Just because you can't see it...

There’s the old man you pass on the street. Hasn’t showered for...who knows, and you can smell him a mile away. His teeth make you want to vomit, well from what you can see of them through his thick, unruly, graying beard. He asks you for your change, and acts desperate, but is just as quick to dismiss you for not giving him change as you are to dismiss him for being that way. That is not the one.

She’s young, grew up in a good home but rebelled against her parents because she feels like they are too strict. What started out as underage drinking turned into weed, then harder drugs until she dropped out of school, got raped, pregnant and ended up in an abusive relationship where she stays because she thinks there is no way out now. Still that’s not the one.

He hangs out in his basement, curtains drawn to hide from anything remotely related to sunshine. Owes money to everyone he knows, and has made promise after promise to get what he wants. Needle marks are the scars that remain from satisfying his need. When he doesn’t get it, she gets beat, the kids are scared and live in silence, slowly growing into the monster they learn by. But again, not the one.

She goes to work every day, 2 jobs plus night school so she can put food on the table for her little girl. Polite to everyone, and would give anyone the shirt off her back. Watches the news about all the sad things that go on in the world and cries for them. Behind her bedroom door lies the abuse, drugs, alcohol and painful memories of her childhood. When that door is closed she can’t be trusted, but open, she is the hardworking and honest woman everyone knows and loves. This is the one.

Not every addict is noticeable. Some manage to hide in the darkness of the life they’ve created, satisfying their need when they can but staying careful not to get caught. When she went to rehab, and people started finding out, I would hear things like “I had no idea she was an alcoholic or used cocaine”, or “this can’t be real, she wouldn’t do that”. Well, she would and she did.

Just because she didn’t drink out of a paper bag that she bought with the nickels and dimes she scraped together on the sidewalk, didn’t mean she didn’t have a problem. She went to work every day and often worked more than one job so that she could keep up with bills and life. Still she drank, still she used. There was a roof over her head, and clothes on her back, but she was good at hiding behind it. It was like a mask she wore to say to the world “I won’t let my past be a problem in my future”, but behind the mask she was really saying “please, catch me. Help me.”

Just a few months shy of 7 years sober she relapsed. And this time, she was making up for lost time. Although she was better off than before, and free of people in her life that brought their darkness into her life, she was lonely. A few beers took Mr. Lonely away but brought in a world she thought she had escaped from. Those few drinks lead to a drinking establishment which she apparently wore a sign reading “please, I’m lonely and have a problem saying no”. Mr. Wrong enters. And just like before, in one foul swoop, 6 and a half years of strength and serenity is thrown away like yesterdays garbage.

He brought her a world she was willing to accept as long as it meant she wouldn’t be alone. So those few drinks she said “I can have a few now, I’m ok”, turned into binges. Those binges lead to a need to cure a hangover and stay awake for work, drugs should do the trick. And like a yo-yo one when one thing brought her down, something else would bring her up. She’s not working anymore.

Disappearing acts began, people searching for her because they are concerned, and when she finally surfaces, she’s angry people won’t let her be. Like it’s all ok. Mr. Wrong is slowly feasting off her insecurities and bleeding her dry of every ounce of dignity she had left. Job after job, begging for money, making promises she can’t keep. Alienating herself from the people that love her, she’s starting to lose her grip on this. It’s definitely not like it was before. Her addiction now, makes her past addiction look like a cake walk.

Addiction turns to abusive fights, empty promises, bad holiday memories and a mess of debt. But she loves him. He doesn’t mean to hurt her. Then he leaves for awhile to go make money somewhere and she cleans up, gets her strength back. “I’m not going to do this again” she promises herself. Then he comes home, drugs in hand and she’s lost another job and they need more money for rent.

One day finally comes when enough is enough, there are no more fights, no more bruises or lost jobs. They don’t need money anymore and she certainly won’t be bothering anyone with those problems. She took one last weekend of it and decided that the partying was over. Either she decided or the drugs did, because she died. It’s Thanksgiving morning. A knock on the door, a rookie cop in a uniform, stuttering the words, nervous. What does he have to be nervous about? It’s not his mother that overdosed, it’s mine.

I can tell you what happened next was a series of emotions and planning. Funeral arrangements, phone calls and a week later it was over and everyone went back to their lives. Mine was now less one person. You would think possibly that I was relieved, but my life was good. She took care of me. By this point I had been long moved out on my own. She was my best friend. Her addiction didn’t define the person she was when she was clean, and she was wonderful. Things growing up were hard, but it was all I knew so it never bothered me.

Now I see her everywhere and wish she was still here. Perhaps if she did drink from a paper bag or live on the streets, people would have felt sorry enough to help her? Who knows. She doesn’t get another chance. I can tell you why she probably was the addict she was, but it would not even skim the surface to the dark and empty hole she covered up so well for so long. It was inevitable that one day that hole would eventually be too big to burden and swallow her up. As it did.

When I see people asking for change now, I give if I can. Maybe I’m enabling them, but maybe I’m going to help save one persons Mom or Dad, brother or sister, daughter or son. We can’t judge them, not because we don’t know them or what they’ve been through but, we can’t judge them because we have no right. They most likely judge themselves much more than 100 people who pass them off as trash on the street, and that’s half the reason they are there. No one left to believe in.

My Mother was one person, and many never even knew. Some people are easily known. But all addicts, obvious or not, are suffering enough without us looking down on them. We think it’s hard dealing with them, and that it’s unfair we have to, but the consequence of abandoning them because “it’s their own problem”, is a life of guilt that we could have done something. We can’t change them, but we can be there to show them, they are worth getting help.