L. was my second 'official' boyfriend, we went to live together when my mum threw me out of her house when I was 19. I liked him since I was 17, but he was 5 years older and thought I was too young.
We met again one evening when I was 18, we went out for drinks with friends, flirted all evening and ended up having Sex in his office after we smoked some joints together.
He was into drugs, I had only done pot until then, he introduced me to some other drugs, like coke and amphetamines, I did not like coke, as coke was my normal state of being, on a speedy highway in thoughts and speech, I liked amphetamines, I felt I was God on them, totally disconnected from my body, no hunger, thirst, or tiredness, absolutely no physical discomfort of any kind, it felt great.
The down was terrible, if you shoot yourself up high, you may see how low you will go when you come down, I did not see it until the come down came. It was horrific, the pain in my body was extensive and everywhere, it took me 3 days to feel Ok again.
So I was in and out of powders pretty fast, I found that Pot was my thing, it slowed me down nicely and basically when I overdid it I would fall asleep, kept me quiet and unbothered and made me less prone to anger outburst, didn't have the energy for anger play outs.
For L. pot was not enough, he liked the roller coaster of drugs.
When we moved into a small apartment after sharing a room in a thugs house in my neighbourhood, we were OK for a while, we would spend our weekend stoned and having sex, he was much into Sex as well, so we got on fairly well, our communication was limited to talking about others as soon as we would be alone, I told him he was NOT the man of my life, I was sure about this, and I felt I had been honest about it.
Our Relationship was always troubled, we split and got together again a few times, sex always drove us back together, but we knew we were not good for each other and at one point I was ashamed of going back to him again and again and we saw each other secretly.
While we lived together I realized he was doing heroin with a common friend, the signs were there, small pupils and vomiting on and off after eating, I asked him and he said NO, then like women do, I told him, "tell me the truth, it's better, there won't be consequences, just be honest".
So he told me the truth, yes I do heroin occasionally with our common friend.
I felt betrayed and taken for a ride, as this had been going on for a while, I felt as well ashamed that someone else knew what I did not know that impacted on us so much, I felt ashamed as well of being with someone who was doing heroin, among the 'sane' one of us in our neighbourhood, we had seen many friends die, L.'s previous girlfriend that he left for me, started heroin too, and eventually died on it, heroin was the line we drew on what was acceptable and he had to cross it.
So I upped and left.
He came looking for me a few times, this is a very cultural pattern, Italian women leave so men can run after us and we get a sense of value, that our man saw our worth and missed us, something that did not happen with my ex husband due to not having the same cultural imprinting (and as I said possibly the relief to see me going), which left me sitting alone at the love game table unable to make any other 'move'.
After 3 months I had left I heard that he was on heroin now full time, he had to give me back some money I had lent him and he would come monthly to my office to pay his debt, the third month I was not there, my colleague told me that he was yellow and that he probably had caught hepatitis.
He called me on the phone, he said "please come back with me, if you do, I'll stop shooting heroin", and I felt angry for the blackmail, I told him, you stop for yourself first, then we see and I said 'NO, I can't, I don't even have the tools to help you, I'm a fuck up myself, I can visit, bring you something to read and chat but can't go back together'
I could not support him as I was not even able to support myself psychologically and I feared I would join in his black hole instead of being able to pull him out.
He did not kick the habit, he went to jail instead, twice, for trafficking, in jail he was tested and they found out he was HIV positive.
He told me he wanted to quit the first time he came out of jail and asked me to host him, I did as I carried the guilt for how his life had turned out, I would lock him in every morning and would come back every evening to have dinner together, a few days later I saw the same heroin use symptoms, I started to take the phone with me and this is when his withdrawal kicked in.
Two weeks later he was better, he asked me to let him go to work, he said he would meet another friend who had given up, so he would be unwatched for just 20 minutes.
One hour later his friend called, he had not turned up. I drove to our pusher's friend home, I rang the bell and L. came to open the door wasted, we looked at each other, I slapped him so hard he walked backward all the way to the wall never leaving my gaze where he just said 'ouch'.
I said 'come and pack your things today' and left.
He came when R. one of our common friend was there, R. said 'I'll stay, just in case', when L. came he said 'I'm sorry I have let you down', this enraged me greatly and I went to the bedroom where he was packing up and we had a physical fight, I told him 'you have let yourself down you bastard', while I smacked him repeatedly. He just lied there and took it. R. had to step in, not for my sake as he may have wrongly foreseen, for L.'s sake.
Few years went by, he got in touch again, told me he was no longer on drugs, he quit after the last arrest thanks to a priest that helped him and could we see each other again.
When we met he looked frail and sick, they found out he had TB, I went to his home, it was a mess, he had always been so neat, even at the height of his addiction, I helped him to clean up everything, we threw away two huge bags of rubbish, I was on a visiting trip from Singapore and had to leave soon, he promised to keep himself healthy, eat good meals and take care of himself.
We called again when I was in Singapore, he told me he realized that everything he thought was actually coming true and was going through a omnipotence trip, few months later my mum and R. had to break down his door and call an ambulance to have him recovered in a hospital, my mum told me his home was a disgrace.
On the next trip back to Italy I went and visited him at the TB facility, he was in isolation, told me they would soon release him, that he had chances to get on a government support plan, we kept in touch by phone.
The last call he made to me I did not call back, two days later he died.
