https://talkingsober.com/t/a-letter-to-him-for-my-1-year/35421?u=stellarstella
https://talkingsober.com/t/one-year-anniversary-of-his-death/41447?u=stellarstella
https://talkingsober.com/t/dreams-tattoos-two-years-and-you/57374?u=stellarstella
https://talkingsober.com/t/a-letter-to-him-for-my-2-year-mark/58839?u=stellarstella
It has been 5 years and you still show up in my dreams more often then not. At least they’re not always nightmares like they used to be but so many times I wake up and still have the residual feeling of you, no actual memories of the dream- just this well of something in my gut that scratches its way up my throat the harder I try to remember the part with you.
Last night’s dream was different. It’s been awhile, years really since I’ve had a dream like this with you. Intense, exciting, frightening.
I was alone in another country, just living my life when I ran into you and a new girlfriend. You both invited me to a concert with you and I agreed to go. At some point chaos ensued and the police were after you and her. We managed to get away but got separated from your girlfriend. You took me back to the place you’d been living. We laid on your bed and caught up on our lives, spoke to each other like it hasn’t been almost five years since you OD’d alone in that bathroom. You offered me H and I declined, like I always did when I used to have drug dreams right after I got clean. It used to be a lot more of a dilemma even in slumber but this time I didn’t hesitate when I said no.
You tried to make a pass at me and we kissed for a moment. The kind of kiss you share with someone when you both know this is it, you are out of time and there’s no going back to the way things were or salvaging what’s left- the kind of goodbye I wish we had had in real life. You sighed, laughed and apologized; “it was worth a shot”, you said.
We laid there for a few minutes more before pounding on the door broke the moment. You helped me escape out the window just as the police rush in. I can see your girlfriend in the back of a cop car. She’s strung out and defeated.
I wake up and that feeling is already in my throat. My boyfriend asks if I’m ok and alls I can say is “just a bad dream”.
When I think about the last few years through the pandemic, I get anxious with the knowledge of how it would have fucked us up. My waitressing job, you on the corner with a cardboard sign, meeting at stores and hotels with our dealers- that shit didn’t happen during a pandemic. Would we have been forced to get clean out of desperation or dug deeper into a pitiful hole?
Then I remember who we were when I left. When I called your brother to come get you and drag you back to the Midwest, thousands of miles away from me. There is little doubt in my mind we would have both been dead long before 2020.
I’m lucky.
This life isn’t easy. Sometimes I feel like a fraud.
I’ve always joked that people don’t believe half the shit I say about the things I’ve done, person I’ve been.
I moved out on my own at 17, black belt in tae kwon do, fire fighter, traveled all over Europe alone for months, photographer, lived in Italy for 2 years, worked on a well known travel tv series, manager of a glass shop, kleptomaniac, heroin addict.
Those last two don’t get mentioned in casual conversation or humble brags.
I always thought we’d have each other to talk about our past. There’s no explaining the shit we got into. Some of the stories are the kind of crap you can look back and laugh about now that we’re years separated from the situation- remember that first time I went with you on a run to Chicago and 5 mins after we left the spot we get pulled over? The cops seemed surprised it was me driving and a puppy on your lap. They even joked and asked if I “happened to have a small amount of cocaine with a large amount of marijuana and heroin in the trunk”. Before laughing and waving us on.— oddly specific to exactly what was actually hidden in the dog crate in the back seat.
I miss you. I’m still angry at you for giving up. I’m still blaming myself for how I left you.
I don’t talk to your mom as often as I used to. We used to text or call for birthdays, holidays etc. but it’s gotten more infrequent.
I’m going to be back home for the first time in three years. The last trip back I spent the night at your parents house. I slept in your brothers bed. Your mom made me breakfast the next morning like she used to.
Should I call them? Part of me wants to see them, they welcomed me into your family for 7 years. I want them to know I’m doing well. I want to know that them and your brothers are ok.
Maybe I just want to reminisce on the parts of my life I can’t with anyone else. No one else knew the side of you I loved.
I think about how my life would be different if you were still alive. Would I have stayed with the asshole I fell even harder into after you died? The guy that I punished myself with or would I have left him before he almost killed me?
Would I have eventually given in and met you half way for a rendezvous in the Ozarks- crashing in the same guest bed we spent our summers on?
Would I eventually have let you pull me back down? I always said NO in my dreams but real life is harder. Would I have used you as an excuse to fall?
Or would we be five years down the road, able to text eachother stupid shit randomly as friends with a secret past neither of our family or partners could understand.
I found a bunch of photos of us on an old memory card last year. The images were painful to look at but I’m glad I found them. There’s even some of you and your brothers and parents that I really should send to them.
It’s been 5yrs, 2 months I’ve been clean and 4yrs 11months you’ve been gone.
Time doesn’t heal wounds.
Time just makes it easier to stay on level ground and not step off the cliff of grief and guilt.
