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In my life I have come across many people and many different things. I have seen pain, the true kind, not the kind Hollywood would lead you to believe exists. I have seen despair and anger and all other emotions and states of being the human body can possibly experience. But most importantly, I have seen hope and what it means to truly have it.
I was raised in a small town in northern New Jersey that was roughly 2 square miles. It was of the cookie cutter kind where everyone knows everyone. It was mostly a blue collar town where the parents worked and the children went to school and at the end of the day the family would sit around the table for a recap of the day's events. What no one ever discusses is the sick little underground worlds that exist in the equally beautiful and well kept houses that line the street.
My father passed away four hours after I was born. My mother, who had already been through more than any one person should ever have to go through was sedated before she was told. Her world was gone just as quickly as it had put itself back together. To this day she has never gotten it back. She went to work as soon as she could stand on her own two feet again. I was left in the care of my grandmother, a beautiful strong lady from an island that did not know she was worth more than what she had been given. She loved herself through me. My father had been warm welcoming glue that made a family feel as if they did in fact belong in a place and country they had not yet begun to understand.
When I was three, my life was a balanced as it could have been. I was still living with my grandparents, my mom and her sisters in a tiny apartment. My mom had met a man named Fred and for the first time since my dad had passed my mom felt as if she had another chance. We quickly moved in with him and his three children who were at least ten years older than I. Everything was good.
Fred had a nasty habit of being best friends with scotch. My mom picked up that habit not too long after. I understood nothing of what was to happen for the next 10 years of my life. My mom stayed in work, she also began taking online classes so she could get her master’s degree in business. On the islands, education is the most important thing anyone could amount to. From as young as I can remember I was reading and rattling off the multiplication tables to my grandfather. Just like my mom, I lost myself in my school work. My mom was so absorbed in her papers, job and her drink that getting an A was the only way I could get her to notice me.
Fred and my mom became bitter and fought a lot, I would sometimes get caught in the crossfire. But time after time my mom began staying away more and I was left with Fred. I was such an easy target. I wish I could say that what happened next was like the stories we were told as kids about how good can overcome evil and how David was able to defeat Goliath and how we were safe. Kids are supposed to be kept safe.
I never liked my birthday. Not because I was one year closer to my life being over or my hair turning gray, but because with every year that I grew older, I began to understand. I began to understand that what was happening to me was not supposed to happen. That the skin that began to show through the marks on my body meant that I was covered in pain and hurt. I was not protected. The day after my seventh birthday my mom was not home. I thought Fred had already taken everything from me. I didn’t know that what he took from me that day was the last shred of innocence and part of me that I had left and that after that day, I had nothing left. Nearly every day for the next 6 years Fred continued to take whatever small bits of light and stars I had left in my eyes.
My mom got her degree and we left. We didn't go very far but for the first time I had a small sense of safety, It was just me and my mom and maybe now we would be allowed to bond and love each other the way we were supposed to and hopefully the past would be forgotten. Something I soon discovered was that my mom always needed a man in her life. After Fred, the contractor was enough for her. I was old enough that I became bitter and angry. I stopped trying to be a daughter to someone who never tried to be a mother. I was twelve when I had first ripped myself open to assure myself that I really was not empty on the inside. By the time I was 14 I had already been to three therapists and been told five time to take those little capsules filled with what my brain was supposedly missing.
No one stopped to ask what was wrong. No one ever asked if I was okay.
I started smoking cigarettes my freshman year to fill my lungs with something other than what I was feeling. I became friends with a girl who introduced me to the green stuff. Someone took the stars from her eyes too. We spent our days in a smoke filled haze because that time spent together made us feel something other than alone. I was hospitalized for the first time when I was fifteen because I’d tried to kill myself. In the guidance office at school I was introduced to painkillers that did exactly what the girl who gave them to me said they would; they killed the pain.
Drugs soon became my best friend. I was living a life as far out of reality as I could get. It was the only way I could sleep at night. I went through three more hospitalizations and started to take the pills the doctors pushed because I was no longer afraid to put things in my body that didn't belong there in the first place. I got better and better at hiding my feelings, because when anyone bothered asking how I was doing I realized they only asked just so they could hear me say I was fine. I was supposed to be fine.
Pills were too costly and my grandmother had no more money left for me to steal. I was no longer a shy little girl who was too smart and too kind. I was a full blown drug addict. I lied, I stole, I cheated. I avoided mirrors because every time I looked into one all I saw was how dead my eyes were. I saw everything that Fred had taken from me. I saw how the scars on my arms were pale in comparison to the ones that existed on what little of a heart I had left. I couldn't bear to look at the little girl inside of me that I knew was still there, I couldn't bother to hear her screams to stop what I was doing because I was killing myself.
Heroin is a lot cheaper than pills. With every line that went up my nose and every shot I pumped into my bloodstream pretending to be a doctor because maybe then I could patch myself up, I fell further and further into Hell. Something no one ever bothers to tell you is that Hell is not a place; it is a state of being. Anyone that says otherwise is someone that has not seen enough of despair to know that it exists within us.
My mom finally started to notice me. The first time I was arrested for possession she was angry and I remember smiling because she felt something toward me. I hardly got in trouble and as soon as I was back home I celebrated by my finding myself at the bottom of the same bottle Fred used to drink. I didn’t think that I had a problem.
I spent two more years of my life trying to end it. Id overdosed three times on heroin and watched three friends die from it. I went to jail, rehabs, moved, saw three more therapists and am where I am now. I have nearly nine months sober. I no longer look in the mirror wishing that it showed something else.
I cannot tell you how it happened. I cannot say that I found god, that my relationship with my family is perfect, and that I wake up every day thankful for the air in my lungs. But what I can say is that something I never lost was hope. Hope was never taken from me, I never lost it even as I watched a friend die right before my eyes, It never left me even through those years when I thought I lost all that I had.
I am not a tragedy. I am not another story of the horrors and outcomes of rape and abuse. I am not a poster child for addiction. I am me. I’ve learned that words have power and that power can turn into the hope that someone else needs, and if me stripping myself down to the bone can make someone feel that way then I will rip my flesh from my bones to give them the hope they deserve. I have gone through the things and lived the life that I did for others. I am not to be defined by the evils I have seen and done because I have beaten them already. I have battled the demon of addiction, I fight it every day. But I am not fighting a losing battle. I will win, because I have hope. And when I feel like tearing myself out of my skin because I still feel hands on my body that are no longer there, I can breathe. I can breathe knowing that I can heal. I know that there will be a time in my life when I sleep soundly.
There is pain in this world. I am not the last person to go through the things that I did; there will be others. I say this with emotion and power because one day I hope that other girls will know that there is a way out. They are not alone. That no one else needs to die from addiction because we addicts are there for each other. I will speak up for injustice in this world because no one was there to speak for me. I am not bitter. Yes, I may be bruised and cracked, my voice may shake and I may clam up sometimes but I am no longer broken.

This poem is Copyright Â© LaurelPaige