Keely Flom

Addiction

            Can love for someone be an addiction?  Theses kinds of questions play out through my mind on a continual basis.  The one man that I had an addiction to if you want to call it that, I thought I had cured and never wanted to come back into my life was him.  In my heart he was the one I was addicted too.  The one that I always wished was addicted to me but never was.  I always dreamed of him coming back and telling me how good he is doing.  How he was a fool to have ever let me slip away and would do anything to have me back.  I would dream of him being addicted to me.  The sad thing is that I have heard it all before when he had no one else.  The fool that I was, I wanted to believe him, but I knew that if I let him I would become addicted to him again.

            Life with him was quixotic, intense, and full of what some would call puppy love.  We were young and foolish when we met.  It was instant love – we couldn’t get enough of one another.  Then we went down a road that I thought would never end.  He started using; I mean really using hard stuff, not just weed but ecstasy and cocaine.  I would be lying if I told you that I wasn’t okay with it because it made our sex life unbelievable, another addiction of mine.  But that was in the beginning.  He started wanting to use drugs all the time and I would never know when he was high and when he wasn’t, this is probably because he was never not high. 

            He started to loose focus of his responsibilities, but he would always promise me he would take care of business.  It eventually turned into me sounding like his mother instead of his lover and he hated that.  The one thing that he always did was push me to do well in school and at work but never took the advice himself.  The next thing I know he is taking other girls out, knowing full and well that I was going to be there – I just didn’t get it.  Things like these went on for the longest time. 

            Then he would drop off the face of the earth.  I wouldn’t here from him for months.  Then just when I thought I had it together and had overcame my addiction he would appear with his big brown eyes and I would fall for him all over again. 

            Then I did it.  I walked away.  Technically it wasn’t just away from him but away from everything that I knew up to that point.  I just couldn’t stand it any more.  I felt claustrophobic, my addiction to him was consuming my life and I had to get clean.  I didn’t want anything to do with him; I had had enough. I had to go, and so I did. Not that I went far.  Just 90 miles.  I don’t know why that felt a million miles away but it was far enough for me to loose contact, overcome my addiction and that was all I wanted to do. 

            After a year I began to wonder if he even cared.  I had a weak moment, which did not happen often after I had my release from my addiction, and I called him.  He answered phone and was surprised to her my voice.  He wanted to come and see me but I wouldn’t let him back in.  I just wanted to hear him say he wanted me back and that was enough for me to get a fix.  We did not speak for another six months. 

            During those six months I met someone new, someone who had the same desires, the same goals in life.  I was fascinated with Andrew, his family and his friends.  There was something in Andrew’s eyes that told me he felt the same way, that he had an addiction to me.  The difference with Andrew was that it was a healthy one.  We built a solid foundation.  Then our biggest fear became reality – I was pregnant.   

I was devastated. We cried and held each other.  Even though we were adults, Andrew and I didn’t want a child but decided that if we were grown up enough to have sex then we were grown up enough to have a baby.  The weird thing was that my old addiction came back to mind.  My feelings resurfaced and I couldn’t help but think of him.  I secretly wished he was the father.

Andrew and I didn’t tell our parents because I lost the baby.  Andrew promised me more kids one day but I couldn’t see that anytime in our future.  I really didn’t want that future with Andrew, I wanted it with him.

Three years went by, Andrew and I had moved back to our home town.  When I left I never though I would have moved back, but it didn’t seem so bad now that I was with Andrew.  After our big loss we seemed to grow together more. 

I didn’t announce that I came back, which helped, but the one thing that I couldn’t repress was the thought of him.  My addiction some how came bubbling back to the surface.  Wondering what he was doing, how he looked, if he cleaned up his act, if he finally went off to school.  Then it hit me – what did I have in common with him?  Nothing. Nothing at all.  I convinced my self that he was the loser he always was, the drug addict that he always claimed not to be, and was probably still living off other people just so he can feed his addictions. 

I was free of him; I was free from my addiction.

I did it.  No more thoughts late at night wondering about him.  My new addiction was Andrew.  I finally could see Andrew and me, 80 years old, sitting in our rocking chairs on our front porch in the hill country, grandchildren playing in the front yard and smell the fried chicken and sweet peach cobbler floating through the air.  It was as easy as that.  I had planned our lives out for us, now all Andrew had to do was ask. 

I waited for another year and decided to ask Andrew instead.  Of course he said yes and I started the planning.  We had everything done, with the exception of the cake and honeymoon, before we went on our big trip to Europe and 11 months before we said I do.  I was on cloud nine.  I couldn’t help but smile thinking to myself how well my life was turning out to be.  I had everything I ever wanted and more, I was truly happy.

Then he called.

I told him that I was engaged – of course he was not thrilled.  He told me of how he was getting clean.  I was proud of him, but he still was the same guy that I left – living off some one else, no job, and had no plans other than to get sober.  That was saying a lot but like I said before he has said it many times.  This time was different though, I could tell something was different.  Then he told me.

