Welcome to my blog. This is a new experience for me, so please bear with me while I unfurl my wings and learn to fly.
My life began on the 5th of September 2009. Or rather, it died. With the death of my reason for living. My mom. She was my best friend, my confidante, my sister, my mother, my everything. And my world crashed when we walked through the door and discovered that she'd left our world for a dream. She fell asleep in the morning, and she never woke up. She was tired. She wanted to rest. And I firmly believe that she is resting. She's having a really long holiday, and she deserves it. But she left my life in turmoil. I couldn't imagine going on without her.
I won't bore you with the details; suffice it to say, the next few months passed in a grief-induced blur. I was functioning on every level but the important ones. I was numb. I woke up, went to work, came home, ate (a lot), and slept even more. I can look back now and say with certainty that I was depressed. Not suicidal, but certainly not involved in life.
And then I met Elf online through a mutual online friend. And I realised, with a very hard knock on the head, that my life was pretty damn good. I was lucky. I had a job. I had my own place. I had friends. I had never, ever dreamed of even half the horrors that Elf had seen in her short eighteen years of life.
You see, it was Elf's first weekend in the real world for three months. She'd been in rehab for heroin, methamphetamine (or tik in this country); cocaine and goodness only knows what else. As I'd learn later, once she was released from rehab and we really started chatting; she'd been through eighteen years of abuse, and neglect. She started using drugs at the tender age of nine, when her mother tossed her out on the streets. And yet; she was positive that this time, she was going to stay clean and finish school and get a job and, and...
And then the girl she loved and trusted not to leave her; left her. And her mother once again backed out on her promises to enrol her in a correspondence course so she could finish school. And her old friends; nice people, but addicts nonetheless, did what addicts do... And she relapsed. Slowly at first.
She lived fourteen hours away from me by car. It's eighteen by bus. I know. I took the bus down to meet her and spent 10 days with her in April of 2010. It was an experience and a half, for a lot of reasons. I took a major risk. She could have been a serial killer for all I knew. But after months of feeling and acting like a zombie, I was ready for a bit of an adventure. Besides, my instincts were screaming at me to meet her, and I just... had a feeling. You know?
She'd already relapsed on tik by then. She tried to keep it hidden from me, but I knew. I knew her, from the hours of conversation we'd had online. For some reason, she felt comfortable sharing stuff with me, that she didn't share with others. And I was so grateful. Here was someone who needed me to be positive, to be a friend. Who needed me. I fell in love with that. I fell in love with being a 'hero' of sorts. I fell in love with her. It was easy. She's an amazing person when she wants to be. But after meeting her in person; I realised that what I thought I felt for her, was more than anything, a need to protect someone who was so tough and brutal on the outside, but who was dying inside. Dying to be loved, and protected, and just... cared for. She'd never really had that. She'd never had a real mother. Not like I had.
When I left to come back home after my holiday, I was afraid I'd never see her alive again. I knew she'd relapsed, even though she only had the courage to tell me online, where it wasn't too bad for her if I rejected her for it. And I knew she was sinking back into her old pattern of life, losing hope. I just didn't realise how quickly it was happening. And how it would change my world, my life.
I didn't realise how Elf would force me to start living again.
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