Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a heroin addict who has recently entered treatment. SILD is doing great, on a tremendous voyage of self-discovery and new beginnings. Meanwhile I seem to be in the throes of some kind of PTSD and all my initial work in discovering codependence and in recognizing changes I need to make — all of that overwhelms me, saps me of energy, and really pisses me off. I just want to live my frigging life. I already did therapy back in my 20s and 30s. I don’t want to go to more meetings. I want to wake up having learned what I need to learn, adjusted what I need to alter. However, that approach never worked for learning Spanish so I assume it won’t be effective here, either.

I keep thinking about all the ways addicts seem to have more energy and fun* than those closest to them and in my darkest moments I imagine addicts as vampires of the spirit. In my self-sorriest moments I see the codependents as second-string sidekicks, leeches who latch on to give themselves purpose.  In more open moments I look around me in the meetings and see the addicts and the loved ones united by a drive to improve, to not waste another hourdayyeardecade of our lives.

Curiously, of late I am learning a lot from a character in my novel Scar Jewelry, Heather. “Curiously” because I don’t entirely like Heather. But lately I keep thinking about back in her wild younger days, when she was Heater, and her husband died in a motorcycle accident, and her friends feared that her devastation would provoke suicide. When they voiced their concerns, her reaction was No way! I’m not done yet! Lately when I spiral into the darkest or self-sorriest  moments I find myself repeating that phrase.

*After all, as Neil Young first pointed out, “every junkie’s like a setting sun.”