CHAPTER 1
Have you ever thought about how life can change in just 20 seconds? Have you ever felt pain that opens the door to your worst moments in life?
You found yourself back in a place you thought you had left behind long ago. You were once again that little girl or boy standing and staring trauma in the face — because of an abusive father who hits your mother, or perhaps as a teenager taking your first “fix” in the cold of a squat in a big city.
Maybe you relived your first crisis, locked away in a youth institution, where the only escape was retreating into the painful reality. Or maybe you were at the funeral of a 15-year-old who was once your friend, unable to understand the feelings that you couldn’t explain.
Or perhaps you were lying on the floor, trying to protect yourself as seven people, filled with rage, kicked you. Afterward, bloody and exhausted, you stumbled into the emergency room, hoping they’d stitch you up and attend to your broken ribs.
Some of you might have recalled the coldness of the city in the deep winter, just before Christmas, while lying in a squat, shaking beneath four blankets because there was no safety to be found behind doors.
All you could hear was the howling wind, growing louder and louder. The rest were safe in their homes, eating cookies, laughing, while you were left with only a little “saving powder” after greedily indulging in the stash that was buried in you, knowing you had no money but believing that the “powder savior” would at least briefly pull you out of the darkness.
As you lay there, you held on to the hope that tourists, eager for Advent, would provide you with some extra money. So you can buy more “stash”.
In just 20 seconds, a person can survive so much — so much emotional complexity that’s hard to describe or convey on paper.
These are the kinds of feelings you can only understand if you’ve lived them.
For those of you who know what this feels like, I admire you, just as sometimes I admire myself. For those who don’t know, I can try to put it into words, but that is so hard to explain to those without “street school of life”.
It’s like when you accidentally hit your little finger or elbow on a doorframe or the edge of some furniture.
Something like that, but it feels like it’s happening constantly, every second.
Yes, over time, you get used to the pain, but it never becomes comfortable.
Or like a paper cut that’s so small, but it stings so much you feel like you’ve cut your entire finger. You can imagine it as a big paper cut, with the pain thatn never go away.
The pain I felt in those 20 seconds when I found my husband dead on the floor, I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
It reminded me of all the pain I’ve felt throughout my life because he was the one who made my life free from the pain.
I had buried that in the darkest corners of my being. But, he always knew what to say, how to avoid conflict for the greater good, how to fix anything.
There was nothing he couldn’t fix — from vacuums to cars, electricity to light, furniture to household appliances — nothing was ever too difficult for him, and everything was done with a smile on his face.
Just as he knew how to fix everything, he fixed me. Maybe I relied on him too much.
I can only imagine how stressful that must have been for him. I just surrendered to his hands, and there was no safer place for me than his embrace.
He tolerated all my flaws and put up with my behaviors. He was truly special, but now, he looked so helpless, lying on the floor of our living room with his head down in our dog’s lounger.
Calm, cold, with the markings of death. He died alone. I wasn’t there.
I had left, angry, to visit a friend. I didn’t answer his calls, even though he called 194 times.
I even blocked him out of anger. I don’t remember the arguments anymore. I just stood there, motionless, frozen in time, trapped in a moment, battling all my demons.
It was as if the doors of hell I had long ago shut opened inside me.
All the evil I had suppressed for years was now coming to the surface. I felt that familiar pressure, that overwhelming urge to run away, to return to old patterns.
And as I stood there, paralyzed by this feeling, I knew what would have been the easiest thing to do.
But then, in the midst of all this sadness and anger, I realized I wasn’t that 12-year-old girl anymore who would go for her “supplies.”
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Still, the pain I felt was the same. In that moment, I also felt fear — the same uncertainty that had always haunted me in that chaos. The pharmacist, where we used to go.
She was the one I always saw as an obstacle, someone who was always on the opposite side, yet still part of that dark world I lived in.
In our encounters, I always had the feeling that she knew more than I showed her, that she could see through me, through all our lies. Every one of her words, “May God help you,” sounded like both a blessing and a curse at the same time.
Her good will, although it never made anything easier, was always present, like a shadow I couldn’t escape.
Thinking about what to do when you find someone dead, my mind switched to another time — the time when I first encountered what they called an “overdose.”
At just 14, it was an experience I would never forget, one that permanently changed the way I saw the world, myself, and how I would cope with life’s ailments.
As I stood there, paralyzed by that feeling, I didn’t know what was coming next. Memories came and went, but something else was approaching, something I wasn’t prepared for. Then it came:
Guest
Knock, knock!
“Who is it?” ,
once I asked.
“Darkness is sweetheart,
open it out”,
voice silently said.
“Why are you coming darkness?”,
with fear I asked.
“To be with you as the friends do!”,
happily she respond.
“But, you aren’t my friend!”,
bravely answer I.
“Sure I am, we known each other
for so long,
Don’t you remember dear?!”,
she hum
“You are lying,
talking foolish things,
don’t want you in!”,
frightened I said.
“To late my dear,
I’m already here!”
