Maddie woke up around 10 am in a panic. She had totally overslept, and she was an hour late to sign on for work. She stumbled over to her laptop and quickly surveyed her emails and chats, figuring everyone on her team was probably looking for her and wondering where the fuck she was, and why her Teams profile was showing her offline at 10 am on a Tuesday. But no one had tagged her in any of her chats, so she relaxed for a minute, until she realized she was completely useless to the world until she snorted her first line of the day.
Disheveled and completely out of sorts, she called Jay.
Fuck, he better be awake, she thought.
He answered on the fourth ring. Never had she been so happy to hear his voice – at least, not since yesterday.
“Hey buddy!! How are you?? Can you come through for one ASAP? I woke up late and I’m fuckin’ dyin’!”
“OK baby”
“Whadya think, like 30, 40 minutes??”
“I’ll see what I can do”
“Awesome!! Love you, Jay!!’
“Love you too baby”
Fifty-seven minutes, 3 unanswered calls and 1 ignored text later, he showed up. Maddie didn’t truly love Jay in the conventional sense, but her heart almost exploded with joy at his trademark double-buzz of the doorbell, his signal to her that it was him. In fact, she trusted him even less than her own fucking mother, who abandoned Maddie as a teenager every single fucking Saturday and Sunday, leaving Maddie to play weekend mommy to her 2 youngest sisters—and wifey to her creep of a father. The man had ruled through fear and was prone to erratic turns of temperament, which she often baited with big words in defense of herself, or of her mother, that cunt among traitors—before she gave up and resorted to expletives, which only got her wrestled to the floor and straddled at the crotch, and her arms pinned to her sides. He intruded on her personal space, always trying to poke and pet her, always giggling like a maniac; and he was relentless with the camera as much as she shied away and hollered at him to fuck off, and even implored her to let him take photos of her in the nude—just as he did of Maddie’s mother. The man easily deplored all women, starting with his wife and 4 daughters; worse still, Maddie’s mother was worse than just absent, she was complicit in the abuse, often laughing and pointing alongside Maddie’s father at the early signs of the young girl’s physical development.
But thoughts like these were a hell of a lot easier to manage after a couple of lines. Maddie bounced over to the door of her apartment and pressed her ear up to the wall, listening to the elevator creak and squawk with age as it ascended up through the floors and stopped at 5. The clank of the elevator gate opening, then closing, and she opened her door. A brief and remarkably upbeat salutation and expression of gratitude, as he handed her an envelope through the crack in her door.
“Thanks buddy!!”
“OK baby”
And he got back on the elevator and left. Or at least she assumed he had; she was too busy crushing the rocky powder, sweeping it into a pile with the ATM card for her now-defunct checking account, and sniffing up the partially crushed powder with the quickest thing she could find — a rolled-up corner of the magazine that sat on the back of the toilet.
OK, now I can fucking work! she said out loud to herself. And she sat down at the computer in her pajamas and smudged makeup and knotty hair, and didn’t get up again until 12 hours later – except to meet Jay at her doorway again around 2 pm.
It was Friday; she was relieved the workweek was finally over. Every weekend was a chance to detox off the booze and get a couple days’ distance from the coke before she had to face work again the next Monday. Getting clean on a weekday had historically proven futile, no matter how hard she prayed and begged and apologized and struck deals with God. So she would use that shit today, and have some coke time to herself in the evening, and then go to sleep at a reasonable time and then start her new life tomorrow – again.
The streets of lower Manhattan were alive below her window. It was a sound she usually blocked out and wanted no part of; but tonight was different. Around 6 she called Joe and sent him cash plus tip to come up and drop off a 50 bag. He too slipped it to her through the crack in her door, but this time she more sauntered than skipped her way to the bathroom. Her gait was curbed by remorse; maybe she needed that first boost to get on point and join the functioning world, but the workday was over, and now she was just fucking around.
And another not-so-little pile of powder and tiny rocks, and she snorted it again in one fell swoop. Except this was different stuff – Joe’s was usually a little on the mellower side. But this was something new and much more potent. And within seconds, Maddie was suddenly and unexpectedly high as fuck. She fucking hated it but was too high to really care, or to do anything about it.
Fuck, I’m goin’ out! And she squeezed into her jeans and a more feminine top, put on another coat of mascara over the smudges, ran a brush through her hair, and almost left before she realized, You dumbass, you forgot your shit.
