to write them down, and I get overwhelmed. I started this piece with no idea of what it was going to turn into and as I type this sentence I wonder if I’m going to post it. There’s things in here that people who love me, people who read this blog, don’t know about. And there’s more than I’ve put in here and more than I will probably ever say out loud. Some things have scarred over, I can talk about them almost like they happened to someone else; but others….well, they still live in my nightmares and crawl up the back of my throat in the form of bile some days. Everything falls into the past eventually, but I’m not sure it all heals. I don’t think I can truly say I’ve “healed” from any of these wounds yet, but I’ve learned to live with them; and on most days they don’t control my thoughts and actions or reactions. I’ll take that. I talk to other people who’ve been there. They tell me how they cope and I tell them what I’ve learned. There’s something powerful about telling someone what is possibly the worst thing that has ever happened to you, and them looking at you and saying “Me too.”

by Ashley King

© All Rights Reserved 2017

It Just Happened

It’s funny how you meet so many people in life, experience so many different interactions; and these interactions help shape what you know about others, and yourself. You slowly learn what you do and don’t like, what you want in a partner, and what you don’t. You learn what qualities matter to you; and those qualities, more often than not, become more or less important with time.

I used to make excuses for people who were dismissive of my feelings or my wants and needs. I used to settle for people who weren’t loyal because they were funny, or who were self centered, but occasionally sweet, because I thought that was enough, and maybe what I wanted. I glazed over things that were unacceptable because it wasn’t quite as broken as the situations I grew up in and I rationalized behavior that warranted immediate excommunication. I settled for less, over and over and over again. I didn’t really know better. So I stayed in relationships I had no business being in just because the thought of going through another shit show of a break up, or having to start over again after attempting to build a life with someone, was exhausting. I was tired of it long before most people my age had even started to discover it. The cost of living a sped up life I guess…

I’ve thought I was in love before, and once before I actually was. But in retrospect, those people were never meant to last a lifetime, no matter how hard they tried to suck one out of me. They were meant to teach me lessons; oftentimes very painful, but necessary lessons. Those lessons included things like what I wouldn’t settle for, what I valued most, what made me build resentments, and how much resentment was too much to get past. I learned where the limits of my forgiveness lie, where my own defects in relationships come out, what makes me happy, and what makes me “hate the way your breathing sounds” miserable. I learned what it felt like when my soul knew it was not meant for the person I was lying next to. And finally, after too much bullshit, I learned how to walk away with my self respect and dignity intact. But more important than all of those things: I learned what Itruly wanted, and needed,all along.

I wanted someone to laugh with, someone who respected me even when they didn’t like my opinions or my actions, someone who truly listened to the things I said, instead of just hearing them. I needed someone who accepted me for the good, the bad, the damaged, and all the in between. I needed someone who could live with knowing my past, without seeing me as some woman to save or a broken bird to be fixed. I needed someone who could support me when I was weak, but could also be vulnerable enough to apologize when they mess up and ask for help when they need it. I wanted someone who didn’t just give up when the going got tough because that was never an option for me and I have a hard time understanding people like that. I wanted someone who felt like home, someone I didn’t have to make excuses for, someone whose actions I didn’t have to hide from my loved ones. Someone who stands up for what they believe in, even when I don’t agree with them. I wanted to be a part of someone’s life, not their entire life. I wanted a partner, a teammate, an “other half” who treated me as their equal. And I drug my way through the assholes to get him. But I have him…

He’s not perfect, but he’s perfect for me. He makes mistakes, but he apologizes for them. I never saw him coming, but he’s exactly what I dreamt of. The timing wasn’t the best, the set up wasn’t great, but the reward has been beyond anything I believed existed anymore. It’s been my experience that when people, myself included, leave a relationship they always say “I’m never doing this again”. And then they go out, find someone who’s the exact opposite of the last one, and they put them on a pedestal that no one belongs on. They paint that person into a picture of what they want them to be, they call them perfect, ignore their flaws, and then act surprised when it all comes crashing down around them. I didn’t do that with him.

Something just happened. He popped up when I least expected it and I just watched. I sat back and let it unfold. I kept my hands out of the mix, I didn’t try to control or force anything, I didn’t try to accelerate the timeline or make him into something he wasn’t. I’m not one for doing that anyway, but I also didn’t make excuses for him. I didn’t need to. I didn’t need to apologize to myself for him because when it was necessary, he handled his shit himself. He carried himself like a man, and so I treat him like one. I respect him, immensely. And when I told him what I needed or couldn’t live with, he respected that and me. And when the time came, I just loved him. It was that simple, I found home in him and I’ve loved him everyday since.

