Goodbye

“I thought I saw someone coming to the door,” she said, sitting back down.

She looked around at the people sitting in front of her. Her mom, her sisters, her brother, her boyfriend, and her favorite uncle were all there. They were all looking at her as though they expected an answer. She couldn’t give them the one that they wanted. They wanted her to go to rehab. They wanted her to stop abusing prescription drugs, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t ready yet.

She had started out simple, the way that most people do. She was just taking them for a back injury. Then she realized how sweet the oblivion was. She realized that the days didn’t seem as long and she wasn’t as edgy if she was blurry from the pills. She started taking more and more until she had to buy them from drug dealers instead of just using her meds. One of the dealers had told her that she would get more bang for her buck if she crushed them up and snorted them, so she had started doing that instead. He was right and she was briefly able to stop using dealers and just using up her prescriptions.

That hadn’t lasted long, however, and soon she was back to hanging out with drug dealers to get enough of her pills to keep her happy. Before long, she was sleeping with them to get what she needed. She didn’t know why she was willing to do that. She loved her boyfriend. They had been high school sweethearts, actually. Lately, she had been impressed with his willingness to pick her up off of the bathroom floor and clean her up. He had cleaned vomit out of her hair and taken all of the intoxicated punches that she dealt. She loved him even more for it, but she wasn’t willing to go to rehab yet.

“I don’t think so, guys,” she said.

She got up and looked out the front window again.

“You know that paranoia is a side-effect of your drug abuse, right? There is and will not be anyone coming through that door,” said her mother.

“When was the last time you looked into a mirror?” asked her sister, with tears brimming on her lower eyelid.

“I know that I am underweight. I know that I am paranoid. You guys aren’t telling me anything that I don’t already know,” she said.

“Well then, why don’t I start telling you some things that you don’t know,” said her boyfriend, sounding resolved, “If you don’t go today, you are going to have to move out. You will not even be allowed back in to get your things, I will be keeping them to make up for the fact that you owe me your half of the rent for several months. No one sitting in this room right now will offer you a place to live.  We won’t even have phone conversations with you unless they pertain to you going to rehab. You will have no one and nothing left if you choose to keep using today.”

She looked around, shocked and scared.

“You guys can’t do this to me. Don’t you love me anymore?” she said, starting to cry.

“We love you too much to be complacent while you kill yourself slowly,” said her brother.

“Fine,” she said, ”I don’t need you. I don’t love you guys anymore either.”

She got up and walked out the door, grabbing her purse from the coat rack. When she got to the bus stop, she rifled through her purse and inventoried the contents. She had about $100, because she had sold some jewelry right before the intervention. She knew a couple of people who squatted in a condemned house downtown. She assumed that she could stay with them, especially if she was willing to share the $100 of dope that she intended to buy.

When the bus stopped downtown, she went and found the guy in the green beanie. He sold her the pills and said he would see her later, which she found funny. Her family wouldn’t see her later, but the drug dealer would. She walked over to the abandoned house and called out for the people she knew. They said that she could squat before she even offered them the drugs. As she sat down on the flattened cardboard box that was to become her bed that night, she noticed that they weren’t doing the same thing with the pills that she normally did. A second later, she noticed the needle.

“Are you in?” one of the men asked.

“Sure,” she said.