Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Method to My Madness

It was fall. Warm days, cool nights. Life was good, bills were paid. Married a couple of years and yet still maddeningly in love, honeymoon style, for the most part. We had wonderful, well behaved, well adjusted kids. A nicely blended family of five, all survivors of previous marital failure. We had family, jobs, intelligence, love, sex, friends, security.  Sweet happiness.  We had what so many strive for yet so many piss away every day. What the fuck was I thinking? I still wonder.

It was not his first time. I knew this. I had seen him do it before and I did not like it. I was scared so I did not participate.  Scared because my Nanny said the stuff could kill you. Scared because I could see another heart attack in my 27 year old husband's future. Yes, another. The first was cocaine. Before us.  And I just knew meth would surely blow up that heart that poured so much sweet love my way. 

I yelled, I cried.  I begged and pleaded.  "Surely, you'll die!" I screamed.  "My Nanny said!" 

But, I had seen him and our friends snort lines a few times right before my very eyes and they were all still very much alive.  Every time they did they just laughed and had a good time, had the energy to party well after I had gone down.  Maybe Nanny was wrong.  After all, she did have me convinced  motorcycles were murdercycles until I was 10.  Nanny might be wrong. 

Maybe a little, just this once would not hurt.

Nothing good ever comes from that phrase.   Nothing!  Listen to your Nannys, Mimmies, and Grannys people!

So it was a Friday night in the fall, some years ago.  The kids were all at their other parents for the weekend, and we had a few friends over.  We were sitting around the kitchen table, playing cards, and catching up.  We smoked a little weed.  I did love me some gateway!  And drank a little beer.  You know, a usual Friday night.  (And no, Nanny did not approve of weed, but she had not scared the bajeezzas out of me about weed.)

Someone pulled out that little baggie and broke out a mirror and I joined the madness.  I leaned over the table and took my turn at the short straw.  Sucking that chunky, crystal-ly powder right up my nose like I knew what I was doing.  Holy hell, the burn.  It burned like crazy when it hit my sinus cavity.  My eyes watered and I almost cried.  What the hell had I done?  This hurts.  And then the drip.  The bitter, aspirin, borax like slow drain down the back of my throat.  Yuck.  But awesome.  I started to rev up.  My temperature rose and I soared.  I chain smoked like I was mad.  We laughed and talked, sometimes all at once.  All night long!  I sounded like Janis Joplin, all sexy voiced from smoking and rahrah-ing for hours.  Our friends departed at dawn and we settled in for hours of beautiful conversation and wild, uninhibited , crazy sex.  It was like falling in love, my first time was.  I was nervous and excited and anxious for the next time. 

I did not know I was falling in love with an abusive prick.  Crystallized evil.  The devil come powder.  Meth harrassed me and stalked me for years, just like an abusive lover.  Rarely giving me the pure pleasure it had that first time.  Truthfully, never did again.  What the fuck was I thinking?

After too many miserable and embarrassing, awful lost years to admit, we finally shook the soul sucking hold it had on us and have been clean two and a half years.  Amazingly, the family is still intact.  Scarred and forever changed.  Not so innocent.  But still together and building back the everything we almost destroyed. 

Just say no.  Some things just should not be fucked with.  Like the serpent in the garden.


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