Imperial Privilege

No punchline

She's been in for about a week on a probation violation, the details of which are still unclear to me. She went to court today and was sentenced to six to twelve months in a live-in rehabilitation facility.

This is a massive mixed blessing.

I've mentioned in previous blog posts that we had broken up in the past due to her heroin addiction, which she then kicked while we were apart. She's been clean for seven months, and we've been together again for most of that time. Then the probation violation happens.

She says it's an oversight on the state's part, that she has a prescription for several of the pills she's been taking ever since her surgery. I can vouch for part of that. I took her to the hospital and sat in the waiting room with her mother. When I went back post-op to see her, she could barely speak due to the medication. So she's not pulling this out of thin air.

But there is a part of me that wonders if she didn't take that as a green light to leap back into her drug-fueled haze.

Maybe she needs to be in a place where she can't play the system, even if she wasn't actually playing it. Maybe this will keep her on the straight and narrow for good. It will also be fantastic getting her out of that jail. She's come down with a nasty infection and sounds like she really needs to go to a proper hospital.

In the meantime, I'm trying to be proactive. I've informed a few of her closest friends about her sentence, and I have her mother's blessing to go over to the apartment she shares with her sister in order to collect several of her belongings and take them to the mother's house about an hour away.

That sister, man. I fucking hate her sister.

They've both been into recreational drug use (marijuana, LSD, air cartridges) for about as long as I've known them, but the sister picks up hard drugs almost as soon as my girlfriend gets serious about getting clean. If she has lapsed again, I would bet good money the sister and her meth-addicted boyfriend have something to do with it. God, they're such awful people.

It will be a blessing in disguise if we don't have to put up with their brand of bullshit for a while.

She offered me a chance to back out of the relationship because she understands it's a lot to ask someone to wait for you when you might not see them for an entire year. I told her the truth. I love her too much to leave her in her time of need.

So I'll go visit her during visitation hours on Sunday. I will write her, first in jail and again when she is transferred to rehab. I will drive out there--wherever the facility will be, though it will be somewhere in the state--to see her as often as I can. I will do my best to keep that poisonous sister from making things any worse.

I will wait for her.

My mother has asked me why. I can't save her, she says. And even if I wait, she tells me, there's no guarantee we will have more than a few years with all of her health complications.

You've heard all about her addiction, but have I told you about the eating disorder? The mental instability? The sleeves of scars on her thin arms?

I may lose the love of my life very soon. It will shatter me. It will ruin me.

This woman I love may break my spirit.

But I will continue to love her and provide for her in these small, simple ways because I know she would do the same for me. I have loved other people, but this woman is all I have ever wanted out of life.

There's not a road to happiness that doesn't have her next to me. So I will walk this road, even if it hurts me, even if it's short and stressful, even if there are other roads.

I will walk this road because it's the only one worth walking.

I love her so much.