I met a girl when she picked me up while I was hitch hiking back from the health food store.
Her name is, well, I’ll call her “Mirror”. She was seventeen, with three different colors in her hair,and she was driving this great big mafioso looking thing down an old country road.
AND she picked me, a hitch hiker, up. like it was it was no big thing to her.
My first response after the normal howdy do’s, was;” Okay, first off, we are on this desolate back road, in the middle of BFE ,and corn fields forever. How do you know that I am not going to pull out a gun or a knife and slit your throat, or blow you away for your ride, or WORSE?”
She snickered and said,”Cause’ I can tell .”You aren’t that kind of person!”
My responsewas ,”How can you even pretend to know THAT?”
She comes back with; “I can just tell”!
“Anyway, aren’t you glad I picked you up?’
“Of course!” I said, “but you need to be more careful!”
She dropped me at my house, and that was that.
I was left with hoards of memories sweeping my mind. Memories of myself at her age, along with her responses to my concern, and her total disposition, I knew I was staring into a mirror of my past!
I would, for sure, be seeing her again!
It was approx. two weeks later that I saw her, in a little mustang, as I was walking my dog on that same old road.
She pulled of as she turned the stereo down, I think it was blasting some new girl band, “Hey girlfriend” she says with this sweet little sideways glance, as if she’d known me for a lifetime, “whatcha up to?”
Having done the small talk thing, we decided ot hang out.
So she came over to the house, we talked.
As I got to know her situation a bit better, I knew.
... I was looking into the mirror of my past once more.
I had been placed into her life for a very special mission.
I also knew in my heart that, according to what she was telling me, she was headed for the same path of disaster and destruction, I had, not so long ago, put my own self through.
It had all started at her exact age. but I did not, at this point know what to do about helping her.
...But it would come! ...yes, it would!
I found out, a little more than a year later, i could not have done anything to stop it from happening, when I met her. ...In her beginning...
It was during the “aftermath” or the “beginning of the end”, where I would be called back into her life to “play my part” so to speak.
So...
It was about a month ago, I just happened to be browsing through a thrift store, in Spruce Pine, with my neighbor. As I stood there, looking at an old quilt I wanted, but could not afford, I heard that soft, sweet, little voice call me by my name.
”Romy?’ “Is that yooouuuu?!”
“OMG I can’t believe it!”,
.....and so on and so forth.
My sweet friend from the road by my house, was there, was handing out Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
Mind you, I knew what this meant...
...She’d gotten herself into some kind of trouble.
And now, she was doing community service for it.
Sure enough she had.
I gave her my telephone number, and that was that.
It was about three days ago when I got a phone call.
It was her.
She asked if she could come by to see me that afternoon, after school.
She needed to talk.
She actually did come on by.
Here we are some years later. I am scared.
Not for myself , physically, but something told me my time was up.
The gig was up.
The angels had finally found a way.
For me.
For her.
Now.
I need to back up to two years ago, so that you can get a real sense
of what is really going on here…..
After our first meeting, after she came back by my trailer, in the cow pasture, the first time,
She hung with me the whole summer, and then into fall.
I got to know her parents very well.
I n their eyes I'd become a big sister/baby sitter for her.
She thought of it as just hanging out.
...a place away from her Dad, but close to her home.
She had never been with a boy, she explained,
but she'd made an attempt at a relationship with a girl at school, which turned out disastrous.
It even landed here in trouble at school, with the cops, and with the DSS, here in Yancey County.
(a place no one would ever want to land!)
Her mom was going through chemo and radiation, and so was I.
I was uncanny.
I had at least SOMETZHING, one thing, in common with almost every member of her family.
I became part of her family!
I knew from my own life and my experiences,
she was dabbling in some kind of drug activity.
I just did not know what at first.
Made myself a promise.
I would find out what was really going on with t his girl.
Once I got her to open up to me.
I discovered she was stealing her dad’s 40mg Oxycontin and his 1mg klonapin out of his locked box.
This only AFTER he'd been giving them to her when she turned fourteen.
She was not only snorting them, but she was selling them as well!
I also did some digging, and found, she was getting in with some pretty savory characters.
Of course it wan't long, before she met this guy...
He was handsome, manipulative, and cunning.
