Chapter One
Bailey
Growing up, I’d never imagined that I would fall in love with a drug addict. But it happened.
Tyler wasn’t answering my calls, and I had begun to get worried. My concern and anxiety heightened over the last year, ever since Tyler became addicted to heroin.
I stared down at the person I once loved—who became almost unrecognizable. He wasn’t the good-looking, toned, and healthy guy I saw walk into that creative writing class my second year in college. I’m sure it was love at first sight. I felt an instant connection—complete and utter infatuation with him.
We were out of our minds in love.
The reminders of our times together flashed through my mind when I yet again found him passed out on the floor of his apartment. He was lying on his back with a syringe hanging out of his left arm. The little orange cap haphazardly laid nearby. The fucking orange cap that would haunt my dreams for months to come.
I reached my hand up to my forehead and gently wiped the moist skin. He must have forgotten to turn on the airconditioner, and it made me wonder how long he’d been lying there drenched in sweat.
My eyes had fallen to his arms, riddled with pink track marks from repeated use. Some were as long as an unsharpened pencil, others were newer, fresher, and full of healthy veins ready to be broken down and damaged. The sharp point of the needle hung from the base of one of those track marks.
His favorite one.
The one most mutilated. The one that his cells had tried to heal many times before—not standing a chance against his repeated torture; it’s raised from scar tissue with a soft ball at the end.
His breathing was hollow, as I hardly made out the rise and fall of his chest.
A lump formed in my throat.
I couldn’t have kept doing this—finding him in random places, passed out, almost nonresponsive. Sometimes I’d find him in abandoned parking lots, construction sites, and even his hall closet once.
He wasn’t always a heroin addict. He used to be a loving son, best friend, caring brother, and attentive boyfriend. Once he took that walk with the darkness, that first hit of overpowering euphoria, nothing else in his life stood a chance against it. Most twenty-somethings party hard in college, making questionable decisions, but few let it get that far. I’ll never truly understand how it went from popping pills at parties and raves to shooting up in bathrooms and closets.
Tyler came from a well-off family with what felt like an endless amount of money at his disposal. His mother struggled with alcoholism for years, often putting down multiple bottles of wine a day. Perhaps he carried traits that supplied himwith an addictive personality. Perhaps he was just an unlikely recipient of a long string of unfortunate events.
With a combination of confusion, rage, and sadness, I thought back to the good times we had together. Even though there weren’t many as the darkness took hold of him rather quickly, the whirlwind love we had was incredible and good until it got bad, really bad.
Tyler would have never hurt me, and even in his times of deep desperation, he’d never put his hands on me. However, he had put my life in danger more times than I could count.
I had bent down and kneeled next to him. “Tyler. Can you hear me?”
I scanned the length of his limp body, and I landed on the puddle of drool that formed under the left corner of his mouth. The tears started to build in the back of my eyes and stung as I refused to blink, letting them spill over. My eyes locked on the unconscious man who laid on the floor at my feet with the sleeves of his white shirt pushed up to his elbows. Small red dots scattered the light-colored fabric and showed evidence of the work he put in for that particular high.
I clutched both of his shoulders. I had shaken him a few times. When he didn’t flinch or show any signs of a response, my heart raced.
“Tyler!” I screamed, having heard the panic in my own voice echo throughout the apartment as each second had passed, and he didn’t budge. I thought, ‘Maybe he took too much this time? Is this the day that I’ve been dreading? The day that I find him dead?’
Those thoughts ignited dull flames in my mind that eventually turned into a raging wildfire, catching every neuron and every ounce of resilience that I had left.
I frantically yanked my phone from my purse with my hands trembling so much that I could barely swipe it unlocked.
Then I dialed 9-1-1.
Within minutes, the paramedics were at the door. The shock had overtaken my body as I rose on shaky legs to let them in. In a haze, I was able to give them the information they needed, and with that, the EMTs explained that he was going to need a good detox, but he would be alright.
I had to pry my locked fingers from tightly gripping my phone to call my mom. Through frenetic tears, sobs, and barely audible words, I had replayed for her the events that had occurred. My mom calmly told me that she sent both my brother and dad to pick me up.
After the ambulance drove Tyler away, I crawled into his bed for the last time.
I pulled his blankets over my entire body, and I withdrew into a fetal position and cried. I cried harder than I ever had at that point in my life.
I knew it was time to let him go.
