Second To The Bump

 

      I still set a place for you sometimes. You, the man who made meals feel like magic, who filled the house with spice and smoke and stories.

     The food was your pride; the way you'd hover nearby, watching for my reaction. That fed me the most.

      Now, the kitchen is painfully quiet, but I still hear you there.

      A folded towel where your clothes used to land. A moment of silence before I lock the door, half expecting you to stumble in behind me.

       I wonder if you know that.

       Wonder.

       It's a strange thing to live with, like an ache that never fully forms into pain. People think grief is heavy, a stone you carry. But wonder is lighter- more insidious. It floats, just out of reach, and it follows you everywhere.

       I wonder what life would be like if you were still here.

       There are days I can almost see it. You would of grown tired, maybe, of chasing that elusive high. You might have come home for good, for real, this time. We would of taken road trips in early fall, when the air bites but the sky promises warmth. You'd have played your guitar again, badly, but with heart. Maybe you would of stood beside me at the stove, offering unsolicited advice about seasoning like you were auditioning for a cooking show. I would of laughed. You would of made me laugh. 

       That was your magic, before it turned against you. It all plays on repeat in the theatre of might-have-been. 

        You never made it to fall.

        I remember the first time I realized I wasn't your first love. It was subtle. A look in your eyes when you talked about it- about the way it made everything fade into velvet. The way you described the high, like a lover you couldn't quit. And maybe, that's exactly what it was. I wasn't naive; I knew you had a past. I just didn't know it was still your present. Still your future.

        I tried to compete with a ghost that never left your bloodstream. I poured everything I had into being your anchor, your safe harbour, your soft place to land. I stitched up your lies with hope, as if love could outrun a needle.

        Wonder is also cruel in retrospect. 

         I wonder if I enabled you. 

         I wonder if my kindness gave you permission.

         I wonder if leaving sooner would of saved you- or if staying longer hastened your end.

         People talk about addiction like its a personal failing. But I watched it eat you from the inside out; like rust in a beautiful machine.

         You were never weak.

          You were fractured.

          Haunted. Brilliant. You were the kind of person who could hold the whole room in your palm and still feel empty when the crowd dispersed. And I, I was the one who stayed behind, trying to refill what you couldn't hold.

          Sometimes, I wonder what my life looks like without you. Not the obvious parts like the cold side of the bed or the deafening silence of the house. I mean the deeper silhouette you left behind. The shape of my days altered by your absence. The strange guilt in peace. The freedom I didn't want. 

           People say things like "You can finally breathe now". They don't understand that breathing feels traitorous. 

           I miss the sound of you in the other room. Even when we weren't speaking. Even when you were gone in all the ways that mattered. I miss the version of you before the addiction hollowed you out. The version of you who held my hand while walking and cried during Little House on the Prairie. 

           That version died long before your heart stopped. 

           Loving an addict is a constant balancing act between hope and heartbreak. Every small victory; a week clean, a moment of clarity, a real smile- plants seeds of hope. And every relapse scorches them. You learn to live in cycles, to celebrate the brief intermissions and brace for the next act of disappearance. I became fluent in your patterns. I knew when your laughter was genuine and when it was a smokescreen. I knew the tone of your voice when you were about to use again. 

           And still, I loved you. 

           Not because I thought I could fix you. But because, despite everything, you were still you- complicated, magnetic and utterly human. My love was never blind. It saw all the broken pieces and loved you anyway.

            Maybe that's why it hurt so much to realize my love would always be second to something I could never touch. You called it "The Bumps", like it was; a friend, reliable, comforting, always waiting. I was the detour. The backup plan. The warm body you returned to when the high ran out. No matter how much I gave, the substance asked for more. 

            Addiction is a thief, but doesn't always steal in obvious ways. It steals birthdays and Sunday mornings. It steals trust in increments. It steals the way someone looks at you when they're fully present. And in the end, it steals the person themselves. What it left behind was a body, a shell, an aural void so loud it kept me awake for months.

            After you died, people didn't know what to say. Some offered platitudes: "At least he's at peace now". Others avoided the subject entirely, as if your name was a curse. I needed someone to say what I couldn't: that your death was both a tragedy and a relief. That grief could be tangled with resentment. That mourning someone you lost long before they died is a uniquely lonely kind of sorrow. 

            Sometimes I imagine talking to you now, not the man you became in the final stretch, but the man I fell in love with. I imagine telling you about all my thriving plants, the short stories I started writing again. I wonder if your proud of me. I wonder if you'd even recognize me. 

            Because the truth is, I'm not the same.

            Grief changes you. 

             Loving an addict rewires you. I'm sharper now, but softer too. I don't give my energy freely. I no longer believe that love can save someone who doesn't want to be saved. 

             But I still believe love matters. Even the kind that ends in ash.

             I no longer keep your toothbrush by the sink. I no longer check the phone at 7am expecting your name to flash across the screen. I've learned to exist in the new reality. But some nights, when the wind catches the blinds just right, I swear I hear your footsteps. And for a breath, I wonder.

             I wonder if you found peace.

             I wonder if you finally felt loved- truly loved, without condition.

             I wonder if, in your final moments, you thought of me.

             I wonder if that part of you I fought so hard to hold ever really wanted to be saved. 

             And perhaps most of all....

             I wonder if I will ever stop wondering.

             Written by Janine Reid

              I love you HB. RIP my Love xoxo