Prose

Love or Lust

written by: stjogo

Drawn to a flame, you know the feeling. Your feelings have always been high for a certain person, ever since you met them. And as usual over time a relationship develops and before you know it, it's unrequited love.
No movement toward you, no outpouring of emotion or even a hint that they are interested. Situation normal, no matter how hard you try to be a part of that person. Not the lunches, not the midnight phone calls to cry on your shoulder or assistance, not the business trips back and forth across the country just to keep in touch, just to check on her status. Nothing seems to penetrate. I'm seen as a non-entity, a friend.
As the rest of my world ravels and unravels around me, kids and grandkids growing older, current wife, number three, getting lost in her religion, faith or quest for the Almighty, career and business becoming weirder by the moment, I still want to reach out and let this person know that I care, truly and deeply care. But I don't want to appear as if I'm jumping ship, looking for the greener pasture. Don't want to feel the sting of rejection, even approaching while approaching 60.

When I first did Herion, many years ago, it was the feeling of love through out the all the senses, the body and the mind that attracted me to the drug and kept me using it. No other drug, organic or man made, gave me that same feeling. The feeling of being loved beyond reason. And just like Love withdrawl was a bitch...over the last 40 years I have been in rehab for every known substance including love. At times I think that I'm not so much as a substance abuser as I am a "fail" enabler or an inept substance and relationship juggler.

One shrink asked me if I couldn't see the warning signs? If in the midst of a relationship or a binge that my "spidey sense" didn't tingle to alert me to the disaster ahead. I have great common sense she told me, and full of wisdom, I just always seem to chose the wrong door. Was I just trying to make the Lust last by taming it into Love? Thereby renaming the disaster and the disease.