Maddie did a fat rail and put the baggie in a slit in the right cup of her bra, started to check herself out in the bathroom mirror and then changed her mind in disgust. Besides, Who-the-hell-cares, it’s not like I’m going to lose 30 pounds or grow breasts in an hour.
She had absolutely no agenda, no destination in mind. When she got downstairs, the rowdy and intoxicated locals were spilling out of the bar and carousing on the street. She was high enough to leave the house, but not quite high enough to enter a lively gathering of people who actually had fucking friends, and could imbibe, she assumed, without consequence, without sacrificing themselves to the throes of addiction. Suddenly painfully aware that she was alone, and shocked by this latest reminder of what a fucking loser she really was, she walked through the small crowd and up the street toward the shops, and went into a cheap women’s clothing store. Noticing some items as she entered, she was, for a moment, elated — until she felt herself start to crash, a feeling that was bad enough, but made worse by the thought that tweaking in public was not a good look, and people around here would recognize her in the light of day, and she would be eternally marked as The Lonely Tweaker. She got the fuck out of the store with its horrible glaring lights and went outside and lit a cigarette, as a group of rowdy guys on the prowl for some strange walked by. Standing there, she mused at the fact that they hadn’t said anything to her, hadn’t stopped, hadn’t harassed or solicited her in any way; in fact, they barely even looked at her. Twenty, even 10 years ago, those same men would have caught her gaze and at least one of them would have tried to roll up on her—or they would have at least cat-called her from a safe distance. She reflected on this new absence of men’s attention, and concluded that no, she didn’t really miss it; it used to cause her a lot of distress when men randomly bothered her like that, on the street. And it all came back to her, and she remembered how shitty it made her feel; any loser guy on the street is going to cat-call a woman no matter how she looks, or what her style, or how she carries herself, so it had never made Maddie feel special at all. And what had made it worse was that no one had ever approached her with interest or respect, or asked her name, or tried to really talk to her, or ask her on a date. “Cat-calling doesn’t count,” she had always insisted.
The super-high began to recede with increasing speed like a harmless, petrified wave being dragged from the shore and swept up in a deadly tsunami growing in strength a mile out to sea, except she couldn’t find a public restroom – or maybe no one wanted The Lonely Tweaker in their establishment. Maddie wanted to go home and be alone with her best pal coke, but going back to an empty apartment on a Friday night in New York fucking City, with no plans and nobody to do them with, was just too fucking sad.
Well, if I can’t do more coke, I’ll catch a buzz to take the fucking edge off.
Her brain began doing the math, and yes, she still had some cash left from the 200 she had borrowed from Jay the day before, when she first ran out of money, the day after she got paid – enough to get a few tall boys of something super-strong, like a 9% ABV beer. Quickly scanning a map of her neighborhood in her mind, she assessed that the nearest place to buy booze was 1 short block west of where she stood, so she tossed the butt, lit another one, and headed toward it.
She walked in with purpose and headed straight to the back, where she grabbed 2 tall cans of something that looked strong, and headed to the counter. There were 2 people in line ahead of her, and she could tell by the first patron’s angry and insistent tone that his spirited debate with the clerk was not going to end soon. So she cracked open one of the cans and began chugging, not due to thirst, but a savage need to quell the agitation that ran bone-deep and was making her wring her hands, and her glance begin to dart around the room. The only thing worse than this feeling, she thought, was someone knowing that I’m feeling it. She sucked the beer down as if it gave life, like breath does to the body, as she stood in line and shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
“Oh man, what did he do??” A man standing behind her sought Maddie’s attention and spoke with a sly grin on his face. She was oblivious at first to his intention, then looked back at him and caught his gaze. His eyes danced, and it struck her that he was trying to be funny – and that he was in fact speaking to her.
Mark was only slightly taller than she was at 6’2”, or at least she guessed he was when he stood up straight. She couldn’t exactly determine if his shy posture was intended to express a non-threatening nature, or if he naturally stood like that; but she found it disarming, either way. His glasses were slightly ajar on his face, which, she assumed, was not intentional at all, but it leant to his easygoing, hesitatingly bold approach. And his dark hair seemed to run amuck, though she quickly decided it was working for him.
Most importantly, she liked the way his eyes played in the light, and for a moment she felt herself come back to life; desperately trying to conceal her withdrawal and hand-wringing and weight-shifting, and finally getting the joke, she laughed — sort of sharply, but with an undeniable earnestness.