It hasn’t always been a picture perfect fairytale, but I’m pretty sure everything that seems that way is a lie anyway. Love is messy and sometimes, uncomfortable. It shines a light on all the places we’re still broken and damaged. It brings out the best, and the worst, in us. It makes me fucking crazy sometimes because I haven’t exactly lived a life that’s taught me how to have a healthy relationship. But there’s no one on this planet I’d rather give it a shot with. I am so excited to continue to learn how to do this the right way; and for once in my life, I’m with someone who wants the same things as me. And it’s such a beautiful thing. Being with the wrong person will always inevitably lead to suffering. But being with the right person? That changes everything. And I’m so grateful for it, I’m so grateful for him… It’s that simple.

by Ashley King

© All Rights Reserved 2017

Undercover Romantic

I’m an undercover romantic,

A safe keeper of memories,

It’s always the little things,

The little things that get the best of me.

I’ll never forget the night of the fire,

The true beginning of everything,

You simply opened your mouth,

And we talked well into the morning.

Every part of me was warming,

And every part of me felt home,

I distinctly remember wondering,

Where that comfort was coming from.

I watched you form your thoughts,

As the color of fire licked your lips,

You gave me your honesty,

And in return earned my respect.

There was something in your words,

That I just found so attractive,

It’s a rare day you find the truth,

Offered in the same way you give it.

A meeting of such like minds,

An offer of experience,

You carried yourself so humbly,

I thought you were fucking brilliant.

I didn’t want that night to end,

I would’ve stayed till the sky turned red,

But when I finally hugged you goodbye,

I somehow knew I’d remember it.

I woke up that next morning,

With your words echoing in my head,

I couldn’t shake the sound of your voice,

And this thing right behind it.

This strange sense of belonging but,

You were the last thing I was looking for,

And the timing of it couldn’t be worse,

I tried to tell myself it was nothing

but there was something I couldn’t ignore.

Just a feeling, a hint of longing,

As I found myself craving your presence,

And even when the days got busy,

I still made time for our conversations.

I fell in love with your mind first,

How you weaved your words together,

And I don’t think I had laughed that hard,

In what felt like a thousand forevers.

You asked me to get together,

And I was all about it,

We met at a park in the middle of summer,

And I knew that this was something special.

The way you smiled stopped me dead in my tracks,

And baking in that sun I was still so relaxed,

We went to get milkshakes because I didn’t want it to end,

And when we finally went home,

Your smile stayed in my head.

You’ve smiled at me so many times since,

And it still feels as warm as the first time I saw it.

I’ll never be more grateful for offered experience,

Because out of a talk came a forever I believe in.

by Ashley King

© All Rights Reserved 2017

Speechless

He says he loves it when I write and he asks me to write for him. And really, he’s my favorite material… and there’s no shortage of inspiration. Everything about him is inspiring. He’s the real fucking deal. Here’s the problem: I’ve mistaken empty hands for wanting hearts before. I’ve mistaken infatuation for love, used words for others that I should’ve saved up. Because every line I ever wrote about anyone else now feels like a lie. To the core of my being I want to rip it up, erase it from existence so that I can use the beauty of each phrase, the perfection of every line, the words that I wasted on others, to write about him, and this time. I want to say a million things but some of them have been said before and the very fact that they have left my lips, my fingertips, somehow makes them not good enough for him…. because he’s something new… something different… something actual and tangible and real, totally authentic.

Words never fail me. But when I fell for him I spent so many nights looking in his eyes with a million things I wanted to say to him… and I said none of them. I expressed the smallest pieces of what I was feeling. Because my words didn’t seem good enough to explain this volcano of flames that was erupting in my chest. They simply, just did not fucking cut it. I’ve thought I loved before; and once or twice I have. So I have said many things to a person that I thought was my forever at the time. And to use those same words now, with someone so special, feels nothing short of wrong. They just aren’t good enough. So I’m a writer with no words like a bird without a song…

So how? How do I explain the way that the warmth of his hand on my shoulder radiates through my body straight to my soul and makes me feel like I’ve just come home? How do I explain the amazement I feel when I watch him think his way through something and come to the exact same conclusion that I have, that I swore no one else could see? How do I put into words, that after years of being bad at love, at fucking it up and finding it in all the wrong places, that I know I’ve finally got it right this time? Have you ever done that? Tried for something, given it a chance, time and time again all to discover that what you’d found is just another fuck up, another bad choice, another tragic ending? I have. And because of this past, all the words I have just don’t measure up in the face of this man. So I stare into the eyes of this person that I love to pieces and I know for the first time… that I’m completely speechless.

by Ashley King

© All Rights Reserved 2017

July Eighth

He makes me laugh. He makes me feel loved. He makes me think not every man's hands were made to be guns. He makes me think. He challenges me. He asks me how my day was. Regularly.

