Reality
The Ways We Fall
My plight isn’t remarkable, just another story. All the people who left the same doors I did only to fall off the edge and never look back. We all leave intact, but it takes only a moment to fall apart.
Many in that program though knew their sanity was only being restored temporarily, I could see it in their eyes, contemplating. Once they left this safety zone, nothing would be waiting for them outside.
With all the services brought forward within those walls, I thought better attention would be made for after care, but in life nobody can hold your hand and many refuse what is made available. When you’ve never had support it’s hard to invite it, even if you know it’s best. When it’s pushed on you for a condensed amount of time you almost rebel from it, not thinking about the future. But so much isn’t done, people just walk out, meds abruptly stopped, supports cut off, no homes to go to or loved ones to pick them up.
They lived in that moment, in that solace. The grim reaper still looking in their windows. The relationships and the supports are comforts many never felt and for that time it eases their broken spirits. But still, never could those walls take away all that pain, cure their loneliness or changed the reality that awaited them once their time was up.
We knew each other while our health was restored and though these illnesses were among us, we all understood one another, something you don’t find beyond those walls. They became my friends.
They are all gone, and I have chosen that path. Knowing my road couldn’t be wrought with risk, the possibility of another weighing my chains when already mine are heavy with burden.
They still have my number though.
The one young man was fun, but such hurt lay within him. He was like me though, a sense of humor that made the darkness easier to live with. Never did we get in depths about the whys of us being where we were. We simply enjoyed bouncing a laugh off our jaded souls. He got out before I did and immediately lost his footing. I talked to him a bit while he was trying to get back up, but I could tell his hope wasn’t his strength.
I know he’s gone. And not just a relapse, I know he is gone, gone. His mistress meth took him and his sanity ran away with the spoon. He’s left me two messages in the middle of the night, I’m sure on a runaway with her. Trying either to instill fear in me or simply reaching out from the gates of his mind. But I don’t know what to do, if anything. I know I can not save him, as much as I wish I could give him anything. I can only wish him well. Wish this wasn’t his reality.
He was not the only one, there was another. Eye’s so sad, wanting better but knowing better wasn’t outside those doors. A good man who never had a chance, I call him a good man even though he told me he had taken lives, I felt his pain and understood his history. He was supposed to go home for the weekend and he never came back. I should have known, his goodbye to me very purposeful. Later we hear his stuff was packed up as he never returned. What a weekend can do.
I watched the people, so I could learn from them and I gave what I could so they could learn from me. The progression of mental illness and addiction are steady and I just hope to miss those hurdles. Where that inner light is barely flickering anymore. When the pain is so overwhelming, when you’ve been there time and time again, and you already know, this is just a vacation from the madness. There is no recovery.
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