syzygy part II

it wasn't until the man who extracted my wisest of teeth gave me soul-warming pain killers that i began to feel relief outside of my phone calls from mike. i would slip a handful down my throat and soon feel this summery euphoria envelop me and everything would be ok, for the time being.

mike started to notice i was acting a little differently when he would call. he'd notice i was sleepier, sooner. he eventually asked me what was going on and i was up front with him. i was doing way too many painkillers and had had my pharmacist refill the prescription more times than they were supposed to. after being turned down, finally, by a pharmacist with a conscience, i did some research about the drug, codeine. i found out that in canada, you can buy smaller doses over the counter and so that's what i did. i'd take more than the recommended dose every day and if didn't take enough, my head would pound and i would be in utter misery. this went on and on, and i'd take more and more. sometimes i would take too many. i knew this because of the knee-weakening, whirlwind of colors and shapes and an inability to really articulate much from sleepiness. on those days, when i slept, i would have the horrors. dreaming about the most terrible things, waking up terrified and sweaty. the horrors were truly horrifying.

i told all of this to mike, and he quickly became concerned. he told me how much of a health risk i was taking. he told me the drugs would eventually shut down my heart, my kidney or my liver. he told me that no one can survive a lifetime of doing these drugs. and then he dropped a bomb.

mike went silent. i could barely hear him breathe, short breaths and then a muffled sniffle. i asked him what he was thinking, a question i asked often, and he uttered so quietly, "court, i don't think i could handle it if anything happened to you."

silence...

"i love you".

it was a mutual feeling we'd both been having after months of talking to each other, spilling the darkness of our souls to one another, getting to know each other like no one else had known either of us. it was a natural progression. we loved each other. not the way i would love boyfriends, not the way i loved my family, my love for mike was like nothing else i'd ever experienced. he was a profound friend, and a cherished soulmate.

i quit the drugs for him. i went through the days of aching pain and sweats and vomiting for him. i stayed clean for a long time after that for him. i couldn't think of one thing on this planet worse than michael being disappointed in me.

and then i met jeremy. jeremy was a man from the united states who'd come to canada to live for 6 months. i met him, i was around him all the time, and then he came to stay with me and my family. i lived with this man, i saw him everyday and when the time came for him to leave, i didn't want him to. i'd become so used to having him around, i couldn't imagine life without him. so we got married.

it soon became apparent that jeremy didn't wear marriage well, becoming stressed and angry. we'd moved out of my parents house into an apartment in burnaby with another couple. this couple did a lot of drugs and it had some kind of an affect on us. i soon found myself, with a partner in crime this time, in the throes of a heavy codeine addiction once again. all we would do is get high and play sim city or get high and fuck or get high and sleep. i was miserable during those few moments every day that i experienced real emotion, when the high wore off and we were mixing up another codeine concoction to give us the happiness, the warm joy, the total euphoria, the delusional sense that all was well.

we stopped being able to make rent. jeremy wasn't working and i was about to be laid off. our roommates were beginning to scare us, with their drugs and filth and ignorance. so we moved back in with my parents.

to be con't...

Labels: mike

posted by Courtney at 6:13 p.m.

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