Moving Towards The Centre
My Mom and I have had a somewhat stormy relationship ever since my Dad passed away in March 2003. Up until this time, he somehow had managed to keep us reigned in and under control. I suspect that my Mom and I are just too much alike to truly get along and that somehow my Dad recognized this and cleverly kept us in our separate corners so to speak. Without him around any longer to temper us, I knew that it was just a matter of time before my Mom and I ended up having a knock down, fight to the bitter end kind of argument/disagreement that would result in our separation until one of us was able to suck it up and attempt a reconciliation.
Like clockwork this is exactly what ended up happening. In June 2005, my Mom, Sara and myself took a three day shopping trip together to Toronto. We traveled from London by ViaRail and stayed in a semi luxury hotel downtown near the Eaton’s Center so that we would be right in the heart of all of the shopping. Why I had originally agreed to go on this trip in the first place is still a bit of a mystery to me even today. When we had been talking about it and planning it the January prior, I guess it just seemed far enough away in the future that I was able to convince myself that the day would never come. How very wrong I was.
Even at the start of 2005, I had a pretty healthy addiction that needed to be fed fairly regularly and often. Why I thought that six months down the road, this wouldn’t be an issue just goes to show you how easy addicts delude themselves. Denial, denial, denial. That probably should have been my mantra back then. To top it all off, by the time June rolled around, my addiction pretty much knew no bounds. I was certainly out of control in a very controlled way. Always attempting to maintain the appearance of the functioning addict, although by this time, that too was quickly slipping away from me.
Still managing to go to work every day although I was starting to wrack up sick days fast and furiously. Still managing to pay the bills but barely. Many were getting paid later than usual and my normally full cupboards were starting to look a little bit bare. Was also starting to look for more and more and bigger fronts from my dealers, something I never, ever did in the past. At least before, if I couldn’t pay for it with cash then and there, I normally didn’t bother, but even this bit of control was disappearing rapidly. I found myself in a bit of a viscous circle. If I felt sick, I wouldn’t go to work but if I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid and if I didn’t get paid, I couldn’t score so something had to give and so it did. It became easier and easier to ask for a front and to take it.
Anyway, kind of long story short but by the time that our trip rolled around, I certainly was not in my best shape. I also didn’t go on the trip as prepared as I should have gone mostly because my credit was no longer as good as it had been in the past with dealers. I also didn’t have enough cash on hand to use on buying the amount of pills that I would need to get me through the three days we were away.
So by the second day, I was feeling awful and wasn’t doing much in the way of hiding how I felt. From this point on, our trip rapidly went downhill.
TO BE CONTINUED…