Continuing the discussion from One year anniversary of his death:
03.01.19
Dear K.
Two months and I will be clean for two years! I literally can’t believe it, and increasingly I fear I’m going to need to reset my “sober clock” app. Things have been going fine. Work is great. School is… school… My mom is doing ok. But fuck if I haven’t been thinking about getting a bag. I wouldn’t even shoot it, I tell myself… just snort it… just a line or two it won’t be a big deal.
I started having dreams again about using, “just once” I say in the dreams. You’re always there of course offering me a plate with a line on it while we’re driving to Chicago.
Eventually we spiral down again and I tell you I have to go back to North Carolina, I have to stop the drugs again, leave you again. God damn if I don’t still see your face and the disappointment mixed with confusion and loneliness. We both cry and you beg me to stay with you, get clean with you. It’s different in my dream than what actually happened… In reality I never told you I was leaving, I never told you I was cutting you out of my life and that things were over, I had all of my things and the dogs packed and gone before you even knew what happened. I said fuck you and left. I was selfish and took for granted our years together. For better or worse it was always us.
Until it wasn’t.
I went back home over the holidays recently. The first time I’d made that drive back to our home state without you in the car next to me. I did have S with though, she’s always been such a good road-trip dog(probably thanks to those drives shed come with when we’d be trafficking shit from Chicago in exchange for “wholesale” price from the dealers? WTF were we thinking taking those kinds of risks?).
I went and saw your parents. I brought S because she always loved them and I figured having her would make me less anxious there. Do you know how fucking heartbreaking it was to have this dog know where we were before we even pulled up? It had been at least 4 years since we’d been back there, but she knew. She jumped out of the car and ran straight to the front door… when your mom came out she eagerly greeted her with kisses for a moment before detouring up the stairs and to the right. Straight to your old room. My heart broke all over again, it truly felt like the day your dad called and told me…
That little dog was so confused that you weren’t in the room. She was so excited because she thought after all the time apart that she was going to see you there. She knew that this place meant YOU but you weren’t there. The entire rest of that night she didn’t stop wandering around upstairs from your bedroom to your brothers, pacing and sniffing, just lost and confused without you.
Of course your mom made some amazing dinner like always. I sat at the table with them, same places we always sat with your mom to my left and your dad at the head of the table… except the place to my right was empty, you weren’t arguing with your dad the entire time while your mom caught me up on family gossip and what your brothers were up to.
We stayed up and talked for hours. We talked about you… all the good and all the bad. Your parents had a lot of questions obviously… and I didn’t hold anything back; there’s no point in trying to sugar coat the life we were leading before I left and called your mom to bring you back home… So many tears, so much fucked up honesty. All of us rotating between what a piece of shit you were and making our way around to how much we miss you. All of us saying out loud and admitting that you used everyone around you- the three of us the most because we loved you more than anyone and you knew it. But no amount of the bad, not even the worst of it could be harder and more difficult than the pain of not having you in our lives.
I could never stand your love of Knick-knacks and boarder line hoarding. It was one thing your mom and I would laugh about that you got from your dad. You and him were on such opposite ends of so many things but that was one trait you got from him. Now your dad has a mini shrine to you in his office. It’s just a bunch of trinkets you had on you that night: your wallet, a movie ticket stub, grocery list, your Swiss Army knife you got on your trip to Switzerland etc. Things that are completely useless, half of which you should have thrown out but sentimentally held onto for no reason and now he can’t let them go either. Then I saw the one thing I couldn’t help but burst into tears over. After all those years you still had the main bead from the first thing you ever gave me. Your parents had no idea what it was, I told them the story of our spring break trip to Florida, you bought (well stole actually but we’ll stick with bought for your parents) me this awesome bead and leather necklace with a green moon pendant on it. I wore it 24/7 until it broke about a year afterwards. You told me you were going to fix it and you tried but your attempt at making a new one was pretty terrible lol. So instead I went and got that green moon face tattooed on my wrist. We had agreed previously in a random (likely drug fueled) evening that people getting couple tattoos were absolutely ridiculous- but this tattoo “just represented this point in my life” I told you.
So there it was, that green moon that I had forgotten still existed was in your dads hand. After all the times I bitched at you for keeping shit we didn’t need… you kept that little piece of us.
People ask me all the time what that tattoo means, I always seem to have a different story. The truth means too much. It really does represent a specific time in my life but that time in my life was you.
I can only imagine how hard that was - but you know what, it just goes to show that he wanted to keep that piece of you. So as bad as you feel for the way you left things (even though I feel like that was what you needed to do), and that you feel responsible for his final downward spiral (you’re not), you gave him some times that he wanted to keep hold of just like he did for you, despite all the fucked up ness.