Turn the Page
I hope a chapter is ending in my life. I hope.
The last three-four years have been so complicated, much of it by my own choice, some of it anything but my choice, unwelcome and unwanted. There was the very tangled mess of my relationship with Colin, the cocaine, the meth, the pills, the violence, my throwing everything away. My trying to get a little bit of it back. Perhaps the most damaging thing of all was the inclusion of Colin’s business partner Quinn into our lives.
Then Colin died last October, I started getting serious about quitting the drugs, I began reaching out, changed everything - where I lived, what I did for a living, who I hung out with, how I dealt with things - everything. Things began to turn around. I had hope.
I made a friend, who became my best friend, who became my lover, who became the one true love of my life. I finally knew what it was really like to have someone love me and accept me and support me. He helped me save myself. I was happy. We were happy.
Then Quinn came back around. Pushed his way back into my life and into the life of the one person who has ever really loved me. He set about to tear everything apart and he may have succeeded. He had me convinced that there was no place that was safe and that his control over me extended everywhere. Quinn was the highly decorated cop with a dirty side who had been Colin’s protection in the dope game. Quinn knew where all the bodies had been buried, so to speak, he’d put them there. He also made Colin look like a boy scout. Quinn had some leverage over me, made threats, hurt people close to me, hurt me, and still I thought I could placate him until he got bored.
The last several months have been both hell and heaven for me. And I’m here to tell you it is impossible to coexist in two worlds like that. As much as you want the heaven to spill over, it is the hell that intrudes.
Today, Quinn was arrested on three felony charges. More charges may follow. I can’t tell you what it cost me to get to today. And even though the untouchable one can’t touch me anymore, he may have still cost me everything.
I’m still not quite out of hell yet. But I see light dawning nonetheless. I’ll spend Monday at the District Attorney’s office, a place I unfortunately became familiar with last August. I don’t like being under the Klieg lights especially when the things that have happened were always meant to be kept in the dark. But isn’t it those things we keep secret that steal the life from us in the end?
I don’t know if I can salvage that part of Heaven that I’ve known these last several months. I don’t know if I can save the only relationship that has ever meant the whole world to me. I dont’ know. I know what I pray for though.
Today I’m numb. Today I’m almost apathetic. But I know it is the only way I’m making it. In a couple of days or a week or so, the survival mechanism of apathy will wear off and I’m afraid of that day. And the days that will come after it for awhile. I don’t want to face those days alone but I’ll do what I have to do.
I’ve got a lot of healing to do. We’ve got a lot of healing to do. Together or apart. But now is the time to get started. I’ve got to close this chapter and leave Colin and Mathis and Quinn behind. I’ve got to regather all those broken little pieces of myself and see how they fit back together. It is the only way I’ll ever clear that space in my life for something new, something better, something true.
I hope that the one best thing in my life is still able to be saved. But if it isn’t, if we can’t put what we had back together, then I’ll make it anyhow. Because that’s what I do. I surivive. I start over.
So it’s time to turn the page.
Text posted at 9:00 PM (1 week ago) | Permalink