He thinks I am beautiful. He sees me as whole. My past is just a past, something that's old. He doesn't use it to label me, color me damaged. He sees a rainbow, not a woman made of bandages.

He loves me the way I thought only I was built to love. Not in that way that makes me think I'll never be enough. It is equal. It is good. It. Is. So. Much.

He speaks my language. He's never bigger than me. Smarter than me. "Be quiet so I can ignore you loudly". He wants to hear me. And that's why he chose me. And I accepted. Because I know a good man…when I see one closely.

by Ashley King
© All Rights Reserved 2017

Substandard Love

I’ll love you when it’s easy,
I’ll kiss you when you’re sweet,
I’m careless and convenient,
I’ll support you when it suits me.

I’ll kick you while you’re down,
I’ll never lift you up,
I’m fucking fantastic,
And you’re never enough.

I’m all the ways you settle,
And nothing that you wished for,
But now my hooks are in you,
And I’ve pinned you to the floor.

Are you feeling trapped?
Baby that’s my speciality.
I’ll knock you down, wear you out,
Suffocate you, breathlessly.

Don’t you know? I’m everything,
And you are just my hostage.
You used to have self respect?
Well baby, you just lost it.

Come taste my love,
It’s nothing but substandard.
You swam onto my island,
Now you’re fucking stranded.

You’re welcome.

by Ashley King
© All Rights Reserved 2017

Dedicated to all the egotistical, narcissistic, one foot out the door, “I’m better than you”, demeaning, condescending, douchebags of the world. We see you. And you suck 🙂

Possible Again

I sat back today and watched him play with his kids, just wild and free, so full of love and life. It was like one of those perfect pictures that bullshit romance novels paint: Dad playing with the older kids in the yard, dogs running around enjoying the freedom, mom a few paces away holding the baby, feeling blessed, laughing wholeheartedly at the people she loves playing without a care in the world. It was perfect. And foreign.

It reminded me of a time when I still believed in white picket fences and happy endings. When families weren’t the people you were trying to become the exact opposite of. He reminds me of when I still believed in true love. When “forever” meant forever and wasn’t just a false promise used as a bandaid over another bullet hole. He makes me feel special again, like maybe people really can love each other for all that they are. He makes me think that fall evenings spent sitting on the front porch watching the kids play in the yard are possible. Like nights spent cuddled up on the couch actually talking to each other, not just existing in the same room, are real.

I’ve always had a habit of ignoring the warning signs. I’m not one of those women who can’t see them, I can always see them. But I would convince myself that I could work around them; when in my heart of hearts, I always knew when and how a relationship would fail.

I don’t have that here.

Everything is still so new and yet, I can’t see anyone else after him. I feel like I’ve finally come home after years of living in some alternate reality nightmare and all the sudden the world is an endless sea of possibility and happiness again. Everything makes sense again. It’s like I finally woke up and everything I once dreamed was possible actually is. Ask anyone who knows me well enough and they’ll tell you they’ve heard me say “Forever is a fucking lie we tell each other to hide from the pain that we know will always be inevitable.” And I said it because I believed it. I don’t know what that says about me… or the people who’ve supposedly “loved me” before, but I know that I believed it. That forever only meant “until this ends in a three ring shit show circus”, or “until I get bored and you get sick of who I am”, or at best, “until we fall apart because people can’t survive all the ups and downs of life together”.

But I don’t believe that now…

I actually believe I could sit back and watch the kids play and grow and evolve for the rest of time with him. I can see fitting into the crook of his body for every night of the rest of our lives. And that’s insane, isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be? It doesn’t feel like it is, or should be. I have always trusted my gut above anything and anyone else and everything I say now is coming from my gut, not some lust drunk, fantasy induced place in my head. I don’t see anyone else after him. I don’t have any “I wonder how long this will last” thoughts. I never wanted to believe in someone this much, ever again. I was completely unwilling to give one more person what I saw as being “too much power over me” ever again. I loudly refused to ever start over or try again.

