Psychosis

Epilogue

I escaped that day. I escaped with my life. I had come closer to death then than I had at the docks in Avondale. Once I had turned back onto 49, I pulled Damien’s red bandana out of the center console and I blew my nose until it bled.

My instinct was to go to Lawrence’s house. He took one look at me and knew I was speedballing. I told him I was done, I told him I was leaving the underworld behind. I wanted to resurface from the rabbit hole, and I wanted to never look back.

Four days passed, and Damien never returned home. Four days passed before I felt normal again. Once those four days had ended the most horrible feeling of my entire life had hit me; and I couldn’t help but think to myself how hilarious it was that so many people, for so long, had quipped at me about being a drug addict. They had said I was addicted to meth and cocaine and amphetamines and all of these different uppers. They joked about me being addicted to pills, about me being an alcoholic and a nymphomaniac.

And I laughed because they were all wrong.

For you see, at the end of the four days, when the high had worn off and the most traumatic thing in my life had come and gone, I learned that I indeed was an addict, but not for anything other than heroin.

I sat outside, watching my kids play in the backyard, thinking about just how close I had come. Thinking about what I had lost. I sat by the willow tree where my husband was buried and prayed to a God that I didn’t believe in, that the next man I intended to marry was okay.

My shade chuckled subtly from the back of my mind, ‘Never forget Kara, everyone leaves. Be it by death, or decision.’