I used to dread days like this. The guilt would consume me. The frantic search for money was too much. The begging, the borrowing…I always knew it wouldn’t work. I did still try though. That wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part of days like the day before my son’s birthday was when I finally had the money to buy him gifts and I would sit in my car if I had one, or on the metro, or at a bus stop and look at the cash in my hand and debate.
You know the choice I had to make. It’s the same choice I made everyday but today was always different. Any other day I would just know that my priority was to get well. The next priority was to get high…then I might think about feeding my kid or doing something semi-responsible. Usually not if I’m being real. But today was different. Today I looked at that money and thought about what I could buy him that he would really like. Something that might have him think differently of me. Something that might make him forget about how much of a monster I was. What can I buy that might have him mentally escape from the world of pain that I caused just for the day? It’s his birthday tomorrow and I can’t do anything other than try to buy a moment’s worth of happiness. $100 just didn’t seem like enough to accomplish any of those things. Guess $50 wouldn’t be that much different anyway. I’ll get a gram of raw and figure it out after. Shit, I doubt I could cause anymore heartache or disappointment anyway.
I remember 7 years of days just like this.
It’s different now.
Tomorrow my son will be 16. Six-fucking-teen. I spent a lot of time today comparing him to me when I was his age. I was very much physically addicted to heroin at 16 and was selling basically everything else on the market. I was getting in fights. Waking up in strange places. Running from police. Pissing on people’s living room floors. I was a disgrace at his age.
I just walked downstairs and heard him talking on the phone with my mother. He was so excited that she got him these Magic the Gathering cards he really wanted. That’s who my son is at 16. He’s amazing. He is one of my favorite people in this world. He is my heart. I would die for him. Much different from before when I was dying in front of him. Today he is surrounded by so much love. He has a very strong family in this house and I can’t think of a better gift to wake up to tomorrow than to have his family, his father included under the same roof as him. I can’t think of a better gift than to have a house with God protecting everyone in it.
It’s seriously amazing.
I can’t take back who I was for the first 7 years of his life. What I can say with a very high level of confidence is that I will never feel like I did at that bus stop looking at a palm’s worth of blood stained crumpled up twenty-dollar bills again. I honestly don’t give a fuck about what you think about me crossing the “Don’t ever think you got this” line. I don’t think I got anything except love in my heart, an awareness of what’s important, a family that needs me, two beautiful kids that look up to me, a fox of a wife that does nothing but support me and the biggest fucking God in my corner.
Oh…and the acceptance that I’m an old man with a 16-year-old son. Damn that was fast.