But most of all, he had a raging monkey, the size of Detroit, on his back!
Only I could see him for the junkie bastard he really was.
I tried many tricks to expose him.
Her partents were blinded by his enamering.
His story was easy:
..he had been in the military, only to come home to a trailer trash wife, on drugs, of course, who had neglected their four year old child.
He'd come home just in time to play the knight in all his armour....!
I KNEW better!
But when I tried to warn her parents
they would hear nothing of it!
They refused to see in him
the evil that i could....
So when she started seeing him, I went to her parents with my premonitions.
They told me I was over reacting.
And that i had become attached to their daughter, that I should just stay away for a while.
Her mom’s exact words were:
”I mean really, Romy...
" He is a MARINE for goodness sakes... !"
"... and the only reason he is home right now, is to save that yungin' from his drug addicted mother!”
UGHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I had to let go....
Only years later, it would come out,
To her parents and everyone.
...He was a meth and dilaudid junkie.
His mother was one, as well.
They used the little boy for food and money,
as well as their own selfish adgenda of feeding
that monkey from Detroit,
and the disease he brought with him.
They conned everyone from welfare, to churches, to the department of Social Services.
I remember a conversation a had with her mom, while trying to get her to realize what he really was.
It went like this:
mom: “How could you even say such things about him!”
I never said another word.
Only
In my mind I was screaming;
"Because I know this asshole!
He is addicted to drugs!
He told me so, in the beginning!
He bragged to me about how he’d been doing dilaudid with his MOTHER for years.
And, all of us junkies know, the only way to do dilaudid, is to shoot it up in your veins!
"DUMB ASS!”"
I said to myself.
"PLUS, I even know his other name."
"THE NAME is Daniel!"
"I know him well!"
"I ruined most of my young life trying to win his love."
"Only I did not know then what I was up against...."
"This addiction was more powerful than another woman, or anything else, for that matter!"
"There IS no match
for it!"
...I was screaming this all to myself.
...I knew then.
I was talking about my own life experience.
The years I spen, hurting myself, all the while attempting to impress my first, and truest love of my entire life.
He almost proved to be the ruin of me!
...The man on whom I waisted more than half of my life!
He, who became the beginning of my end!
He was the beginning of a lifetime of heroin addiction, tears, disappointments, lies, and horror!
As I saw it, he and this asshole were one in the same.
More importantly, I also knew, in my heart of hearts, he would be the beginning of HER end.
He would prove to be the beginning of her horror.
I also knew, if she were to end up staying with this nobody bastard, for any length of time, she would, inevitebly begin sticking needles in her arms.
My bet would be she'd start within one year.
Sadly, I was correct.
she was,
and had been,
sticking needles in her arm.
The way I found out went down like this:
(and thus my reason for writing this)
She phoned me, upset, and crying.
Don't ask me how, but I knew she was dope sick.
...Perhaps it was the quiver in her voice.
The desperation.
A feeling I knew all too well.
I told her to come over.
She did.
I'll never forget.
She was working at Mc Donald's, to pay her way through cosmetolegy school.
So she still had that Mc Donald's uniform on. (The one, I knew, she loathed with every part of her being!)
And bless her heart...
...She brought me a pie.
I told her she looked like shit.
Then I asked her to explain why she'd gone so long without having any contact with me.
(although I knew the answers to each of my questions, I asked them anyway.)
I gave her motherly/sisterly hugs, while attemting to make her feel loved.
(something she had not experienced often, at least, not without a price!)
I needed her to know, that no matter what she had to offer , for the time I hadn't heard from her, I would love her, and I would help her, and I would hold her, until she needed me to let go.
So.
It was after hugs, love, some understanding eye contact, I made the promise of understanding. She had to know, that no matter what she might reveal, I would ALWAYS be in her corner. I would always be hers. I would be whatever she needed me to be.
..As long as I was helping her towards her self understanding, towards love, and towards happiness.
It was a few seconds after our long embrace and our moment of connection and understanding, when she took me into the bathroom.
She uttered these words, nervously, and with shame;
”Romy, Do you really want to know how bad I've gotten, how far I have now fallen?”
...Or perhaps her words were, in actuallity, more like "Romy, look at how bad this has gotten."