“So where’s the party tonight??”
Maddie realized the line had moved and she was next to pay and didn’t answer him at first. Too fucked up to find the right change, she handed the clerk a 20, took the change without counting it, and turned back to him squarely, trying her best to find her composure and deliver a retort as if she were of sound mind and body – like she was not even a week ago.
“Oh no, no party. Honestly I’m keeping it low-key tonight – all part of my campaign to stay out of trouble.”
Maybe her own eyes danced when she said that; she wasn’t sure, but she felt the spark of life when she spoke. And surely they must have twinkled with delight at this sudden and unexpected rapport, because she saw on his face her own amusement and interest reflected back to her.
“Oh yeah. I hear you. I’m laying low tonight, myself. My ‘trouble’ days are behind me.”
Maddie threw her head back and laughed, this time gentler, as the beer had kicked in and smoothed out the rough edges of her withdrawal. She was unsure what to do but in a flash of a thought she perceived in him possibility, and was afraid her compromised state of mind might kill it right then and there.
“OK, well.. enjoy your snacks. I gotta bounce.”
He hesitated for a minute, then came up behind her as she headed out the door.
“You know what, wait – can I get your number?”
Maddie was stunned. When the fuck was the last time a man had asked for her number? Without an agenda? Or flirted with her? Or even tried to talk to her like she was a fucking woman? Here she was, 2 decades past her prime, and someone had recognized in her a vitality that she had suspected was long gone.
Maddie’s voice trembled as she gave it to him.
“Text me, I hate talking on the phone.”
“OK, cool,” he replied, as she turned on her heel and hastened out of the store.
A rare glimmer of hope outweighed her withdrawal as she walked home. For a solid 5 minutes, she didn’t need coke, or booze; remembering that she still had most of that 50 bag from Joe in her bra, she decided to flush it and call it a night.
But she didn’t do that; instead, she did the rest of it, running out in the middle of the night. Luckily for her, none of her dealers picked up the phone, and she crashed out for the night, and slept all through the next day.
Mark texted her on Saturday, but she didn’t see it until she came to on Sunday.
“So sorry, I missed this yesterday. I promise I’m not ghosting you!” She texted him back the moment she saw his message.
He was absolutely forgiving, and the conversation was easy and quick. Maddie’s mind was still sluggish from her week-long bender, but she was ecstatic to discover she still had some agility and could meet his clever and teasing remarks with almost the same degree of lucidity. The exchange started out like small talk; but, by the late afternoon, she felt like she had known him all her life – and he knew more about her than anyone else in the world. He told her he was going out of town that weekend, so they made plans to meet up the weekend after that.
“I should tell you, though, that I actually don’t drink anymore,” she confided in him, with reluctance – less because it had only been true for a day and a half, and more because she feared he would reveal that he liked to drink, and a lot.
“Oh that’s great! I don’t drink anymore either.”
For Maddie, that clinched it. Dumb-fucking-luck, she said to herself. And they texted every single day from there on, up to and including the day they finally met up.
***
Maddie didn’t use coke or drink for a full 16 days after that. But on Day 17, she was tired of trying, always fucking trying. She pulled up Jay’s number on her phone and then put the phone away four or five times, and then thought, Using coke has got to be better than this fucking addict purgatory shit. I’m going to Hell anyway, might as well do it now.
That was a Tuesday. By Friday, she began to panic. She was supposed to see Mark on Saturday; as much as she could still feel anything, it tore her heart to shreds that he would have to see her like this. Ultimately she decided that she would not let that happen; but instead of canceling, she told on herself.
She was more than eerily moved by his response, and deeply; he was compassionate and understanding and offered to help her in any way he could.
“I don’t want you to see me like this,” she texted him.
“It’s OK, I can handle it. I want to see you.”
The next day was Saturday, and Maddie didn’t wait long to start the private party at her apartment. If I’m getting fucked up later anyway, might as well get fucked up now. Why fight it? She saw Jay around 10:30 am, maxing out her line of credit to cop just enough to get through the day and well into the evening.
But it didn’t last. Mark was supposed to come over at 3, and by 1:30 she had run out. Fuck me, she muttered sourly under her breath. Jay was unusually unwilling to accommodate and make another delivery on consignment. She heard panic somewhere behind the wall of muddled consciousness; for Maddie, an evening being social and alive and awake sans coke after a full day of using sounded excruciating. So she called Joe.
