Addiction is a vacuum.  It sucks everyone and everything into its grasp.

It’s a hard life, it’s a heartache.

When you listen for the breathing, when you listen for movement, when you believe, when you are disappointed.

It’s a hard life, it’s a heartache.

When you see the potential in someone, when you know their circumstances, when they continue to fall and picking them up is only empowering to you not them. When you dare to think you can save them you only destroy yourself.   Your fundamental goodness is counterintuitive to what an addict needs.  It then becomes a race to see who will hit bottom first.

It’s a hard life, it’s a heartache.

It’s where I used to live.  Now I’ve moved.  To calm, to peace, to the enchanted forest.  I live here now, among all the things that tell my story of escape and joy and very little of what once was. I’ve put the hard life in its place but perhaps there are some boxes that I’ve yet to open.

My home has no attic in which to keep secrets and yet I hear noises coming from above.  Sadly they are familiar noises that sound exactly like a vacuum running. I find myself listening hoping they will stop like when you go too far and the plug pulls from the wall.  I didn’t think I could volunteer to do the cleaning upstairs, I didn’t think I was capable.  I struggled with the helping/hurting of yet another addict.  I know all too well the road to hell is paved with my good intentions.  I can’t go to hell again.

It’s a hard life, it’s a heartache.

But the noises get louder, and then they stop.  Like when you go too far and the plug pulls from the wall.  I can’t ignore the silence, silence could indeed be deadly.  Rally my resources, don’t do this alone, seek counsel of the authorities, seek your younger strength and let’s act.  I can’t bear the silence, I can’t live with the dichotomy of such a good person in free fall not having a soft place to land.

It all comes back, the whole script, all the steps, the surprise, the love required to take someone from the comfort of their addiction into the discomfort of detox and the twelve steps and the sponsor and the ninety meetings in ninety days and the and the and the.  There are times when I deeply resent knowing what I know and then there are times that I am keenly aware that they may save someone’s life…if they allow it.

That said, unpacking those boxes this weekend has been difficult for me, and while I know this shouldn’t be about me, I lived the hard life and I know the heartache.  My friend is safely tucked away in detox, her sisters are trying to fix her but I am giving them the three Cs in every phone call, they didn’t cause it, they can’t control it and they certainly can’t cure it.  I know like I know that I will only do this this one time, that people need to live their own consequence after being given all the tools they need to make it in the world of the clear minded, they are in charge, they too have their own three’s, serenity to accept the things they cannot change, courage to change the things they can and wisdom to know the difference.   God I just want my hour back.