Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a heroin addict, newly revealed. Over the last few years, I have been ever more sucked into the addiction behaviors without knowing them as such. In many ways it is an enormous relief to have it all out in the open and to be going through this now – the rehab, the meetings, so many hidden cards on the table. Turns out that the kind of lies I have faced and the kinds of mental backflips and self-doubts I have entertained to accommodate the lies are akin to abuse. It was getting to the point that I was so uncertain about everything that I couldn’t bring myself to ask for help in a store.

But the last thing I want is to swoon with hand to forehead. The role of victim is such an unpleasant one.

It staggers me. The truth was slapping me upside the head for so long, yet I didn’t see it. I knew something was wrong.  I knew it deeply enough to distress my sleep and trash my ability to meet the day head-on. But I was completely clueless about what and how bad.

I didn’t think I was capable of that kind of denial. I am someone who so values honesty and who so regularly spotlights any emperor sans clothes. In this case, I could see the figures under the ice, gesturing and shouting; yet it never occurred to me to get a pick and smash a hole so I could hear what they were screaming.

When SILD admitted the heroin, my first reaction was “Oh no oh please no.” My second reaction was “No wonder.” After all these years, eagerly awaiting messages from my subconscious, I wouldn’t have thought I could so successfully block its transmissions for so long.