Then he happened…

And now loving families, and crisp fall evenings, and white picket fences, and even happy endings, are all possible again. And I tell myself that I should be terrified…

But, I’m not.

by Ashley King
© All Rights Reserved 2017

Jack & Jill

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a happy life. But Jack fell down while reaching for the crown and Jill couldn’t stand the lie. See Jill didn’t want that life. She just wanted to see Jack smile. But Jack got lost in the screaming for power so Jill bowed out before it got any louder. Power is such a volatile thing. Specifically when it’s your everything. So Jack got his image, and all of his power.. to enjoy all alone in his empty tower.

by Ashley King

© All Rights Reserved 2017

This Is Your Relationship On Drugs

You meet a person. They’re funny, they’re cute, they make you smile. You love the way they get excited when they tell a story. You love their dimples, their bright eyes, their passion for the things they love. You find yourself attracted to them, missing their presence when they’re gone. You like them. You develop a friendship and get to know each other. Maybe they socially drink or occasionally smoke a bowl, but they maintain control and can put it down whenever they want to. But you know, deep in your core, you know, that you’re different from them. The drugs you do control you; not the other way around. You’re an addict. But this person, they’re intoxicating and attractive and everything you ever wanted in a partner. You’re afraid if they find out you’re an addict that they won’t want to be around you anymore. So you hide it. Lines in your car before a date, extra drinks when they’re not looking, shooting up in the bathroom… You hide your sickness while you fall more and more in love with this person who makes you feel alive again. They say no one has ever made them smile like you. But you’re an addict. So you don’t do anything in small fashion. You run head-on, full force into this person. You start dating and for awhile everything is nothing short of magic. Long nights of talking until the sun came up, dates that give you butterflies, making them laugh, and watching the way they stick their tongue out when they read. And the sex! You can’t forget the mind blowing, life changing, world altering sex. Everything is… perfect. The relationship progresses and they start to notice little things. Maybe you drink “a little too often” or “a bit too much”, or they comment on how little or big your pupils are all the time. They notice you’re up at strange hours by the loving text messages you send them. They notice how long you spend in the bathroom when you wake up each day. They’re starting to sense something but they haven’t been able to put their finger on it yet. 

You have your first fight, about how sometimes you “just seem off”. It shatters you. You know why you’re “off” sometimes but you have to keep the secret. Have to stay hidden, stay quiet, seem normal. Your addiction spurs your total codependency on this person and you feel like you can’t live without them. But you can’t live without the drug either. You’re ripped in half between what you “need” and who you want. Mercilessly torn between a decision that is no longer a choice and a person you choose again everyday. 

So you balance these two worlds on the tips of your fingers, trying ever so carefully to maintain both, without being caught. You plan you’re using, when you buy, when to not be “way too high”, and how to hide behind excuses when you’re sick and can’t hang out. And you do so good, for a little while. You want to be with them as much as you want to use so you choose to move in together. You sign the lease and combine your lives and for a little while it’s amazing. At this point they know you like to “party a little hard”.  But they think you only use the “acceptable drugs“: weed, alcohol. They don’t know about how much of these drugs you actually use though or dare I mention, that you use the “not acceptable” ones. But you’re in love with each other. Living together makes you’re obsessive and compulsive behavior harder to hide. They start to notice when you come home “a little too late after work” because you had to go cop. They notice your occasional emotional outbursts when you’re too high to realize you’re being ridiculous or too dope sick to care about hiding your insanity. They know, somewhere in them, they know that they aren’t seeing the whole picture. They grow suspicious. 

And then it happens. 

They find a needle, or a bag, or catch you doing a late night line in the bathroom. The lid has blown off the fucking pressure cooker and they know. You try to deny, rationalize, minimize, justify, and then cry. You try to defend, explain, guilt trip. And they love you so they accept your half hearted excuses praying that maybe, “it’s not as bad as it looks or seems”. But they know. Fear has never run so deep and this thing you have? This beautiful, magical, life altering love? It becomes tainted. Stained with the choice that isn’t a choice anymore. 

