One Last Time

28 August 2007

The 26th of Aug represented a profound realisation and turning point. It boils down to one simple choice – there are no alternatives. Life or death.

Just One Last Time
The truth comes like a rushing wave of the ocean.
Expected, overwhelming, unpleasant and unwelcome.
It smashes us down, turning what we know into chaos.
Drowning in eternal moments of shame and regret.

The swim out into the carefree sunset of ignorance,
Seemed safe in the gentle calm of salty surf.
Children laughing running in the soft sand,
Bodies soothed in the glow of bronzed rays.

The beach the ocean the people are oblivious.
It’s all a dream, the subconscious a dim light.
The reality – powerful danger of the wave ignored.
Everyone chooses to believe it will not rise up.

Smash tumble torn broken into little pieces.
The bottom of the ocean dark fear eternal.
Drowning suffocating bleeding dying.
The final thoughts regret shame anger…

You knew the wave would inevitably arrive!
You wish you hadn’t denied its presence,
Too arrogant to admit that it could just be…
While you paddled around JUST ONE LAST TIME!

I feel like the life is slowly leaving me, I am so weak… This was the last of it, I will surely die otherwise…
I never in my life want to feel like this unless I am actually physically ill. I actually feel like it would be nice in hospital for a few days, to rest and detox from all the poison in my frail body.

The end of the line came very abruptly and completely by surprise. It happened one morning after one of the very few raves we actually went to. My best friend bought us tickets to join her at an H2O party that December – just to get us out for a change. We were at her house the following morning, high as kites. She suddenly started going off at me, saying that I was a hypocrite and a fool. That I kept saying how much I loved God but here I was – an addict! I knew that she had been using crystal meth and I knew it made her crazy. Still, I couldn’t accept that my friend was being so utterly mean to me.

In those moments, while her words cut me so deeply, I looked to Seth to defend me, only to find him lying on the couch in dead silence. He was oblivious of how I was cracking up inside. I demanded then that he take me home. As soon as we got to our house, I packed my bags and called my parents and told them that I was coming home to them.

I asked my dad to call my boss and tell her that I would not be returning to work. That was the end of my life as I knew it in Joburg. The end of my relationship with Seth – who never actually did anything to try and stop using drugs with me. It was finally the end of the hell I had been drowning in for two years straight.

It was truly very hard for me to walk away – again – but I knew that I had no other choice. I had proven for two years that I was simply too weak to beat my addiction by myself. So I gave in and allowed my parents to reach out and help me yet again.

At the age of twenty-six I started my life over for the fourth time.

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Tell us what you think: What do you think finally rescue Michelle from her addiction?