Swallow

Chapter 1.2:

"I'm going to miss you." Mom said, standing on the front porch with a frown on her face.

"Yeah, I'm going to miss you too, Momma." I pulled her into a tight hug.  She had been the only constant in my life and I had spent all of my teenage years being a little shit to her. I was finally ready to make up for it; I was ready to make her proud of me.  I had been clean for the last two months and it had been a lot harder than I ever imagined. In fact, it had taken me almost three full years of struggling with my addiction to get to this point. Flipping back and forth between withdrawal and relapse left my body in a constant state of chaos, but I was determined to do it this time.

It didn't help that my cousin Jake was my main dealer. He was a pushy one too.  He was slightly older than me and I looked to him as my guide to all things that were depraved. He introduced me to everything I ever got into—pot, pills, pipes, needles, and sex.

The pot and pills came first.  Once I got ahold of them, I could never get enough. I had to have them to make it through the day. One time a day became two, and two became three until they had taken me over. I thought about the drugs every second of every day.

It got so bad at some point that the effects of the pills had stopped working their magic for me. It was taking a lot more of them just to get me a slight buzz. I was bitching to Jake one day because I was running out of my stash and he couldn't get me any more until the following day.  He suggested I try shooting up. He had been doing it for a while and thought I should try it too. He touted the epic quick high I could get from injecting the poison into my body and it intrigued me. By the end of the night, my arm was burning as he pulled the needle out from under my skin. 

After that, I was hooked on anything I could get. I sat back and watched him do the same thing to my cousin Mandy, but her story didn't turn out the same way mine did.  He shot her up and sat back as her body started convulsing. She was foaming at the mouth as the bad batch he gave her shut her body down.  I called 911 and held her in my arms while he laughed at the way her whole body was jerking.  She wasn't breathing for almost eight whole minutes before the paramedics got there. 

They were able to save Mandy, but she had some serious issues after. She went into the night a girl with a big future; she was on her way to college with a full-ride scholarship. She was going to make something of herself. When she came out of the coma she was in, she could barely even dress herself without help. Her mind was slower and she would say things that didn't make a lot of sense. Over time, she relearned how to do things most people took for granted, but she was never the same.

Watching Mandy go through that scared the piss out of me.

That was what made me decide I needed to get out of that life. It was the reason why I had to leave town. I kept slipping back too easily and didn't stand a chance where I was. I needed a fresh start without the reminders of why I started using in the first place.

When I told Jake I was leaving and went to say goodbye to him, he gave me a parting gift. He handed me six bottles of pills for the road in case I needed them.  I took them from him without hesitation just to be done with him. 

Three of the pill bottles were in the side pocket of one of my guitar cases right now; the other three were hiding under the loose floorboard in my closet. I'm not sure why I kept them or decided to take some with me.  I should have flushed them the second I got home.  I think I wanted to prove to myself that I didn't really need them. If I had them and didn't use them, then I had to be better. It would help me learn how to control the urges, which was something I always struggled with.

"Are you sure you really have to go? You are doing so well now. " Mom's lip trembled as she ran her fingers over my eyebrow rings and pushed my hair back off my face.