The tragedy of the famous first hit

Beanie sagging on his head as the sweat trickles down his face and the sleeves sit so carelessly on his arms the temperature is 90 degrees and rising yet he clammered out of the house looking like the middle of December. His eyes cried out help me and his demeanor scolded back off, he was irritable today. The plug must’ve not picked up his cry for the cure, hands trembling, he tried to reach out for a touch of affection yet jerking back into himself he remembered he wasn’t high. I couldn’t see him anymore, I couldn’t see his soul in his big dark eyes, I couldn’t see the hopeful dreams that normally fluttered so impatiently over his head.

Why have you gone? What does this selfish disease offer that love and tenderness can not? I reach out to caress his being only to ask if I’m enabling to much. This twisted web has even me tangled along with it, fighting back tears I reminisce on the past trying to pull just even an ounce of him out of the empty shell he’s now residing in. The past is all we have when we lost him to the famous first hit, how can we look ahead to a future that is so out of reach, a future that a breath in his lungs is not guaranteed, a future that we are slowly helping him destroy.

Why did we let you walk out of the front door and into the war zone? Why did we ignore the signs when you came home nodding off and just claimed it was exhaustion? Why must we even now still try and justify what this devilish substance has ripped away from us? 

She crept in and promised you sweets and a life with no pain, tightening her grip, she slowly sucked the life out of the darling soul we once knew. She raised you like a lion to be tough and alone with courage of never needing or wanting us again. She kidnapped you. She raised you. But we will bury you. 

When your heart is breaking for someone who is broken but your words can’t reach them and your love can’t save them, ask the angels to go somewhere that you cannot. To whisper in their heart what their ears can’t hear: We will not give up on you, don’t give up on yourself.