Junk sick…
Today I made a visit to a person who is an active cocaine & heroin user, who has cancer, and who has wildly uncontrolled pain in spite of a s.h.i.t.l.o.a.d. of pain med. This person is addicted, this person doesn’t want to quit - only to not be in pain, this person knows that time is short and there’s no going back. This person hurts my heart.
I have loved, in my life, 2 junkies. Deeply. I am in no position to dissect the nature of addiction. I can’t pretend I know what it feels like to be as focused, driven, creative, and motivated as one needs to be to stay fixed. Or how ultimately exhausting and defeating it is. I am only an observer. I do know what it feels like to be begged, cried on, manipulated, promised to, emotionally distanced, and loved in the most desperate and intense way that I will ever know. Hope and despair. And hope.
So meeting this person today - watching the wall climbing, hearing the rap, being invited into the suffering, and trying to sort through notions of real and unreal - has slammed me back into a time and place that I wasn’t prepared for. I mean, I knew what to expect. I thought I was ready and maybe even a little bit of an “expert” (fucking arrogant. and stupid). This person will die hard, will suffer and suffer more still - in spite of my puny efforts, the efforts of the docs and the palliative experts. Despair.
I can’t sleep. And I can’t seem to drink enough to catch a proper buzz. Life’s not fair.
Comment by Jack
Friday October 06 2006 @ 2:51 am
Life is sometimes tough and unfair and mostly out of our control. Go for a run, it’s Autumn outside!