“Hey buddy!! Guess who’s been drinking margariiiitas!!”
Maddie didn’t have to actually say it, to say it. She had known Joe for years, and she was counting on his reading between the lines. To her relief – and dismay – he understood loud and clear.
“Oh yeah? You want me to come in?”
She answered in the affirmative, trying to conceal the warble in her voice. She heard her words as if they came from a being outside of herself – and not from her own mouth at all.
Maddie hadn’t fucked Joe since that quickie at her old apartment over a year ago. And she made a point of paying him for the 50 bag he had given her before she took off her leggings and bent over the armchair. But this time, she did not.
“We gotta hustle, I’m seeing my homeboy in like an hour.”
Maddie didn’t even try to kiss him this time — not that he would have let her. If it was out of boredom and loneliness last time, it was all business this time around. The sooner he got it over with, the sooner she clean herself up, and try to find the right balance between the high and the low. It had been years since she had given her body to a man, quid pro quo; but she’d be damned if she was going to just sit there and let her mind start opening the dusty boxes she had tucked away in the recesses of her consciousness.
Joe was done within a couple of minutes. She tried to reassure him that it was good for her, too. But it wasn’t. She hadn’t known such self-debasement in a long time, and had figured it was already way, way behind her. That she had just done it again scared her to death.
This is the last time, I promise Maddie. This isn’t a backslide, it’s a one-time thing. I promise.
Mark showed up at her apartment less than an hour later. He was early; he apologized, but he was just so eager to see her.
OK, this is my new lowest fucking low of my whole fucking life, she thought. No, it wasn’t her father’s regular assaults on her body or femininity, or the way he always creeped on her, or the way he controlled and punished her, just for being a girl. Or the succession of times she was fired for being coked-up on the job, or any other array of humiliations she endured at the hands of anyone that she had been close with over the years. No, it wasn’t any of that, it was this moment.
It was Mark’s ardent and ebullient greeting as she opened her door, as he threw his arms around her and squeezed her into his body. It was just as he came in close for the embrace, that she caught it: the profuse twinkle of love in his eyes. And her heart quick-plummeted into her gut, and the acids begat of self-starvation began to devour it whole. And she froze like a corpse, and her core temperature dropped, and the hair on her arms prickled with stiffness as the chill of remorse and the need to die shivered up and down her limbs.
And there was only one solution: snort more coke. So she did exactly that, and her horror at his arrival took a backseat to her drug use in real time. They made love several times that night; he was sensuous and tender and passionate, but she couldn’t enjoy it – she was too scared he could or would feel inside her that she had just been with another man. Logically, she figured he wouldn’t flip out on her; but by now she was conditioned to fear a man’s spontaneous ire, no matter who he was, or how gentle and caring he had shown himself to be, and to expect an assault on her mind and body through his words – or worse.
Maddie kept Mark at arm’s length. He told her he wanted a commitment, but she turned him down. She was so shocked to experience firsthand the pain of dismay her lover felt at her rejection, and so deeply; she had long feared that her capacity to feel anything was basically gone forever. In that moment, though, she was overcome with relief at this sign of life within her. But that quickly gave way to moroseness as she realized that she had hurt him. She told herself she was simply too independent to commit to anyone, that she was so accustomed to rolling solo that having to answer to another person would dramatically impact how she lived her life.
But she wondered if it weren’t something else; surely, it couldn’t be as simple as I don’t deserve to be loved, to be treated well, could it? Given her past experiences with men, it would probably make a whole lot of sense. But what was most interesting to her was that it hurt her to experience his pain, to hurt him; this was an ache that she could not deny feeling – and, the truth was, it was simply divine, almost a high in and of itself. She needed to be punished, it seemed – not for all the terrible things she had done as an adult, but only for being born at all.
Maddie wanted to cry for him. But it had been years since she had been able to cry; pushing that shit down had become so routine that she didn’t even have to try anymore. And that’s what was so scary — she wasn’t even doing it on purpose.
She couldn’t admit it, but she wanted to cry for herself, as well; cry for the sting of realizing that maybe she was just too far gone to walk through the fire unless she was entranced in a sleep-state, destined to move through life like a sleepwalker – still breathing, still beating, still basically alive. But unable to wake the fuck up.
