CHAPTER SIX

FUTURE

I was developing a severe twitch, my head jerked quickly to the side, as if giving directions with my forehead, with each click of the clocks second hand. It was an involuntary spasm which was becoming second nature; after all, I had been listening to that constant clicking sound for 518,400 seconds by now. Wow. More than half a million seconds, that meant 8,640 minutes had gone by and the ONLY thing to remind me that I was not dead was that STUPID sound reverberating in my brain. If I simply had the strength to lift one of my shoes and fling it at the wall, I would have, like 4,320 minutes ago.

It felt like an eternity has passed, but a quick glance at my iPhone reminded me that as much as I love math and breaking things down into numbers, it had not even been a full week. That’s right, it had only been SIX days since I ate a normal meal, SIX days since I got up out of bed, a quick sniff of my underarms confirmed that it’s been AT LEAST 6 days since I showered. But none of that matters because it has ALSO been six days since I’ve taken any meth.

Going cold turkey was NOT like turning off the engines of a Gulfstream G500 Jet and allowing it to slowly descend in silence as it makes a somewhat emergency yet smooth landing, crashing with style. No, it was more like STOPPING that jet in midair while it’s traveling at Mach 0.925, soaring at an altitude of over 42,000 feet and watching it make an immediate vertical descent causing a crash that NO ONE would want to witness in fear of becoming a casualty; which must be why no one has been HERE, at my place, this past week. And when I say no one I am really only referring to one person: Angel.

As awful as I felt, I tried to convince myself that the withdrawal was not that bad. Sure, I couldn’t even get out of bed those first few days, and every time I did find the strength to open my eyes I was so dizzy and disoriented that closing them was so much more comforting. But the WORST part of it is not so much what the withdrawal does to your body as much as what it does to your MIND. I’ve been lying in bed feeling as physically motivated as a corpse yet my mind has been racing at 1000 mph.

‘I can’t DO this. Meth isn’t so bad. It’s KILLING you. No kill is a drastic word; THIS is killing you, this laying in bed with NO food, NO water, and NO strength to do ANYTHING about it. I should just take a little look at what I did to Angel because of this STUPID withdrawal. Did I REALLY do that? Did I REALLY break her ribs? I can’t do this; I can’t think straight. If I just take more meth I will be back on my feet, I can get her back.”

As broken as my life had become, which was as shattered as the bones on Angel’s body that I myself had torn apart with my own bare hands, I still could only think of one thing: how to keep Angel, how to HEAL Angel, how to heal myself FOR Angel. I was still living for Angel and not for myself.

Not only was I physically dealing with fatigue, anxiety, paranoia, unpleasant yet lucid dreams as well as bouts of psychosis due to the meth withdrawal but I was soon to learn about the devastating symptoms of emotional withdrawal.

Bonding is a biological and emotional process that makes people more important to each other over time, it’s like emotional cement that keeps us jointly connected to certain people. But do not mistake bonding for love, friendship, or attraction. No. We can lose our love for people, friendships weaken and we can feel less attracted to a person even if we are still in a relationship with them; yes, these are things that can lesson or ultimately be lost. Bonding, on the other hand can’t be lost while still in the relationship, rather it gets stronger over time, never diminishing or lessoning in any way.

I was certainly entangled with Angel; I was bonded to her in a way I had never known you could bond with another individual. I was a man stuck in the web of a beautiful woman who sadistically seemed to relish in my anguish.

My spiral of decline into the God forsaken and bottomless abyss of this relationship had traveled through the hedonistic wastelands of massive excess, debauchery and borderline perversion. She first had to take me to the outer limits of my ability to enjoy, stretching my concept of bliss to the point where pleasure of every kind is indistinguishable from pain or depravity. She wanted to show me the extremities of human existence, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I knew, deep down, that she did this not for my education; and it was certainly not for my pleasure; rather it was for her insatiable addiction to narcissistic supply.

Angel knew that the bigger the drop, the bigger the nose dive, the faster the plummet to that baseline of despair, the bigger the thrill. She is the true addict. While some people get addicted to alcohol, drugs, sex, and while some are addicted to all three; Angel was addicted to the internal rush she got which came from the absolute control she had over me. Nothing, absolutely nothing demonstrated to her, her absolute control better than pulling the plug out on the hedonistic life she had created for me, purposely crashing the hard drive of my existence and watching me shatter from the inside out. THAT was her high.

And yet regardless of what she had done to me and why, I was still wrapping my head around what I had done to HER at the Sea Gardens. Trying to tell myself that I had been in an abusive relationship brought no comfort, trying to convince myself that I had done it because she PUSHED me to do it was failing badly. Deep down I knew what I had done, but a part of my mind refused to allow myself to believe it. It was as if the event that my mind was replaying over and over was a part of a movie that I was watching, which had an unfamiliar actor playing my part. I felt as if I was grasping onto a reality that was quickly slipping out of my grip. I was beginning to feel schizophrenic and out of control, which was NOT a common experience for me.

I am usually very in control of what I do – even if it’s 100% stupid, it’s still 100% MY stupid actions and I never blame shift or claim that I was coerced into it. Even if others may persuade me at times, I still own the fact that my decisions are ultimately…mine. But this attack at the Sea Gardens toyed with my mind, confusing my reality. It had happened on a Thursday night at 7:05 p.m. on the 15th of September – a date and time embedded forever in my mind. This date seemed to mark a turning point within me; it became the day I could no longer be in control of myself, the day paranoia began to grow and spread, the day I knew I was capable of doing things that would haunt me the rest of my life.

It also became the day that pushed me to humble myself, to accept the fact that I could not help myself, I could not peel myself off the ground on my own; it became the day that I acknowledged and accepted the fact that I needed help desperately.