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Writer's pictureCarly Mcardle

The Child Is Grown

The old and dusty television connected to my boyfriend’s Xbox is blasting music as it always is. His playlist full of songs he associates with a time in his life when things were better, when he was on top, a time before he became the shell of a man that he has become. I am realizing I am becoming just like him, angry, hateful, and broken. I push those thoughts deep down as I approach the plate positioned on the TV stand. I stare down at the light brown powder some of it sticking together resembling tiny brown rocks. I pick up the ID and lighter and go to work carefully, covering the powder with the ID and using the butt of the lighter to push down harder crushing the powder into a fine dust. I then start separating it into small thin lines. I let out a breath as I pick up a trimmed down short straw bend down towards the plate connect straw to powder and snort it deep into my nose feeling it drip down my throat. I know that soon all my worries will disappear, and I will feel nothing at all. As I sit back down next to him the song “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd starts to play. I closed my eyes drifting in and out listening to the intro and this song has never made more sense to me. I remember listening to this song as a teen and loving it but not understanding it. I was a good girl when I was a kid to most of my adulthood. I was too afraid to break rules. People knew me as kind, caring, honest and always trying to do the right thing. That girl is gone, and I don’t even know who she is now. Suddenly, I feel pain, an ache burning deep inside, an anguish too intense for me to handle as I mourn for the girl that I once was. “Apparently I haven’t done enough,” I think to myself. The drug calls to me “I can hear you’re feeling down/well I can ease your pain/and get you on your feet again.” Wait, is that the heroin or the song? I conclude it’s both as I am almost involuntarily drawn back to the plate. It feels like I am being drawn down to hell. I bend over the plate again. “This better take this feeling away this time.”


The song keeps playing. I listen but only some of it registers. I know the words already because I am living them. I no longer want to feel anything anymore. I don’t even want to exist. A year ago, I was a mom, a wife, a daughter, a coworker, and a friend and today I am a junkie, an addict, a loser, a liar, a thief, and a battered woman. How did this happen? I tune back into the song for some kind of answer but all it is telling me to do is keep going. “There is no pain you are receding/a distant ship, smoke on the horizon/you’re only coming through in waves.” It sounds great but they don’t tell you what happens when you come back to reality. How when the money and the drugs run out its just you with your thoughts and your guilt. How now you need it physically to function not just mentally to cope. They don’t tell you that when you run out you will be in pain from your head to your toes and that even your hair will hurt. They don’t tell you that you will run to the bathroom vomiting up your insides until there’s nothing left to get out. The emotional numbness ends and is replaced with self-hatred. The faces of everyone you are actively hurting while you have been chasing these drugs live in your mind and haunt you every second of every hour of every day until you get that next “high.” However, by now it’s not a “high” anymore you just try to get enough to be able to function again.


I snap out of those thoughts and walk back up to the plate again. I am resolved to drown out this voice in my head. I take in the last of it, sit back down and then “Finally!” The song continues: “Can you stand up/I do believe it’s working good/that will keep you going through the show/come on it’s time to go.” I realize I feel better now. Things might be okay. It’s not that bad. I need to stay in this state where I don’t care anymore. I can’t let that end. I feel no pain right now and no worries about tomorrow. I love this drug right now we are on good terms. I want to spend forever with this drug. How could I have ever doubted it? Why was I complaining? Yes, we have our problems, but things are good right now and that’s what matters.


Every part of me is buzzing and the song continues. “You’re only coming through in waves/your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying.” I know my boyfriend is yelling something at me, but I really don’t care. I don’t hear him. He is drowned out by the buzzing in my head. I am floating now. I move to the bed so I can hang on and I don’t float away. Then everything changes and I feel my arms getting heavy. I can’t keep my eyes open anymore and there are no more thoughts left to think. I don’t care that I used up the last of my drugs and tomorrow is going to be a miserable day. I also don’t care that my boyfriend is going to hurt me when he finds out. I am not worried about my perfect daughter who wants nothing more than to hear from me and for me to be the mom that I was before. A mom who read stories, played games, and comforted her when she was sick. A mom who hosted movie nights with just the two of us on special occasions with mountains of snacks and sugary drinks. A mom that loved her more than I did myself. It doesn’t matter that I have nothing anymore. I am fine, I am happy now. I may be hated by my family and friends, have no money or future, but I do have this good feeling now. And as I drift off to oblivion the song continues with its last words. “The child is grown/the dream is gone/I have become comfortably numb."

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