Driftwood

“If I had any money I would leave you now.”

He looked at me with a look of sadness and resentment, without knowing whether to believe me or not. “Would you really?” I looked straight into his eyes and repeated with all the conviction I had at that moment: “Yes, I would. Nothing is worth the hell we go through sometimes.”

As he turned and walked away, leaving me alone in the bedroom, I repeated those words to myself and asked myself if it was true. Would I leave him?

I loved that man with all my heart. I loved that man more than I had, could, or would have loved any other man in my life. He was, in many ways, my addiction. His addiction made my life with him impossible, yet he was my addiction and just as he couldn’t leave the cocaine and the alcohol alone, I couldn’t tear myself away from him.

For four years he had been my life and I had felt as the most loved person in the world. On good days, times had been “perfect.” If perfect exists, I believe we had the perfect time. To fear and to completely trust a person is a paradox, but I lived in that paradox and though at one moment, without notice, would be running away from him, absolutely certain that he was capable of killing me, at another would deliver my life into his hands and trust that wherever I fell, he would be there to catch me and guide me back to life. If at one moment, he made me feel as the most insignificant thing in the world, the next he made me feel as if everything was within my reach. Together, nothing else mattered. Alone, we were each just broken pieces of driftwood, floating into nothingness, waiting to be swallowed by existence.

I would have perhaps lived in that paradox for the rest of my life, except that his addiction was not me, and his need to feed his addiction excluded me. “Aloneness” became more constant while he searched for that lightness that seemed only attainable through narcotics, a world that only he could see, a world that truly didn’t need me. My feeling of being driftwood became more constant and I became to just long to be swallowed by whatever existence was meant to be mine.

So many times throughout those years I left him and returned. Even driftwood wishes company while drifting.

“Everything is open
Nothing is set in stone
Rivers turn to ocean
Oceans tide you home
Home is where the heart is
But your heart had to roam
Drifting over bridges
Never to return
Watching bridges burn
You’re driftwood floating underwater
Breaking into pieces pieces pieces
Just driftwood hollow and of no use
Waterfalls will find you bind you grind you
Nobody is an island
Everyone has to go
Pillars turn to butter
Butterflying low
Low is where your heart is
But your heart has to grow
Drifting under bridges
Never with the flow
And you really didnt think it would happen
But it really is the end of the line
So Im sorry that you turned to driftwood
But youve been drifting for a long long time”