Raise your hand if you know what it feels like to have an addiction. Tell me – have you experienced the high that comes with obtaining that special, cherished object of your desire? That feeling when your chest swells with pride and knowing that the universe has gifted you with this particular moment – be it a puff of nicotine, a bite of cake, the strongest orgasm – whatever you call your vice. It feels as electrifying as getting struck by lightening – the electrocution creating a savage and lasting charge. There is nothing like the high. Then the separation comes, of you and your obsession. The addiction begins to consume your thoughts, suffocating your brain between hits. It is as if you are losing your mind … to this object.
Some of us know to get help; that with this addiction, we cannot survive. We will become its prisoner, if we let it. Those people go to rehab. Therapists. Counselors. They take medicine to become normal again. Their souls are strengthened and they detach. The marriage between self and addiction divorced, the dooming sense of reconciliation lingering in the air for life.
And then there are those like me.
The trouble with recognizing an addiction is that you don't realize you've met rock bottom until it smacks you in the face. I didn't realize mine until it was too late, although the warning signs were clear. Usually, your friends will notice it before you do. Your addiction changes you. You feel it, but your mind distorts the truth so that you feel you are progressing. It fools you, but your friends know.
Mine tried to warn me.
"Please, just come here for the night. When you calm down, we'll talk about what to do."
I giggled hysterically, shaking my head, trying to ignore the drumming heart beating painfully in my chest. My dear brother Chuckie never ceasing his role as the voice of reason, even beyond adolescence. Usually, it worked. He always knew the right thing to say to calm me down. He helped me put things into perspective and compartmentalize my unproductive emotions. Perhaps, finally, I met my tolerance level. After all, especially recently, I was calling on him more to help me keep my cool. I was losing it, I realized, but the hostility continued to blossom. The anger infected me.
"She keeps betraying me!" I screamed into the phone. I wanted to lurch it at the windshield, allowing myself to imagine the shards of glass from the windshield and the cellular phone intermingling as if they were destined to be together. As I first thought that we were – her and me.
He pleaded with me that night, as if he could see the look in my eyes through the phone. He knew. He knew before I did. I was drowning in this obsession with her. Our lifelong friendship, spiraling out of control, and my insatiable desire to savor it – he knew.
This is why he wanted me to come to his home that night.
This is why he called me twenty-seven times after our call dropped as I entered our apartment complex.
This is why he texted me ten times, threatening to send the police to the home Lil and I shared if I did not respond.
He knew to come to the house that night to check on me. Us.
"You're too late, Chuckie…"