Tag Archives: drug addiction

Today is January 1, 2018. I am alive and well.

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Wow. Another holiday season come and gone. We now have to wait a whole year again for its return. I love this season and am always a bit blue when it’s over.

Looking back over the year, I’ll say that the most difficult thing for me is knowing that my sister is homeless and missing all her teeth except for one in the front due to crystal meth addiction.

I understand addiction. I know how all consuming it is. It’s like being in a box with one small hole in it and a radio, thinking that you’re sitting on a velvet cushion. The radio is stuck on your favorite song repeating over and over again until the lyrics become irritating and then inconsequential. The hole is the only thing that allows you to breathe.

When the box is opened, you have no idea if it’s day or night. All the new space is overwhelming and the silence, frightening. You seek the comfort of the box again and your favorite song. There’s really no velvet cushion when your certain there is.

Again the song becomes meaningless and you tire from lack of oxygen. The box will be opened again and again. You’ll become overwhelmed and seek confinement again. The rotation is endless. Then someone puts a cork in the hole. Suddenly, you can’t breathe. The person with the cork yells loud enough to be heard over the music. The person wants to know if you’re ready to enter space, breathe freely, and be given possibility one step at a time.

You pound on the box meaning yes. The box is opened. You suck down air and cry because the air tastes so good. Sadly, my sister’s box has not run out of oxygen. I pray for the day that it does.

The highlight of my year was having one of my short writing pieces be nominated for a Pushcart Prize. I’ll find out in the spring if I’ve won or not. Accolades or not, writing is a must for me. Recently, I’ve begun writing a young adult novel. I’m having a great time making things up and love when my characters direct me to places I didn’t know I was headed.

May this year inspire you to be your best. If you believe in God, to be the person God wants you to be. May we all spread love even if that’s the last thing we want to do. Good morning to the sun. Goodnight to the moon. All is well.

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Today is November 27, 2017. I am alive and well.

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Like usual, I have no idea what I’m going to write on this blog. Of course, I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving. I love the holidays and don’t experience them as stressful. But then I don’t cook and the only gift I buy is for my roommate.

I have thought much about my sister who’s a crystal meth addict and homeless. I actually dreamt of her last night. In the dream she was showing me her teeth, of which she only had a few, and the sores on the inside of her cheek. She told me that the infection from her sores would ultimately spread to her jaw and then follow her bone to her ear, making her deaf in that one ear. I asked my sister what meth did for her. Her response, “I’m rocketed to a new dimension, much like what happens to people of faith visiting with God. It is thrilling. My trip is thrilling.” That was the end of the dream.

I haven’t given up on my sister. I know the truth currently is that my sister has no desire to give up meth. I found a place where she could live for free for a year and they would provide for her all her meals. All she has to do is give up the drugs and get sober. She said no. She is three years younger than I am, 50-years-old, and I would guess that she has been using drugs for over 25 years.

With sobriety, I am safe. I am a sober drunk, 24 years sober,  with a healthy fear of drugs. My drug use amounts to me trying marijuana once. It left me paranoid and rocking in the corner of a room. Thirty years ago, this same sister told me I just smoked it wrong. Ha. How does a person smoke it right or wrong?

I am completely aware of the fact that I could be her. I don’t know why I was led to sobriety and she wasn’t. Out of desperation, I latched on to a program of recovery. I’m certain my sister has felt desperation at some point. I’m certain she suffers. Neither of these two things have brought her to her knees.

I will be warm this holiday season. I will eat good food. I will be physically clean. I will surround myself with people I love and who love me. Life is good.

Today is February 9, 2015. I am alive and well.

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Today, I will leave for work at noon. I want to stop and get a sandwich from Subway. I like the egg, ham, and cheese on flat bread with two scoops of avocado. Egg whites, please. It is four dollars and eighty three cents. I know this like I know I have two sisters, one of whom I don’t talk with and have no idea if she is even in Arizona. Hunter. She is a paper bag who has been ripped open from the weight of all her own misgivings. Being a drug addict is easy. Being a drug addict is hard. I really don’t know which is true. I have never been a drug addict. I am simply an alcoholic in recovery. A drunk who has a great shot at living a happy, joyous, and free life as long as I stay sober and maintain some sort of spiritual life. God is good to me; I know there will be a next loaf of bread.

It has been good to write today. I miss Guy and the two little dogs. Writing pulls me away from missing and plops me into a dream of letters. The letters are lovely, forming words such as chocolate. Laurie, my friend and supervisor, keeps chocolates in her desk for me. Laurie is like a motorized cat, always moving quickly from one task to the next, never batting the ball entirely out of the room, but tracking it so it stays in play and ultimately gets where it needs to go even if it lodges itself beneath a shelf of books. Laurie will know what to do when this happens

Today is June 18, 2014. I am alive and well.

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I have been spending a great deal of time organizing my second book. In reading it through again, I came across Hunter, my youngest sister by three years. Her name has been changed to give her a bit of anonymity. Hunter is a paper bag which has been ripped open from the weight of her own misgivings. I spent years trying to be helpful to Hunter, all for not.

Recently, I learned that Hunter had been labeled an extreme overdose after showing up in a hospital emergency room in Pennsylvania. How she got there, I have no idea. Got to Pennsylvania, not the emergency room. The emergency room makes sense as she has been an extreme drug addict for a long time, tearing through all the lives of those who once loved her.

After my niece told me about her admission to the hospital, I text back that I love Hunter because she is a creature of this earth, but I don’t like her. I have finally forgiven her for all the grief she’s caused me and the family. But I want nothing to do with her. Harsh, I know. And whose to say that if she showed up at my doorstep, sober, that I wouldn’t reach out to her.

She won’t find me. I am lost to her in all the ways a person can be lost to another. I pray for her peace of mind. I pray for her hoping it is not too late.