He got busted with his so called friend’s drugs.  It is so hard to believe an addict but for some reason I believed him.  I felt sorry for him.  I had to see him even if it was for one last time.

He looked different, not as I pictured him.  God was it good to be in his arms.  The strength of his hug was so strong; I felt that nothing could hurt me.  But I always felt this way when I was in his arms.  He told me of his story and it broke my heart.  How could someone so smart and be so stupid at the same time?  It was so hard for me to understand, but in my heart I knew – he was the same person that I always knew – he didn’t know the potential he had. 

The feelings came rushing back and my addiction came over me.  I ended up asking him the questions that I had held on to for seven years.  Why did he not keep me when he had the chance?  Did he still love me?  Why would he still want me when we were so horrible to each other?  Did he have a relationship like ours with anyone else?  Why did he let me leave?  Why didn’t he ask me to stay – that’s all it would have taken.

He cried.  I told him how I really felt about Andrew.  How I really felt about him. I told him how I wanted my life to go…how I wish he were Andrew…then I had to leave.  Andrew was home by then and even though my body was yearning for him for his fix, I knew that I had to go.  Leaving, I wondered if he felt the same way.

Fighting an addiction is hard to do.  I feel that it is possible to have an addiction to a person that you care for but keep it only as that. Not knowing what the future holds, I often wonder how my life will turn out to be.  Even though I still have my addiction to him that is all it is and will ever be – a fascination that is not in tune with reality.  I realize now that I have the capability of dealing with my addiction without actually falling back into it.  Andrew is my choice…he is the one…he has become my true addiction.

Revision Account           

I had originally decided to try and write a fiction piece based on my grandfather’s World War II experience.  I had it all planned out and would think of ideas but before I could get to a computer or write them down they would be gone from my mind.  I did this for two months before I actually started to write my story. 

            I got a lot down but was struggling with how to get all of the stuff that I wanted to say about him out.  The time line was not fitting within my limitations and I just could not get what I wanted to say to come out the way it played in my head.  I read over my chapters and implemented some of Merger’s suggestions.  Still I had no luck.  Then it I hit a wall.  Better yet I think I had that wall up the whole time I was trying to write.  It was just so frustrating because I wanted to do my grandfather justice and still make it enjoyable piece to read.  So instead of beating my head against the wall I tried a different focus altogether.

            I decided to go out on a limb and try writing a piece that was based on some since of the present.  I love reading love stories, so I decided to look on the internet for a quote about love with hope that it would inspire me.  To my luck it did.  I found a quote by Rob Cella.   "A relationship is like a rose, How long it lasts, no one knows; Love can erase an awful past, Love can be yours, you'll see at last; To feel that love, it makes you sigh, To have it leave, you'd rather die; You hope you've found that special rose, 'Cause you love and care for the one you chose."

            I tried looking this man up to see who he was but found no such luck.  This quote spoke to me though.  I thought about my past relationships and how they could have turned out. I thought of my current love and tried to figure out whether this could apply to us.  I thought of my best friend who had sort of a rough life but found love so I just began to write.  I created this character of a man who I called him.  He is not based on anyone in particular just an accumulation of men in general that I knew at one point or another in time.  I wanted people to be able to read it and interpret it by relating the story to their own life.  I wanted to start off with the poem and then bring it back to the poem in the end.

            I shared my piece with JT and Anissa.  Anissa was the first to respond back with her ideas.  She liked the way that I made it so vague and I was happy to get that reaction because it was what I had intended.  She also liked the way that I used italics when I was addressing him.  She pointed out areas that were a little confusing, which helped me a lot because how I was reading it in my head was not how it was actually read on paper.  She also questioned my use, or lack of dialogue.  I also did that on purpose.  She thought that it was interesting to read a piece without any.

            JT responded and he got a totally different reaction from the piece.  I did not predict this happening but it makes since because a guy would not necessarily be able to relate to this story as well as some women would.  JT gave me an interesting new direction to look at developing this piece.  He said “Some of us can really empathize with falling for the person least good for us.  Maybe you could make the connection that her addiction to him was like his addiction to drugs.  She seems smart enough to understand bad choices, yet she makes them as well...”  This struck me like a ton of bricks.  The story that I had come up with was about an addiction to love and really had nothing to do with the quote at all, so I ran with it.

            The character him was a drug addict and the narrator of story was addicted to him.  It made perfect since so I changed up the story a little bit and this was my ending piece.   Although I like the way that the story turned out I feel that it is only a jumping off point.  I feel that with a little more time I could expand this piece into a bigger story with more character depth and even some dialogue.  Even though feel that I accomplished my vision of what I wanted the story to be, it will be revised and hopefully I can develop it into something bigger.