Despite Maddie’s rejection and increasing tendency to push him away, Mark stuck around. He’d take what he could get. But she regularly canceled on him, sometimes not long before he was leaving to head to her place. It was already too hard for her to look at him, to look in his eyes and catch the sparkle of love that was only brighter against the shadow of sorrow and loss. It was a love, she perceived, that craved expression, a love that perceived in her only what was good. She saw all of that in his eyes, and she wanted it all, badly. But no, she wasn’t allowed to have it. If she let it in, she might lose what she had spent years constructing around her: the façade of composure, and the belief that she had it all under control. But with his presence in her life, it threatened to all come apart at the seams. And that, for her, was more terrifying than the thought of losing him, and being condemned to move through the remainder of her life unloved and carved out like a shell, intent on going, going, going, and knowing that, if she stopped even for a second, she’d be forced to confront the reality of her life, and admit to all the years squandered, and all the years before her that she suspected she would end up pissing away.
But one Friday after a 5-day run, a strange calmness came over her. She had started making mistakes at work again – just bad judgment calls, one after another. But on this morning she decided she was finally fed up – with compromising her career, her relationship with Mark, and her future overall. She had always told herself that she wasn’t hurting anyone except herself, but that was not the case anymore. This realization burned deep; and if hope wasn’t enough of a catalyst for getting better, then relief from the guilt and shame certainly was. That morning, she copped one 40 bag from Jay to get her through the day, ran out around 1 pm and then got another one. At 5 pm she had enough left to keep going well into the evening; but remorse and despair weighed her down like a heavy, soaked blanket around her shoulders, and she wanted to shed it and step forward into the future unencumbered and without that burden—or, at least, without burdening those around her.
Before she could change her mind, she flushed the rest of her supply and poured what remained of the wine down the kitchen sink.
Maddie made it all the way to Day 3. Day 3 was always hard because it was usually a Monday, and difficult tasks at work often triggered a call to Jay. I just can’t think clearly without it, this is too fucking hard. I’m literally good for nothing right now, and all I can do is fucking stare at the wall and drool. Cocaine sucked the life out of her, especially when she used it on several consecutive days, especially from morning till night. She was an addict, and it didn’t take long for her to get hooked, and to fucking need it to perform basic tasks like brushing her teeth or reading something for work. Within a couple of days, it had already eroded her motivation to do anything, and she stopped caring whether shit ever got done at all; and her ability to focus or concentrate rapidly dissolved with each passing day of each new relapse.
But this Day 3 was special. Her sobriety was very tenuous, and her future uncertain; but, in a moment of raw bravery, and inspired by a critical hunch, she elected that morning to confide in Mark exactly what she was going through, and why she couldn’t give him the commitment he wanted, and why she had been pushing him away so much — and she reasoned that he could just take it or leave it. Part of her feared and secretly hoped it would chase him away for good, and she would be free of this inner debate and could do coke to her heart’s content, without ever having to examine her behavior; but another part of her had a brighter, kinder hope. She couldn’t forget that moment of profound empathy, when she looked into his eyes and knew what he was feeling, as if firsthand. And she thought, Maybe I’m not dead yet, after all.
At Day 3, she couldn’t say for sure that she wanted to wake up from her 30-year slumber. But it occurred to her that she might feel differently by Day 15, or Day 30, or after 1 whole fucking year.
She heard the phone beep, and the new text message icon pop up on her home screen. Her heart began to pound, and her hands began to sweat. She was starting to panic; and that’s when she knew she wanted to wake up and walk through that fire. She didn’t want him to bail, after all; she didn’t want the freedom to do coke alone in her apartment without self-examination, she didn’t want to sleep through the remainder of her life, or squander even another minute, let alone decade.
When she couldn’t stall any longer, she reached for the phone, her hands shaking, and opened her text messages.
“Maddie, it means the world to me that you felt safe enough to share this with me. I’m here to support you in any way I can.”
Before she could summon a reply, another text came through.
“And you don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for. I just like being near you.”
And she felt the earth move beneath her, and she almost laughed out loud at the thought that she could possibly be dead inside. She began to wake up, opening her eyes as if for the first time, finally taking note of where she was, and what she was feeling; and it was OK.
She thought, I’m ready to wake up and walk through the fire—eyes wide open. And, secretly, she hoped he would be there waiting there for her at the other side.
Photo by Frankie Cordoba on Unsplash