I was not on speaking terms with my mum at the time, so it was up to R. to send me an email, the email said
'Ele, I'm sad to let you know that L. passed away one week ago, I just went to his funeral, I'm sure you will agree this was the best thing for him too'
I did not cry, I felt it was the best he could do for himself at the stage he had got to, L. died to himself when they told him he had AIDS, for someone who had always cheated death with a flair that came as a blow he never recovered from, finally Life had caught up with him, he did not manage to run fast enough to cheat Death too.
I Forgive myself for Accepting and Allowing myself to isolate myself in my pot world so much that I could not care for myself or others
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel guilty because I did not go back to this relationship with L. when he started on heroin fearing that he would not get out and I would get in instead
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see and define myself as a wasted person and for being unable to stand up in self support and practical support of another
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel guilty that L. got hepatitis and HIV because I saw it as an outflow of my unwillingness to put up with his heroin habit to support him
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to blame myself because L. got sick
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to tell someone 'there will be no consequences' deceiving them when in my secret mind I knew all along there would be and I'm just pushing for the truth they don't want to tell me, fearing the consequences of the truth
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear the consequences of telling the truth
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear the world of thugs in which we were born and raised and for believing we had no choices to change ourselves unless we cheated and lied about where we were from and our past
I forgive myself for accepting ad allowing myself to live a secret Pot life in which I did not let anyone in as I liked to project an image of myself as having it together and being in control
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel guilty whenever L. was arrested because I was never able to express my fears and let him know that since I did not trust myself to be able to change I could not trust him either and this was why I could never support him through his change
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe I couldn't change and for not trusting myself to be able to change
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel better when his life became troubled because I could show myself I was right after all and that he would have never quit no matter if I had been present or not and that I made the right choice to not go back with him
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to have Relationships with men for the sole purpose of having sex that I enjoyed, not caring what that meant for them because I had been clear about me being just transiting in their lives
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I can find my worth in relationships with men and I can push it until they show me the worth I am after, either by leaving or staying and making myself special and within this I forgive myself for having desired to and made myself special and for having left as a way to gain value for myself instead of facing the point that I felt worthless to start with
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel worthless within my relationships with the men I left to prove I was worthy, due to my separation from Self Worth as Self Here in every moment of Breath
I forgive myself for accepting and allowig myself to separate myself from Self Worth as Self here in every moment of Breath
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to accept and believe that drugs are our way out in a world that doesn't make sense, instead of seeing why is this world not making sense and what I can do to change it into an experience where no one has to live the kind of experiences I lived while I grew up in fear in a thugs area where violence and survival where the name of the game
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hate my mother's Pollyanna mindset as she thought and believed that the repeated setting on fire of the fruit stall in our square was just an accident while she refused to see reality for what it is, like I did through using pot, to not have to face reality as a scary abusive place in which some kids are just trained and left with the choice to do vile things to survive
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that violence is a way to show disagreement in a passionate way, instead of seeing and realizing that passion means suffering and violence is just the physical outflow of the suffering we all share that explodes into the physical because we have not stood up against any form of abuse, starting with self abuse
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to base my relationship with L. on guilt for what I did not do to help him out of his heroin life
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel a void when L. died, because so many relationship threads were created between the two of us that I left unattended and did not clear out because I feared ending up going back with him to put a lid on my guilt, if I did
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that he died because I did not care enough, instead of seeing that he died because he did not care enough to live
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be angry at L. for dying on me instead of sorting himself out so I could put my guilt to rest
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe I was a liar when later in life I spoke the words, "if you need me I'm here", because I had not been there for L. and look what happened
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to accept and allow myself to live and breath guilt as one and equal to me, instead of realizing guilt is my own creation out of my own judgement of myself that I have suppressed about L., the Past and what happened with his life, instead of seeing I can only be self responsible and make myself stable so I will not suck the life out of others as a way to sustain myself and my ideas and definitions of myself that I have made up to deal with my suppressions due to my self judgements of myself and others, one and equal.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not stand up for a world change that would allow lives of dignity for everyone, where everyone can have enough and access to free education and no life goes wasted in a system of abuse in which I have been a willing and an active participant through direct participation or through my acceptances and allowances of just try to pass another day in a world of fear and hate I wished I had never been born into.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to desire to never have been born as the ultimate abdication of my power and self responsibility for a world I have created through cycles of time and that I now I need to stand up and correct inside and outside, Equal and One, for myself and What is Best for All.
When and as I see myself bringing up or about to bring up Memories of L. to abuse myself I stop, Breathe, remind myself L. is gone and no thoughts were ever supportive or can now be of support to him or myself and my participation within and as the polarity of emotions and feelings on this topic is just a form of Self Abuse that I will no longer accept One and Equal to myself
When and as I see myself doubting myself and moving into or about to move into not trusting myself to be able to support someone effectively, which means to not accept from them aything less that I accept of and as of myself on my Walk Back to Life, I stop, Breathe, remind myself I'm not supportive if I support another's Ego of emotions and feelings and beliefs about themselves, instead I offer the tools of Self Honesty, Self Forgiveness and Self Corrective application so they too may break free from the prison of their Minds, and trust that this is enough as each one of us has to walk ourselves out of our own self designed prisons of self and other's judgements.
I commit myself to no longer disregard any crime against Life, be it my own or other, and to expose this world that is an abomination in which I am born as a chance I am giving to myself and others One and Equal to make it right, to straighten what went wrong from the beginning of time, to realign to creation as an act of Life, in which everyone is Equally considered and supported and no one has to die for my for-get-fullness instead of living What is Best for All, for and as my for-giveness, to All as Life, One and Equal.
Further support @: