My best friend from childhood grew up to be a pathological liar, a grifter, a prostitute, and a heroin addict. She became addicted to heroin through the grace and benevolence of her “thirty-something” boyfriend Danny when she was only sixteen years old. From that point forward, there was never an alternative identity available to her other than that of victim with a capital "V".
I wonder what she would have become or accomplished had she never become addicted to heroin. Without that ever-present and overpowering weight to drag around, what kind of life could she have led? This line of thought provoked me to consider all that I have not accomplished. I find I don’t really have much in the way of achievements, and no real excuse for the lack of them. If I have managed to dodge the bullet (addiction and an early death) that Michelle did not, shouldn’t I show a little gratitude and get the hell off of my ass?
I have talent, intelligence, and ambition. The question is, why haven’t I demonstrated any drive? I have spent years feeling superior to Michelle because I had the good sense not to get involved with highly addictive substances (or people). But, really, which one of us has shown more of a “go-get-em” attitude? I know that Michelle expended huge amounts of energy and ingenuity in the pursuit of her fix day after day, month after month, year after year. It makes me so very tired just thinking about it. It makes me sad too.
God, what could that girl have attained if she had spent her life pursuing a passion instead of satisfying an addiction? For that matter, what could I accomplish if I spent my life pursuing a passion instead of satisfying… a sense of self pity?... an inflated sense of entitlement? What? Why haven’t I lived up to my potential? What is my excuse? Is there any?
I wonder if she ever had a dream. I call her my friend, but I’m not really sure that I knew her that well as an adult. We both ‘left home’ a bit early, and from the moment we stepped out the door and into the big, wide world we went our separate ways. We intersected each others' lives for shorter and longer periods after that time, but we were headed in such opposite directions that it was always with a sense of nostalgia and loss that we met. Childhood was over and we both knew it was gone forever.
Even as children, though, I don’t remember her expressing any particular ambition. The reality was that we were both pretty aimless as teenagers. I remember when we took off in her stepfather’s car. We didn’t have a plan, at least none that I recall. I was fifteen, she was fourteen. Neither one of us knew how to drive, but we both somehow thought it was an intelligent idea to steal a car. She wouldn’t let me drive and never gave me a good reason why not. I don’t know if she was trying to protect me from a felony charge, or if she was trying to make some kind of statement to her mother and didn’t want me stealing her thunder.
Either way, it was the last time the world viewed us as equals. The world tended to deal more harshly with her from then on out. She was sent to the rougher “youth facilities.” I went to the more “progressive” places. She was labeled a marshmallow head while I was branded a cabbage head – the idea being that she was vacuous and without merit, whereas I was simply making ‘bad choices’.
For some time now, several months to more than a year, I have had the feeling that she was ‘gone’. Until now, depending upon the mood I might be in on any given day, I have either defined ‘gone’ as doing time, missing, dead, or even in witness protection.
The last notion, that of her being in the Witness Protection Program, tickles me a little. But my consistent lack of faith in her ability to stay clean makes this little fiction improbable. There are, I imagine, rules and procedures that must be strictly observed by any and all who participate in the Witness Protection Program. I don’t think a heroin addict could or would be trusted to walk the line.
If she were merely incarcerated, I don’t think I would have had such a feeling loss connected with her. After all, there is nothing of which I am aware that is so different about a life hustling behind bars than that of one hustling in the ‘free world’. I really question, however, if she had ever been free.
From my perspective, being “missing” would probably feel no different from being incarcerated. Besides, her whereabouts have been slippery and quite impossible for me to pin down since we were still teenagers. Michelle always appeared when it suited her, and disappeared when it pleased her to do so. (I often got the impression that she didn’t want to me to see her at her worst for fear that I would judge her. Sadly, she was right.)
So that leaves death. I have wondered what sort of death this might have been. Quick and violent? Accident or homicide? She used to tell me the most horrifying stories of very near escapes she had from johns who were bent on robbing/raping/killing her. Or was it a slow and lingering illness? Did she waste away in a hospital bed? Alone?
But today, July 1, 2008, I found out definitively that my friend Michelle is dead. I got this confirmation when I stumbled across an internet link to the Social Security Death Index search engine. There I found out that she died on November 24, 2006, the day after Thanksgiving. She was thirty-eight years old.
I am brought to tears when I think of what her last days or moments might have been like. Was there anyone with her at the end? Did anyone care about her comfort or try to ease her fears? Was she buried by the state or did one or more of her relatives bother to give her a proper burial? Was she scared at the end? Or was she relieved? Did she know that, in spite of it all, I still loved her as I did when we were children? Did she forgive me for being so hard on her?
I will probably never know. All I do know is that her energy, perseverance, and ingenuity were squandered as utterly and without mitigation as my talent, intelligence, and ambition have been. She’s dead now. She will have no opportunity to reverse this travesty. Whereas I am still alive...
No comments:
Post a Comment