Goodbye, HEROIN

To Heroin –

As I compose this letter, I’ve no doubt you are swimming freely throughout the veins of yet another victim of your ruthless, lethal and bittersweet harmony. I’m sending word to you, that we are done, finished, our love affair kaput. I will not keep airs, however, and place all the blame on you. No, in truth, it is quite the opposite. I chose freely to pick you up that first time. There was no gun pointed to my head, held cocksure at my temple, as I put you into my body and allowed you to permeate my every layer. I welcomed you in with open arms, like a soulmate much too grand to be called anything but.

You & I soared higher than I could have ever envisioned with sober sight. When we were together, our time spent was the perihelion of my existence. Every breath I breathed was for you. Every action I took was done as a pledge of devotion to your promised numbness. I built you up as a ship of paradise, and sailed your brown waves to a utopia more sacred than Consumption of the Holy Host, more alluring than fruit borne of forbidden trees, and deadlier than lies spat from a sycophantic devil.

In the beginning, you taught me powerful lessons on how to survive by nothing greater than the hairs on my chest. You revealed a doorway, which led to a me who could do absolutely anything, without any self-doubt or fear, and you pushed me past the threshold with the simple thrust of a plunger into a plastic barrel. I didn’t know what life meant, until I saw it seeping like a ruby vine out of my arm.

But then you commenced to teach me things from a curriculum I never signed up for. You schooled me in the art of deception, and your greatest trick was to make me believe that at the root, I was the devious one. You bestowed upon me how to lie and how to cheat, how to rob my brothers of their goods, and my sisters of their wares. And you painted a mask onto my very face, so when I peered into a mirror, a stranger was beholden to me: a doppelganger who may have shared my features, but whose eyes were not mine.

What was once a warmth that gushed straight for my heart, broke into parasitic tentacles, reeling as far as the ends of my toes. The golden throne I placed you on decayed into a funeral pyre, lurking in wait for the one inevitable injection that would finally spark the flame. The happiness you provided was uprooted, and supplanted with dolorous & shame.

Still, I cannot put all the blame to you alone. I invited you to lay claim and take control of everything I felt, everything I did. Possessed, I became, when you were in me, and possessed, was I, without you.

But now, beloved, BRACE YOURSELF. For it is time to evict you from the premises, and exorcise you at the last. Your kiss was tender, and your lips sweet, but sweeter still is the kiss of freedom, and more tender the gift of family, who I forsaked when I scooped you up in spoons of silver-kind. Riches I experienced when you were with me, but at the end of the day, it was but a pauper’s life you could give. NotagainNotagainNotagain.

You may have left your mark on me, impressed a classic tattoo that cannot be erased. But if, and when, I pass you on the street, I will not know you. You will not be given the dignity of a single glare. And when I come across other innocents in your wake, you can be most assured that my hand will be there to extend offers of help, of hope, of escape. The pit you gifted is refilling perpetually, and onto your tombstone, my spirit will etch:

HERE LIES THE LIFE,
AND THE DEATH OF A PAST,
THAT WILL ALWAYS STAY BURIED,
FOREVER & AT LAST.

Yours no more,
Christopher Alexander Sommers

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