I am not sure which of the two is more correct, but I got the message loud and clear, and my heart broke.
Litererally, it broke into a million pieces.
My heart broke for her, but it also broke for the girl I once was, before my own demons came to visit.
I knew then, from the depths of my being,
how the scene would play out...
I knew the ending,
before it ever began.
In a moment I will share with you, the dialog that went on between us on that cold, cloudy, winter afternoon in Nowheresville, NC.
This is one conversation I shall, forever, remember until I take my final breath.
It will remain with me through lifetimes to come.
...It has become a part of me.
ME: ”So. have you learned how to do yourself?”
“Or is that why you are here?”
"If it is the later, you've come to the wrong place."
She started to cry.
"I know how to hit myslef", she said.
H uge tears runnig down her face.
"You warned me, Romy." "And I didn't listen."
"How DID you know, anyway?"
I could not hold back the tears.
They poured straight from the depths of my being.
Again, he I stood, once again, in front this georgous girl, who was destroying herself!
Again, all I could see was myself in the mirror!
I have yet to felt such a sadness within me, as the one I felt at that moment.
As she rolled up her sleeve, there it was...
a site too familiar..
Uncanny, it was.
How could this girl be the SAME?
Seriously!
...The same arm.
...The same hole.
...The same sore.
...The same color.
..The same sad and bewidered expresion.
It said. No, it screamed;
"Help me please! I'm so fucking gone!"
"Help me please!"
" You're all I've got!"
I wanted to turn and run a fast and far as I could get.
Heer she stood in front of me
Here she stood.
The exact fucking same as me.
I couldn't move.
I couldn't think.
I wanted to puke.
She
was
MEEEE!
The silence was broken by her voice, and by her expression.
She obviously saw my transition from a strong woman who cared so much,
into a womean who had turned white as a ghost.
Then she asked;
” How did you know, Romy?”
“How ever COULD you have known?”
I did not.
I could not.
Begin to answer her then.
But I thought to myself;
"How could I not?"
I left that tiny bathroom not knowing WHAT to do, or what to say.
I, for once,was at a loss.
For the first time in my life,
the words would just not come!
I couldn't speak my usual words of incourgment.
Until she came to me, and gave me a hug.
...she has just left my house.
My heart is heavy.
She'd come to me today, for reasons,
she herself,
could never have understood.
I went into my bedroom, whee she sat.
I asked her what she'd been up to that made her decide to call me.
She said she did not know.
She'd been out driving after work,
and so she'd just ended up calling.
Now she was at my place.
I shared with her the importance of truthfulness.
With oneself even more than with others.
Then I shared with her my story, and my reasons for caring so very much for her well being.
I told her about the mirror I saw between us from the beginning.
..of my battle with herion addiction.
But I told her also of the stubborn dream I'd carried with me for eighteen years because of a guy, just like hers.
I answered all of her questions.
I completed her sentences.
She completed some of mine.
I felt her heart breaking.
And I helped her to let go.
She was so shocked at what I shared with her, about myself,
and about my own life,
that it literally brought her back to her self. I had somehow, reached her inner being.
She was able to return to her own reality, away from the deceit.
And away from the web of lies which had been woven around her.
I feel good!
I feel like she will be alright.
May hope is, through me, she was able to see how easily we can fall into someone else's need and addiction. How we make it our own by allowing someone elses demons drag us down, down into oblivion, and how their misery can, so easily, consume us. Then take over our very life!
IF we let it!
....I held her for a long time.
We cried together.
I cried for her.
I also cried for me.
I cried for the girl that I once was.
...Before Daniel.
...Before Manhattan.
...Before the misery.
She cried her own tears for herself,
her kind heart,
and for what would never be.
She cried, grateful tears, knowing now she will no tso easily loss her way,
she knows the angels now. She can feel them guide her every day.
She is not alone.
I will forever be there for her.
wherever she may be.
...we are connected now.
...Little Miss Kim and me!
Her spirit is strong.
She will succeed.
She recieved what she needed most.
... A friend
... A kindred spirit.
...and a bit of wisdom from little old
me.
Oh, and now I know why my Blackie walked me down the old country road.....
My sister, Kimberly, needed me!