 
The dynamic has changed. Those nights you pass out sitting up on the couch they find themselves watching your neck to make sure your heart is still beating. They barely even notice how insane this is because they’re so concerned for you. You notice they stop breathing every time someone uses a drug in a movie or talks about it amongst your friends. While you’re taking that “20 minutes to grab gas on the way home” that actually turns into an hour of you waiting on your drug dealer in a Walmart parking lot, they’re sitting at home wondering where you are. Consumed in fear that you’re not okay. What if you got shot, got caught or ended up in jail? What if you got that “one bad bag” that everyone talks about. Their life has become one heeping pile of “what if”. They fill their time researching drugs and how to help addicts. They still think this is a problem that can be easily managed and don’t believe the people on the forums who tell them to “just walk away”. They can’t believe that it’s that bad. Denial isn’t just for the junkie, it’s a family disease. They might as well be out there with you, because God knows their mind and heart are. They start to notice the little things. The red nose from “your allergies”…that has lasted 6 months. The “mosquito bite” on your arm that just won’t go away. Your pupils that never seem to be a normal size. The late nights. How you’re always “sick” but only in the mornings and a random day here or there.  
All these little realizations turn into big fights. Accusations hurled from the place in their heart that is terrified of getting that dreaded phone call one day. Anger stemming from love that they wish was enough to make you stop. Screams bred of fear that the person they adore may never come back from this. Pleas for you to be honest, go to meetings, go to rehab, get help, any help. But you know what they don’t. Asking for help means you do have a problem. Asking for help means giving up the illusion of control that you would just as soon death grip to your inevitable grave. Asking for help means it is real and it is “that bad”. Asking for help means “you can’t control it”. And that is one thing you just can’t handle, for it will surely throw you over the edge. But in that split second of clarity that their tears bring, you can see their pain. And so you go on a bender trying to numb the look of desperation in their eyes, the fear in their cries, the guilt behind your lies. Trying to forget that you hurt them that much. More drugs, later nights, deeper pain, worse fights. You’re spiraling. You know it. They know it. But it’s only spoken about in the heat of another fight that lasts till 5am. A fight that you can’t wait to end so you can sneak to the bathroom and numb all the pain that causing them pain causes you. People aren’t meant to live like this. You can’t keep it up anymore. They can’t live in all the fear, anger, and desperation that they feel and that you numb anymore. You have the drugs. They have nothing. Except an empty pillow beside them and the love of their life they wish they could cry about this to. But they’re out getting high. You’re out getting high.  At this point, even they want to numb it all.   

The more you use, the more they’re along for the ride. They can’t walk away, they’re too afraid that you’ll die. And they truly, deeply love you. Somewhere in them they hope that that’s enough. That maybe this love will keep you alive. But they can’t take it either. The fights, the tears, the looking in your eyes and not seeing you in there. God they would kill for just one more day like it was in the beginning. Much like you’d kill to get as high as you did in the beginning. You need them. They need to know you’re okay. They need to feel like you want them more than the drug. You need something to tie you to reality. Mutually assured destruction. You get higher and they’re dragged lower, all the while you both become sicker. Their resentment grows as fast as your habit and you’re both left just… broken. 

The good days grow further and further apart, till all that’s left is the pain and your “mosquito bite” track marks. But no one walks away because both of you are holding onto those few good days. And in those moments between highs, when you can almost remember their smile, even you wish you could make it all go away. But your stuck watching them laugh at their friend’s jokes the way they used to laugh at yours. You just can’t understand why they “don’t love you anymore”. The catch is, that they do. But this is what “love” looks like when it’s a victim of abuse. You’re addiction is a cancer. It spreads to everyone around you. Till all that’s left is the sickness. They love you but they lost you, and lost themselves in the process. 

Maybe you go to a few meetings, give them a glimmer of hope, all to destroy it, when return high on dope. And they just want to know, why couldn’t it be them that you chose? They don’t understand you’re trapped, you don’t understand their broken. So you stay in this relationship, because hey, “here’s to hopin'”. But the dope has you like you have them and they’re still praying every night you don’t turn up dead. So you live this destruction between half hearted rehab stints, overdoses, and money stolen and the whole time they’re with you, getting sicker by the moment. By the time you realize they “aren’t the same anymore”, this disease of addiction has already destroyed you both and so much more. They lost you, you lost you, and they lost themselves. All in an prayer that you’d survive this hell. 

Maybe you die. Maybe you recover. Maybe they give up. Maybe you stay together. Maybe you break up. Either way it doesn’t matter; because this is your relationship on drugs. 

                

by Ashley Hebner

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