Once, just once

that’s all. But I don’t even know where to begin to start looking…it’s not like I can ask half the people I know. C’mon, they wouldn’t understand. They’d tell me, hasn’t it touched enough of your life? So that leaves the huge question…how does a good girl with no connections find the right kind of dealer?

I’ve been thinking about it all day. I wish I knew why I have this craving to try it

Was it smart to stop my anti-depressants cold turkey? Probably not.

I start to feel that thing again. It’s like a weight of sheer hopelessness pressing down on me until I fear that I may just suffocate under the pressure and drown in all the tears that get caught in the back of my throat. That, or it’s floating on nothing. It’s being weightless and nothing and empty and just not here anymore.

And I can’t get myself to want to change from it. I can’t get myself to swallow another mood adjuster each morning. I can’t convince myself to balance the storms in my mind and heart, not with my little pills. Not with what I KNOW works. Because it does. It works and then makes me feel like a whole different person.

I’m the girl who’s running across the parched grass, in and out of our open front door, classic rock soaring out of my dad’s speakers in the living room. I’m the girl jumping around and playing pretend with myself, pretending that I am all these amazing things. I am a brilliant chef. I am a fashion goddess. I am a writer, a dreamer. I am a little girl still full of light and the will to make the most of my life.

Or my mom’s fading away behind tubes, falling in on herself, disappearing. And we’re just children standing by our mother’s graveside. We’re saying goodbye before anyone should be letting go of their mother, protector.

And then you hit rock bottom.

Find the little blue pills to make everything better.

I want to be me. I want us to be who we were, back when we were still young and didn’t know all the trouble the world could let us in on. Back before the drugs, the self-injury, the fear, the hurt, back when we were falling in love for the first time. You would kiss me in the moonlight, and we would laugh as we shared stories and memories and in the earliest hours of the morning we would give little pieces of ourselves to each other. A sacred memory here, an unknown fact there.

I want to go back to when you were OK; I wasn’t living in the constant fear of if I would see you alive and clean next. Before meth, when you were sweet with the little things. Not like now, when every memory made now is hidden in a fog of smoke—weed, cigarettes, meth.

Please get better. You’re stronger than this. Together we can get through anything. Remember the nights we would stay up on the phone forever, talking through problems, smiling at memories, growing closer, growing together, falling in love. I know you, the real you. The little boy you’ve locked away inside, who cries in fear and doesn’t know where to go next. You’re still my Starshine…somewhere in there. I saw him again the last time I saw you at Acadia. I know you want to come home. It’s not going to be easy, but I’m here every step of the way.

I love you. It’s something that burns and aches in the very core of me and I can hardly explain it a lot of the time.

I spend my time writing and crying and remembering now. Maybe things will settle down into a slower rhythm that will be more bearable. I don’t want to quit writing again. I don’t want to stop feeling, to muffle the negative feelings with a fake, foggy happiness. I don’t want to forget who we are or what we have. No matter what we get into, what we say or do to each other, we will always be best friends. That’s one thing I know will always be there, be real. Stay strong, love.

The Truth Is…

I’m probably crazy in love with you, but circumstance have kept me so busy being worried, that even though I’m shoulder-deep into worrying about you and working on what will be best for us and our friendship/relationship, that I simply have not let myself pause, breathe, and just go with the moment. I’ve been constantly enthralled in one thing or the other for the past few months, and it’s no wonder that I’m so exhausted all the time now.

I just really miss you. More than I realize. I try not to dwell too much on it, to think too much, too deeply about you. Because if I do, I have to admit that you’re beyond my reach, and the farthest from me that you’ve ever been. We haven’t talked in nearly a week, and haven’t seen each other in over a few weeks. (That 10 minutes at Acadia last Sunday doesn’t count really.) That’s something that we have never done since we got together 2 and a half years ago. We’ve never been apart so long, and I’m not really worried about it breaking us, but I do worry about how things are going to go from this point. We never planned for what has happened. Summer was suppose to come, and we were going to start living —together, as ourselves, just living—. But now, it’s probably going to be a month or so after graduation that you come home….if you come home.

I’m just a worry-er, and I worry about what will happen. I worry about you, and that you won’t be able to find your way out of the hellish struggle that meth’s thrown you in. I worry that I’ll one day have to give in and play the tough love card, and leave. I worry that I won’t be strong enough and I’ll fall down with you. I worry that I won’t be able to save you, because you’re not open enough to save yourself. I worry that I spend too much time being pessimistic towards all this, that I don’t see the good things in what has happened and what is to come.

I love you. Always have and always will. I wish you could read all the letters I write you. Be safe, my darling Starshine. I’m waiting for you. Despite all my worrying, I have faith that things will be fine in the end.