I guess I, I just thought, maybe we could find new ways to fall apart
I've been on this ride with Amy for twelve fucking years now. At first it was a rollercoaster, we squeezed ourselves into the same damned, damaged cart and resigned ourselves to the idea that our destinies were intertwined. If she ascended, so did I, and whenever she fell I'd be right alongside with her. You know how some carnival rides have that little fake steering wheel in the cart that doesn't actually do anything, but gives you the illusion of control? Amy was always the one to sit in that seat and pretend to steer, both of us knowing but never saying that our path was being plotted by a much larger, unseen force.
Eventually, eroded from the wind whipping my face and violently motion sick, I finally took control of my own fate and got off.
After that, the ride became more of a trampoline--her plummets to earth were the catalyst, catapulting me ever higher into happiness and sobriety beyond my wildest dreams.
But I don't need that contrast anymore, it no longer serves a purpose. I don't need her success to determine mine, and I certainly don't need evidence of her failure in order to continue on the trail I've been blazing since the last time I touched heroin in June 2005. For years I thought that Amy and I had to eternally stay connected in some way, maybe because I wanted hard proof of the fact that I survived? A constant reminder of the world I'd escaped? Or did I hold on because I wanted proof that she and I had shared a legitimate, valid, loving friendship at some long-ago point before addiction and sociopathology took hold? Even during the roughest years to date, when I was clean and she wasn't, I'd discover that deep in the recesses of my mind I was still clinging to the thought that my best friend could and would return.
But the more the years drip by out of the leaky faucet of Life, and the more times she gets clean and then relapses, then gets clean and then relapses, the more I understand that that is never, ever going to happen. And now, as the downward spiral starts up all over again, with her husband calling me in a panic that she caused, and her family soon to be in tears over what she has done, I realize once and for all that her friendship is no longer what I want.
On the surface, in quieter moments, I find myself thinking again about what I'd say at her intervention, or, more likely, her funeral. How I'd react to news of her death.
But deep down in my heart, I know I just no longer have the capacity to care.
"It's something that can only happen once.
You will cry a thousand times, but they'll only be echoes."
-Michelle Tea
Eventually, eroded from the wind whipping my face and violently motion sick, I finally took control of my own fate and got off.
After that, the ride became more of a trampoline--her plummets to earth were the catalyst, catapulting me ever higher into happiness and sobriety beyond my wildest dreams.
But I don't need that contrast anymore, it no longer serves a purpose. I don't need her success to determine mine, and I certainly don't need evidence of her failure in order to continue on the trail I've been blazing since the last time I touched heroin in June 2005. For years I thought that Amy and I had to eternally stay connected in some way, maybe because I wanted hard proof of the fact that I survived? A constant reminder of the world I'd escaped? Or did I hold on because I wanted proof that she and I had shared a legitimate, valid, loving friendship at some long-ago point before addiction and sociopathology took hold? Even during the roughest years to date, when I was clean and she wasn't, I'd discover that deep in the recesses of my mind I was still clinging to the thought that my best friend could and would return.
But the more the years drip by out of the leaky faucet of Life, and the more times she gets clean and then relapses, then gets clean and then relapses, the more I understand that that is never, ever going to happen. And now, as the downward spiral starts up all over again, with her husband calling me in a panic that she caused, and her family soon to be in tears over what she has done, I realize once and for all that her friendship is no longer what I want.
On the surface, in quieter moments, I find myself thinking again about what I'd say at her intervention, or, more likely, her funeral. How I'd react to news of her death.
But deep down in my heart, I know I just no longer have the capacity to care.
"It's something that can only happen once.
You will cry a thousand times, but they'll only be echoes."
-Michelle Tea