nine years gone
893 Words
Nine years.
When people hear that number, it sounds like time. Just years on a calendar. Birthdays. Summers. Winters passing by.
But addiction measures time differently.
Nine years became sleepless nights.
Cold sweats soaking blankets at three in the morning.
Hands shaking so bad Jessica could barely hold anything steady.
Puking until her ribs hurt.
Seizures that terrified her afterward once clarity briefly returned.
Three overdoses.
Three moments where death stood close enough to touch her face.
Nine years of hurting herself.
Nine years of hurting everyone around her too.
Drugs didn’t just destroy Jessica physically. They hollowed her out emotionally until she barely recognized the person staring back in the mirror anymore. Somewhere between the meth, the c***k, the needles, the manipulation, and the abuse, she stopped feeling human.
She became “the addict.”
That label followed her everywhere.
People used her financially. Emotionally. Mentally. If Jessica had money, someone wanted it. If she had drugs, someone wanted them too. If she had weakness, people exploited it. Addiction surrounded her with people who only stayed as long as they benefited from her pain.
And somehow, even in all that chaos, a tiny part of her still wanted a real life.
A small, quiet part deep inside her still imagined what life could’ve been if she had never touched substances in the first place.
Sometimes she’d think about the little girl she used to be.
The loud skateboard kid flying down sidewalks with scraped knees and messy hair. The girl practicing kickflips for hours at the skatepark while boys laughed at her. The girl who stayed outside until streetlights came on because home felt too still and the world felt too exciting.
That girl had dreams once.
Now Jessica sat in dirty rooms hitting pipes and sniffing lines off tables instead.
The contrast haunted her.
It all started when she was ten and a half years old.
Ten.
A child.
By sixteen, addiction had completely wrapped itself around her life like barbed wire.
But then came October 17th, 2016.
The day everything changed.
Two pink lines.
Jessica stared at the pregnancy test in disbelief, terrified and frozen all at once. Fear crashed into her harder than any drug ever had. Her thoughts spiraled instantly.
What have I done?
Can I even do this?
What happens now?
But underneath the fear came something else too.
A reason.
For the first time in years, Jessica felt something stronger than addiction.
Love.
Not for herself yet. She still didn’t know how to do that.
But for the tiny life growing inside her.
Withdrawal hit her brutally after she chose to quit drugs. Her body screamed for substances she had depended on for nearly a decade. Nights became battles. She’d lay awake drenched in sweat, shaking violently, crying into pillows while the rest of the house slept.
Sometimes she thought she wouldn’t survive it.
Sometimes she didn’t even want to.
But then she’d place a hand on her stomach and remind herself why she had to keep going.
Because this baby deserved a chance.
A real one.
Jessica fought through every seizure, every craving, every moment her body begged her to relapse. She fought through headaches so painful they blurred her vision. She fought through vomiting, panic, insomnia, and fear.
And somehow…
she won.
On July 14th, 2017, Elijah was born.
Healthy.
Alive.
Perfect.
Jessica looked at him and realized something terrifying and beautiful at the same time:
He had saved her life.
If she never got pregnant, she knows deep down she probably would’ve died eventually. Maybe from an overdose. Maybe from violence. Maybe from the lifestyle itself slowly eating her alive.
But Elijah gave her a reason to stay.
A reason to fight.
Unfortunately, addiction wasn’t finished with her yet.
When Elijah was around one or two years old, Raymond entered the picture. By then Jessica had escaped drugs, but she still carried years of trauma inside her chest. Trauma has a dangerous way of leaving doors unlocked for toxic people.
Raymond slipped right through one of them.
Eventually Jessica got rid of him too, but freedom didn’t feel freeing afterward. Her mind was still loud. Memories still clawed at her at night. Fear still lived inside her body long after he was gone.
So she traded one poison for another.
Alcohol.
Bacardi Gold rum became her new escape.
One bottle a day turned into two.
Morning drinking became night drinking. Night drinking became everyday drinking. Jessica convinced herself it was better than drugs because at least she wasn’t using meth or c***k anymore.
But addiction doesn’t care what form it takes.
It only cares that it owns you.
Alcohol changed her.
Without a drink, she became angry. Irritated. Restless. Her emotions sat too close to the surface all the time. Rage became easier than sadness. Numbness became easier than reflection.
So she drank to avoid thinking.
Drank to avoid remembering.
Drank because silence brought back memories she didn’t want to relive.
The overdoses.
The abuse.
The fear.
The stained mattress.
Raymond’s stare.
The little girl she used to be.
Jessica didn’t realize it at the time, but she wasn’t healing.
She was surviving.
There’s a difference.
Healing means facing pain.
Survival means outrunning it until your legs finally collapse beneath you.
And addiction?
Addiction always waits patiently for exhausted people to stop running.
- Writer
